'Alternate route' called tangled path to teaching Thursday, March 06, 2008 • BY JOHN MOONEY • Star-Ledger Staff New Jersey's pioneering effort to attract mid-career professionals for public school teaching jobs has filled huge shortages with dedicated and energetic newcomers, but some cracks have developed in the system, a new report finds. The two-year study, the first commissioned by the state since New Jersey introduced the "alternate route" 23 years ago, found the program has become integral to education, with more than a third of all new teachers using it to enter the field. These newcomers are more racially diverse than the general teaching population, often entering lower-income schools and filling voids in subject areas where there are severe shortages, especially math, science and world languages, the report said. But it also found gaping holes in the monitoring and support new teachers receive, prompting state officials to concede that more needs to be done to prepare new hires for the classroom. Administrators interviewed for the study praised alternate-route hires at the middle and high school levels for their "exceptional energy and passion," their maturity and dedication. However, the report found, those entering elementary schools often lack the understanding of child development that teachers taking the traditional route must study. In 1985, New Jersey became the first state to offer teaching jobs to people lacking education courses, allowing them to enroll in classes at night and on weekends after they already had begun teaching. Alternate-route teachers must only have taken 30 credits in the subject they teach and pass a national competency test. Teachers on the traditional route are required to take education courses that include observing classrooms and a semester of student teaching. Both alternate-route and traditional teachers must have had a 2.75 cumulative grade point average in college and pass a standard teaching exam. Since 1985, an estimated 25,000 teachers have traveled that route in New Jersey, with the numbers exploding in the last decade, the state study found. Nearly 13,000 of the 30,000 overall teachers certified since 2000 entered the profession through the alternate route. The trend toward the alternate route has resulted from necessity as much as choice, researchers involved in the study said. "New Jersey has needed the alternate route," said Sharon Sherman, a professor of education at The College of New Jersey and one of the report's authors. "The shortage of teachers is only increasing in some areas and we can't fill it through the traditional (route) alone." Yet at the same time, the proliferation of alternate-route teachers has raised concerns. An option now in virtually every other state, the path is controversial. Some in higher education maintain that such teachers are ill-prepared, and the report provides support for that argument. It found the teachers are often thrown into the job for extended periods with little of the support and training required under the law. For instance, each teacher is required to have an in-class mentor provided by the district for their first 20 days, yet barely half said these mentors were "very effective." One out of eight said they didn't have any mentor at all, according to the report. "These teachers are learning and working at the same time, but for that to work well, there needs to be strong mentoring," said Cathy Pine, a state Department of Education director whose office oversees the alternate-route process. "The evidence is showing there are pockets where that isn't working as it should." State officials said they hope the report will force improvements, and acknowledge a need for tighter enforcement of the mentoring requirement even as they noted it creates huge manpower issues. "This is another wake-up call to improve our system here," said Jay Doolan, assistant state education commissioner. Administrators told study authors that the pathway is indispensable in filling some posts. According to separate data compiled by the state for the first time in 2006-07, the alternate route accounted for more than a third of vocational education teachers and a fifth of those teaching languages, science and business. A third of charter school teachers came via the alternate route, the data said, and it accounted for one in six teachers in districts in the lowest socio-economic categories -- compared to close to one in 20 in the richest communities. According to the data, at least a quarter of teachers in Carteret, Trenton, Paterson, Hillside and Elizabeth were identified as alternate-route. A third of all alternate-route teachers work in the 31 urban districts falling under the state's Abbott vs. Burke school rulings. Long Branch has hired dozens of them, and Superintendent Joseph Ferraina said he has found that many of them -- but not all -- grow to be strong teachers. The results are similar for the traditionally trained, he said. "Without a doubt, in math and science and some of those other areas that are tough for us, the alternate route has been very important, and very positive," Ferraina said. "But it works well for some and not for others," he said. "Some are awesome, and others haven't worked out so well. But I've also had some come out of the colleges who need more training, too." Denis Duffy was an underwriter at Chubb Insurance for a dozen years before changing careers and eventually taking a job as a Spanish teacher at Franklin High School. "It isn't easy...," Duffy said of the switch five years ago. "But I've had kids say to me that I don't really seem like a teacher, and I mean that in a good sense." John Mooney may be reached at jmooney@starledger.com or (973) 392-1548. © 2008 The Star-Ledger. Used by NJ.com with permission.