The relationship between certification status and teacher evaluation: an analysis in a large urban district

Abstract

Teacher shortages are a growing problem across the United States. As one means of addressing this problem, policy makers have sought to loosen barriers to the profession by creating provisions for emergency certification. Emergency-certified teachers require no teaching experience, although they are required to have some experience working in the subject area. Research on emergency-certified teachers reports that these teachers have lower value-added measures, but this literature lacks information on how these teachers perform on teacher evaluations. In this study, the relationship between teacher evaluation scores and a teachers’ certification status is investigated. Data are derived from a sample of teachers (n = 1285) in a large urban district. Results indicate small but significant associations between teacher certification and evaluation scores, with a difference in scores between -0.22 and -0.80. Furthermore, the results are consistent across different statistical models.