Emergency certificates don’t constitute a crisis

I S the use of emergency certification for some Oklahoma teachers a crisis when the overwhelming majority are still traditionally certified? It’s worth asking given the contrast between the “crisis” rhetoric and the more mundane reality.

At the June meeting of the Oklahoma State Board of Education, officials approved 224 emergency teaching certificates, which are issued to school districts that lack otherwise-qualified candidates. For the 2017 state budget year, 1,160 emergency certificates were approved.

Those numbers are eye-catching. But as board member Bill Flanagan noted, the total amounts to roughly 3 percent of Oklahoma’s 42,000 teachers. Put another way, 97 percent of teachers in Oklahoma schools have fulfilled all requirements for traditional or alternative certification.

And use of emergency certification is clustered largely in metro areas. Of the emergency certificates approved in June, 51 percent were for positions in the Oklahoma City and Tulsa districts.

That’s in line with the findings of a previous report from the 1889 Institute, an Oklahoma City-based education and research organization. Its examination of emergency teaching certificates issued from January 2015 through September 2016 found 36 percent of all certification exception requests came from three school districts: Oklahoma City, Putnam City and Tulsa.

This means use of emergency certificates is relatively rare in the vast majority of Oklahoma’s 500-plus districts.

The fact that Oklahoma City schools are among the most reliant on emergency certificates also undercuts one argument made by critics. Supposedly, use of emergency certificates is on the rise because veteran teachers are leaving Oklahoma due to low pay. Yet when Oklahoma Watch compiled average teacher salaries for all Oklahoma districts, based on 2015-16 school year data (the most recent available), Oklahoma City paid teachers an average $51,924 in salary and benefits. That figure was higher than the amount paid to teachers in all but one other traditional school district.

If pay truly correlated to use of emergency certification, Oklahoma City should be among the districts least reliant on emergency certificates.

The factors driving use of emergency certificates have more to do with the longstanding challenges of urban core districts than salaries. And even with those challenges, most teachers in the Oklahoma City district still have traditional certificates. Reportedly, 94 percent of teachers in Oklahoma City were traditionally certified even at the high point of the district’s use of emergency-certified teachers.

While critics like to label teachers with emergency certificates as “unqualified,” that’s more hyperbole than anything. A third-grade teacher with a traditional certificate can require an emergency certificate to shift to teaching kindergarten under Oklahoma regulations. Similarly, the finance director of a multimillion-dollar company could need an emergency certificate to teach math, despite clear expertise. The 1889 Institute found 70 percent of emergency-certified teachers had relevant educational backgrounds. In a nutshell, schools aren’t dragging people off the street to fill teaching jobs.

Thus, even if one is concerned about use of emergencycertified teachers, it remains a limited problem centered primarily in urban districts, not a statewide crisis.