etween the No Child Left Behind Act, teacher retirements, and the low retention rate of teachers, there is currently a shortage of qualified classroom teachers. Under the No Child Left Behind Act, the Class Size Reduction Program was incorporated into the Elementary and Secondary Education Act Title II Teacher Quality block grant. This grant provides funding for smaller classrooms, meaning fewer pupils per teacher, thus necessitating more teachers. Even if more teachers were not needed to achieve a lower student-teacher ratio, there would still be a teacher shortage because of annual retirements. Additionally, teaching as a career has a high dropout rate. The departure rate for teachers is reported as 13.2% a year compared to 11% in many other professions (Viadero, 2002). The National Commission on Teaching and America's Future reports that over 30% of teachers leave within their first five years of teaching. Almost 10% of those who started teaching in 1993-94 left the field within three years (Quality Counts, 2000).

As a result, the country needs between 2 and 2.5 million new teachers to enter classrooms in the next few years (Darling-Hammond, 2000). Complicating this situation is the need not just for any teachers, but specifically for teachers in particular classrooms: urban math, science and special education classrooms; rural classrooms; and high school classrooms, including technology and bilingual education (Recruiting New Teachers, 2000; 2002). Additionally, there is the need for more minority teachers, given that over one-third of K-12 students are of color (U.S. Department of Commerce, 1996) but only about a tenth of teachers are (Synder, Hoffman, & Geddes, 1998).

Faced with the demand for more individuals to be prepared and retained as teachers, national and state leaders are increasingly turning to the community college to help meet this demand. Preparing K-12 teachers is not a new mission for community colleges. Since their inception, many community colleges have played a role in teacher preparation. Some early two-year colleges had roots in normal schools or teacher preparation institutions. Also, in some states, particularly in the South, completing two years at a junior college would qualify individuals for teacher certification, if their education included teacher education courses (Koos, 1925). What is new are emerging roles that go beyond the institution's traditional approaches of the past few decades.

The Community College's Traditional Approach to Teacher Education

As state-level teacher certification requirements increased to include the baccalaureate degree, the community college's role in teacher education became the provision of the first two years of a baccalaureate education. In a few states, such as Missouri, these first two years include some lower-division teacher education courses that may count toward a teacher education degree at a four-year institution. In other states such as Mississippi, no teacher education courses can be offered at the two-year college level. However, in either situation, by completing a university-parallel associate degree program, community college students can complete the first two years of a baccalaureate in teacher education.

University parallel programs require articulation agreements with four-year colleges to ensure that degrees and courses transfer. One type of articulation agreement specifies the way that a general Associate of Arts degree with no teacher education courses fits within a baccalaureate in teacher education. Another type of agreement is necessary for community colleges offering teacher education courses. These institutions need to develop programmatic 2+2 teacher education articulation agreements with four-year schools to ensure that the teacher education courses transfer. A few states such as Illinois have developed a statewide articulation agreement that provides students majoring in elementary, secondary, early childhood, and special education with specific direction as to which two-year college courses, both in general education and in teacher education, will transfer to the institutions in the statewide agreements (Illinois Articulation Initiative, 2003).

While some community college students interested in teacher education may use the articulation agreements to facilitate their movement to a four-year institution, others find that the agreements allow them to stay at the community college campus after they obtain their associate degree and still obtain a teacher education baccalaureate. This is because many community colleges have developed university partnerships whereby four-year institutions offer upper-division courses at the community colleges. These 2+2 programs benefit students for whom taking courses at the community college location is more efficient time-wise than going to the four-year institution.

A variation on the traditional pattern of transferring after the first two years into a teacher education baccalaureate program is the development of an associate degree that focuses on teaching. The state of Maryland has led the nation in developing the Associate of Arts in Teaching (AAT) degree. After intensive work between four-year and two-year colleges, both public and private, the AAT was developed as a 60-hour degree with specified learning outcomes rather than course numbers and content (McDonough, 2003).

Other states are now following Maryland's lead and developing the AAT. In Arkansas, the Arkansas Association of Two-Year Colleges worked with the University of Arkansas at Little Rock to develop an AAT for middle school licensure in math/science and language arts/social studies (New Degrees Approved for UACCM, undated). At least two teacher education courses, one about the field of education and one about technology in teaching, are included in the degree. Illinois is currently developing a report advocating the AAT degree in community colleges, with an initial focus on the AAT in secondary math and science and special education. Models for the degree have been developed through the Illinois P-16 Education Initiative. The University of Illinois led an initiative to bring together individuals from community colleges, public universities, the Illinois Board of Higher Education, the Illinois Community College Board, and the Illinois State Board of Education to develop "degree models…[whereby] students obtaining an AAT degree should have equal status with university native students at the beginning of the junior year" (Report of the Illinois P-16 Education Initiative, 2003).

Other than a few four-year colleges that believe a teacher education program should not start until the junior year, there has been little four-year college objection to the development of an AAT. Within community college circles, any objection has been part of a general concern about degree proliferation.

Transforming Approaches

Confining the community college involvement in teacher education to the associate-degree level fits within the traditional mission of the community college to provide lower-division coursework leading to a baccalaureate. However, in some states community colleges are developing new approaches to teacher education, and these approaches are literally transforming the institutions.

The most obvious example of a transforming approach is the creation of the community college baccalaureate (CCB) in teacher education. The development of the CCB is one of the most important (and controversial) developments in the history of the community college. At least six states (Arkansas, Florida, Hawaii, Nevada, Texas, and Utah) have permitted community colleges to pursue this degree. In those states where higher education institutions are accredited by the regional accrediting body of the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools, two-year colleges that award the baccalaureate literally become four-year schools. Thus obtaining the authority to award the baccalaureate is the first step in morphing or transforming into four-year colleges. For example in Florida, St. Petersburg Junior College is now St. Petersburg College and Miami-Dade Community College has become Miami-Dade College.

This development is directly relevant to teacher education in that the baccalaureate degree most likely to be sought by community colleges is probably the one in education. Initially the community college baccalaureate was promoted as a degree in an applied field of technology, a degree that most four-year schools do not offer. This degree was to build upon the foundation of an associate in science or an applied associate in science degree (Burke & Garmon, 1995). As the rationale for the CCB began to shift to meeting local and state workforce development needs in general, a baccalaureate in education often became the degree of choice. St. Petersburg offers B.S. degrees in Elementary Education, Exceptional Student Education, Secondary Education Mathematics, and Secondary Education Biology. Miami-Dade offers a B.S. in Exceptional Student Education, Secondary Math, and Secondary Science.

By seeking to confer a baccalaureate in teacher education, the community college is no longer a partner with four-year colleges in offering teacher education through traditional means such as university parallel programs articulated in 2+2 programs or through the newer development of Maryland's Associate of Arts in Teaching, which is carefully articulated with four-year colleges' teacher education programs. Rather the community college becomes a competitor for teacher education students and for K-12 student teacher placement sites. Accusations of mission creep abound from the critics of the CCB.

Another non-traditional approach to involvement in teacher education is the offering of alternative certification programs. To increase the number of certified K-12 teachers, at least 45 states and the District of Columbia have developed some form of alternative teacher program (Feistritzer, June 22, 1999). Collin County Community College District in Texas has developed an alternative certification program for people who already have a bachelor's degree. The program offers not only formal instruction in education but requires students to teach with a mentor. Rio Salado College in Arizona is another example of a community college that offers a post-baccalaureate teacher certification with much of it offered through distance education. Since the entire certification can be obtained at the community college, in essence the institution is offering upper-level courses. Thus some see the offering of alternative certification by community colleges as a further example of mission creep.

In addition to teacher preparation, higher education institutions must respond to the need for teacher development or in-service courses for current teachers. The Elementary and Secondary Education Act (Title II Teacher Quality) also provides funding for professional development of these teachers, including money for summer institutes. In particular, each school district is to spend at least 25% of its funds for professional development on preparing teachers to use technology in the classroom. The community college seems a particularly appropriate institution for this kind of professional development, since community colleges have been higher education leaders in incorporating technology into teacher education.

Little is written about the community college's role in K-12 teachers' professional development. In some states such as Mississippi, community colleges play no role since the state mandates that professional development courses must be graduate-level courses. In other states such as Arizona, Indiana, and Virginia, community colleges offer in-service courses, particularly in technology.

Offering professional development courses could be viewed as part of the community college's continuing education mission. Alternatively, it could be viewed as mission creep since four-year schools traditionally offer these courses. As with the community college baccalaureate in teacher education, community colleges offering in-service courses become competitors with four-year colleges for teachers as students.

Conclusion

These various community roles in teacher education have a number of implications. In terms of the teacher shortage, it is likely that the various efforts, including the CCB in teacher education and post-baccalaureate alternative certification programs, will yield more K-12 teachers. Whether teachers who are prepared through the community college will be retained any longer than are graduates of a four-year college needs to be researched in the years ahead.

In addition, there may be some unintended consequences upon education as a field of study. The field of education has long been considered a low-status field socio-economically: the pay is low, it attracts first-generation college students, and the majority of teachers are women. Within research universities, schools of education are not considered professional schools like law and medicine. Nor do they have the status of colleges of business, since few education alumni donate large dollars to the institution nor have strong ties with the business community. The increased presence of the community college in teacher education could lower the status of education even further, since in some people's eyes the community college is a low-status collegiate institution. Additionally, if graduates of community college alternative certification programs and of CCB teacher education programs appear to be effective teachers, it may be that state-level policy makers will decide that community colleges are the most appropriate institutions for teacher education programs and push to eliminate teacher education at public research institutions and perhaps other four-year schools.

Those committed to the community college will find the next few decades critical ones for this institution. First of all, the development of the CCB, not only in teacher education but also in other fields such as accounting, nursing, and technology management, is literally changing some community colleges into four-year colleges. Proponents of the CCB claim that institutions now enabled to offer the baccalaureate will not change their commitment to the values of the community college. However, as current leaders retire or move on and people hired to teach in the baccalaureate program join the faculty, it may be that institutional commitment to community college values erodes.

Independent of the effects of the CCB, the provision of alternative certification teacher education programs makes the community college a competitor with four-year colleges for students not traditionally thought of as community college students-those with a baccalaureate who decide to become teachers. These two examples of mission creep, both emanating from teacher education efforts, illustrate how the changing role of community colleges in teacher education may well transform the institution to one that moves beyond its traditional roles of a junior partner in teacher education to that of a serious competitor with senior institutions.

References

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