Cheapest, Fastest, Best: The Advantages of University-Based Teacher Preparation

9 min readDec 14, 2024

By Dr. Michael Marder, Executive Director of UTeach and Professor of Physics, The University of Texas at Austin

Contact Dr. Marder at marder@uteach.utexas.edu.

Where do Texas teachers come from? You may assume they come from universities. This has not been completely true for nearly four decades, and for the last 10 years it has been increasingly untrue. In 2023–2024, fewer than 20% of new Texas teachers came from university teacher preparation programs.

Maybe you are thinking “good riddance.” You may have heard that education students have low test scores, that teacher training is hoop jumping, that it costs too much, that alternative certification is cheaper and faster, that we need more research on how various pathways into teaching really differ, or even that the teaching certificate is a useless piece of paper.

These statements are misleading or substantially wrong. My opinion is not based solely on impressions. It is based on two decades spent studying Texas education data — and Texas has the best educational dataset in the country, probably in the world. It is also based on more than two decades’ personal experience overseeing university programs to prepare science and mathematics teachers.

Maybe I will persuade you and maybe I won’t, but I honestly believe that Texas students will be facing diminished opportunities and achieving lower education outcomes for themselves and the state unless we rapidly do what it takes to get increasing numbers of new Texas teachers from Texas university programs.

Many laws and administrative decisions have brought us to the current point, where the vast majority of new teachers in Texas is produced outside of universities. Here is a very brief review of the most relevant.

HB 72 of 1984 created the first framework for alternatively certified teachers, motivated explicitly by the need to provide secondary mathematics and science courses. At first school districts and then Educational Service Centers were authorized.
SB 994 of 1987 abolished education degrees, placed an 18-hour cap on education coursework, and required secondary teachers to major in the subjects they would teach.
In 2002, the State Board for Educator Certification (SBEC) started giving permission to for-profit entities to prepare teachers.
HB 1582 of 2015 allowed school districts to declare themselves Districts of Innovation and waive the requirement that teachers be certified or that parents notified if they were not.
In 2015, the Texas Education Agency began a process of continuing review of all Texas Educator Preparation Programs. Auditors select student files and compare documentation with a long and detailed list of state rules, with review recurring on a five-year cycle. Once this practice began, it became impossible for Educator Preparation Programs to ignore or bypass state requirements without being caught.
Since 2018, program outcomes, principal and candidate surveys, and other information about every Texas Educator Preparation Program have been publicly released through the Accountability System for Educator Preparation. Programs can be Accredited, Warned, or put on Probation for one or two years based on their performance, and can lose the right to recommend candidates for certification after a second year of probation.
HB 3217 of 2019 reinstated education majors and eliminated the 18-hour cap on education coursework.

Since 2016, SBEC has focused on raising the requirements for university-prepared teachers. Their requirements have increased the time and expense for preparing teachers in university programs. They have strongly promoted (optional) Residency programs where the length of the student teaching experience nearly doubles, they have increased the number of required classroom field hours prior to student teaching, have increased the number of required classroom observations during student teaching, have required prospective teachers to experience the beginning of the school year, and have been trying to implement a new, complicated, and expensive observation protocol for new teachers (edTPA).

While all these standards were being raised, the numbers of alternatively certified teachers went up and the numbers of university-prepared teachers went down. But in the last two years the numbers of both university-prepared and alternatively prepared teachers dropped sharply while the numbers of new teachers with no certificate soared.

Research shows clearly that universities prepare the highest-quality teachers; their students learn more and they stay in the classroom longer. Thus, by constantly raising the bar on what it takes to get a teaching certificate, the State Board for Educator Certification is exacerbating the largest drop in quality of new teachers in Texas history.

This is unfortunate, because earning a teaching certificate as part of an undergraduate degree is the cheapest, fastest, and best way into the profession. Let me explain.

Cheapest

Becoming a teacher through a Texas university is the cheapest way to obtain a teaching certificate for undergraduates who obtain the certificate as part of their four-year degree. The reason is that teachers must have an undergraduate degree. If the certificate is part of the coursework for a student’s first degree, they pay nothing beyond what they would pay anyway, and they may even come out financially ahead because of scholarships or loan forgiveness.

For example, this works well in a program like UTeach — which I helped found in 1997 and have run ever since — that specializes in providing streamlined degree plans within the major so that students can avoid the added time and cost. This is one reason UTeach programs have been developed at 12 universities across Texas and more than 50 across the country. However, as SBEC continues raising requirements on university-prepared teachers, they are forcing us to add time to the program, making it harder to maintain our time and cost advantage.

Does society as a whole assume an unreasonable financial burden for students who obtain teaching certificates at universities? No. The annual instructional and administrative cost per student for students pursuing teaching is not out of line with costs of students taking part in other pre-professional activities, such as working in research labs for those who want to pursue advanced study or become doctors.

Fastest

Obtaining a teaching certificate through a university as part of a first degree is faster than other ways for the same reason it is cheaper. The student graduates with a first degree and a teaching certificate at the same time. They can start teaching with a standard certificate right after graduation. When SBEC adds time-consuming extra requirements to the university certification process, they diminish the speed advantage along with the cost advantage that universities have held.

Best

The case that university-based teacher preparation produces — on average — the best teachers rests on two pillars. One of them is a description of what actually happens during university-based certification programs. The second is detailed evidence on how long such teachers stay in teaching and how much their students learn.

What Happens in University-Based Certification Programs

There is considerable variety in how different universities prepare teachers, and in how teachers for grades PK–6 are prepared as opposed to science teachers for grades 7–12. However, the state requires common elements for all programs, and these make sense.

Teaching-Focused Degree Plans. Future teachers must take coursework that will assist them in teaching. For example, someone who obtains grades 7–12 science certification will be certified to teach Biology, Chemistry, Physics, and Earth Science. A university program for such teachers typically requires a major in one of the subjects and at least some coursework in all of them. A teacher aiming for a specialized certification like Special Education will take specific coursework to prepare for that.

Early Field Experience. Future teachers must spend time in classrooms prior to student teaching. In the UTeach program they must teach lessons supervised by Master Teachers. Substantial experiences in school classrooms throughout are now typical in university programs.

Student Teaching. University-prepared teachers in a standard program spend a semester (two semesters for Residency) teaching in a public school under the supervision of a teacher and program observers. This practical experience lasting over several months provides the clearest dividing line between traditional and alternative programs.

There is great variety in alternative certification programs, and they provide greater and lesser degrees of experience prior to full-time teaching. However, they are allowed to put candidates into a full-time, fully paid teaching position with minimal web-based instruction prior to the first day of school, particularly using a “late-hire” provision. Candidates have told me they clicked through online modules in four afternoons. They are called interns, have a temporary certificate, and require a year of teaching to obtain a standard certificate, but they are nevertheless full-time teachers on full salary. Alternative certification programs do provide in-person support after their candidates begin teaching, but it is not very frequent or extensive.

It makes perfect sense that a young person who spent several semesters traveling to schools and teaching practice lessons with expert advice, culminating in a full semester of supervised practice, will have an easier time and do a better job in their first year than someone who clicks through some modules, watches some videos, and immediately moves into teaching full time.

Teacher Quality

Evidence. There are two sorts of evidence that graduates of traditional university programs are better teachers on average than those from alternative certification. The first is that they stay in teaching longer. The second is that their students learn more. The Texas Educator Preparation Pathways Study provided evidence for both these claims. A recent peer-reviewed article provides more evidence for the student learning gains. Students in every subject, grade level, or subgroup learn more from university-certified teachers than from alternatively certified teachers.

Uncertified Teachers. The fastest and cheapest way to obtain a teaching certificate is through a traditional undergraduate university program. However, this is no longer the fastest or cheapest way to become a teacher. It is even faster and cheaper to become a teacher without obtaining a certificate at all. In the last two years this has become the most common route into the classroom for new teachers in Texas. More than half enter this way.

The quality of uncertified teachers is considerably lower than both university-prepared and alternatively certified teachers. This is most clear in teacher retention. Around one-third of uncertified teachers do not make it past their first year. Students in classrooms of uncertified teachers gain two to six months less learning than students in classrooms of university-prepared teachers. Evidence for this appears in a report, Beyond the Tipping Point. This should not be surprising. Administrators say that teachers who are unprepared and uncertified are overwhelmed by the job.

What can we do? Only 12 years ago, teacher preparation in Texas was dominated by universities. The university programs are still in place. We have only to incentivize students to go through them. Some actions to do this will cost nothing.

It will cost us nothing to reverse changes to the code governing educator preparation programs of the last five years. Reverse the increase of field-based hours — from the current 50 back to the previous 30 — prior to student teaching. Eliminate the new observations during student teaching. Eliminate the requirement to experience the beginning of the school year. Provide incentives for traditional standard certificates and residency certificates on the same footing. Halt the implementation of edTPA and TexTPA.

It will be relatively inexpensive to provide incentives to students to complete preparation programs as undergraduates. One way to do this would be to waive tuition and fees and cover attendance costs during the student teaching semester. This would mean providing students during this semester $10,000 to $15,000. The funds could be provided across the board or targeted to the greatest shortage areas. This is more attractive to students than loan forgiveness, which needs years of teaching to recover. The effectiveness of this investment could be monitored carefully and modified accordingly.

Providing university-based induction support and mentoring programs is also a cost-effective way to keep young teachers in the profession.

There may be no alternative in the end to increasing the salary and benefits of teachers overall. However, obtaining consensus on this point may take time, and as we enter a third year of flooding schools with unprepared novice teachers, this is time we do not have.

Filling university programs back to capacity with prospective teachers, providing them to the schools, and supporting them so they stay is of critical importance right now.