The Florida Master Teacher Program has added two new levels of certification for teachers: the associate master teacher and the master teacher. Only the associate master teacher level has meaning during 1984-85 since one must have been an associate master teacher for three years before becoming a master teacher. To become an associate master…

Any particular teaching performance is limited by time and place and must be regarded as only a small sample of the large collection of activities called teaching. Evaluation is part of teaching, but it may also be a separate activity carried on by a third party. Evaluation methods differ according to the purpose, whether for guidance of…

Achievements and legislation (1972) related to teachers and school personnel are listed. Information was garnered via questionnaires sent to all state departments of education and related educational agencies in October 1972; legislative status as of March 1972 is indicated at the beginning of each description. Included topics are certification,…

The American Federal of Teachers' president, Albert Ahanker, advocates forming a board of leading educators to develop a national qualifying examination of those newly entering the teaching profesion. The test would cover subject matter knowledge and instructional potential. Public pressure would ensure that states and districts adopted the…

The competency testing of teacher candidates has become almost universal in the United States. This paper explores some of the issues associated with competency testing, especially as they relate to teacher testing in California. The practice has its origin in concern that some of those who choose to pursue teaching careers in the elementary and…

If the restrictions of credentialing requirements were lifted public schools could make much greater use of teaching talent. (AP)

Some of the measurement issues encountered in the equating of performance assessments designed for use in teacher certification decisions are described. Analytic strategies based on examinee data that involve modification of existing procedures and judgmental strategies involving the judgments of experts to determine score equivalence are also…

Discusses the purposes and activities that were central to satisfying the conditions of a contract between the University of Illinois at Chicago and the Illinois State Board of Education. The contract provided background material for the consideration of an Illinois initial years of teaching program. (RJC)

Describes the author's highest hope for the current National Board of Professional Teaching Standards Early Adolescence/English Language Arts certification process. Looks at factors that could undermine the potential benefits that a National Teaching Certificate can have on the profession. Encourages middle school teachers to support the project…

Draws analogies between the character Lydgate in George Eliott's "Middlemarch" and the medical profession on the one hand, and the National Board for Professional Teaching Standards and the teaching profession on the other hand. (SR)

Presents information on the National Board for Professional Teaching Standards (NBPTS) and the Early Adolescence/English Language Arts (EA/ELA) assessment. Comments on "insiders and outsiders" as a guiding metaphor and on the differences in positioning of teachers as insiders to assessment development, administration, and evaluation and…

Addresses what standards for English teachers should be and how they should work. Questions the value of the standards movement as it is playing out in the United States, especially as a vehicle for school reform. Suggests ways of positioning standards within a different rhetoric. (RS)

The phasing out of the Teacher Performance Assessment Instrument (TPAI) in Georgia is described, with particular attention to litigation involving a teacher who lost her certificate after failing the TPAI. Other reasons for phasing out the TPAI are discussed. (SLD)

Reports on the first round of inspection by the Office for Standards in Education (England) of providers of postgraduate certificates in education (PGCE) for secondary school mathematics. Almost three-quarters of the providers evaluated in these 21 reports were judged to be good or better, but problems were found with the consistency of the OFSTED…

This article describes the work Colorado has done to meet the "highly qualified teaching" requirements of the federal No Child Left Behind Act. Colorado's standard is devoid of the loopholes that have drawn criticism to other states' policies, many of which, observers have suggested, fall short of both the letter and the spirit of the…