Troops to Teachers

Revision with unchanged content. As the population of certified teachers shrinks due to the number reaching re­tirement age, alternative certification programs have been proposed and, in some cases, implemented on state and national levels. The Department of De­fense Troops to Teachers Program (Troops to Teachers), originally established as a Department of Defense career transition program, was reauthorized as part of the No Child Left Behind Act of 2001. Although the program is pri­ma­ri­ly designed to provide quality classroom teachers at the secondary school le­vel, the program was neither intended nor designed to certify teachers. The in­tent of the national Department of Defense program was to identify se­pa­ra­ting service members meeting a basic transition eligibility framework upon which states could overlay their individual alternative teacher certification cri­te­ria. Individual states, having developed their own specific certification cri­te­ria, could more quickly incorporate eligible veterans into their alternative cer­ti­fi­cation program. This study addresses the need to assess the initial competencies of Kentucky¿s Troops to Teachers-certified teachers against those who were traditionally trained and certified. This book is designed for education professionals concerned with teacher pre­paredness.