Forty-seven states have adopted a pathway to teaching, alternative to the standard state certification otherwise required. But is alternative certification impairing student learning? That is ultimately the justification for traditional teacher certification. To see which states have established genuine alternative certification programs and which have only symbolic ones, the authors compared alternative certification rules to requirements for traditional certification. Their research revealed that alternative certification programs vary considerably. The variation in state practice provides some answers to questions raised about alternative certification: Do states that provide a genuine alternative recruit more teachers who take the alternative certification route? Do they open the classroom door to more minority teachers? What is the impact on student learning? The answer to the first question is clear: it makes a good deal of difference whether alternative certification is meaningful or symbolic. To the second question, there is also a fairly clear answer: minorities are represented in the teaching force to a greater extent in states with genuine alternative certification than in other states. Most studies show very little, if any, connection with a teacher's classroom effectiveness and certification status. Nor is there convincing evidence that minority teachers are less effective at teaching minority students. On the contrary, results from an experiment conducted in Tennessee indicate that minority students learn more from teachers of their own ethnicity than from other teachers. Their results are consistent with that research and other studies that have found little reason to equate certification with "highly qualified."