March 2008 — News
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K-12 Online Teaching Endorsements: Ohio Department of Education Perspectives
All community school teachers must be highly qualified for their teaching assignments, but may teach outside their area of licensure. In grades K-6, the community school teacher only needs to be highly qualified in any single elementary subject, even if not the one in which they are teaching; In grades 7-12, the community school teacher must be highly qualified in all of the core academic subjects they teach. Teachers in site-based classrooms often have teacher aides or others helping them, but the classroom teacher, or teacher of record, is the one responsible for the bottom line, student performance.
Deubel: I also observed in Keeping Pace with K-12 Online Learning (Watson & Ryan, 2007) that Ohio's "eCommunity schools must administer the state-developed achievement tests and diagnostic assessments in the same manner as school districts" (p. 114). But, there has been concern regarding "[l]ow state assessment participation rates and aggregate test scores by some eCommunity schools (In the year since passage of the 2005 legislation [adopting standards for the schools], most of the eCommunity schools moved up one level on Ohio's school report card system)" (p. 112).
Do you think the quality of teachers might have something to do with that in terms of the professional development they might have received for how to teach online? Might endorsements in online teaching have any relationship to improving outcomes in state standardized testing for online learners?
Troyer: The ODE does not have records regarding the professional development the eCommunity schools might have provided to their online teachers, and it is generally difficult to directly attribute student achievement to professional development completed by teachers. Many factors impact the level of student achievement on standardized tests, including the alignment of the curriculum to the standards, the level of effort expended by the student, and other factors. It would be difficult to directly link teaching endorsements to outcomes for standardized testing. A number of programs at eCommunity schools are focused on dropout prevention. Basic skills might be lower for many of those students when compared to populations in school districts.
Deubel: Todd, can you comment further, particularly in terms of what professional development eCommunity school teachers currently receive for teaching online? Do you think it's adequate?
Hanes: The most important instructional resource in any classroom is the teacher. The tools in a virtual classroom may be different, but the goal is the same. We need to make sure that teachers are using all of the available tools and resources so that they can get the job done. E-school teachers have in-service and pre-service preparation, and there is no existing uniform endorsement or coursework for online teaching. There is always room for improvement in e-learning pedagogy because technologies and teacher tools are constantly changing as in the case of podcasting and other innovations.
