North Carolina Cuts Teacher Certification Requirements for Charter Schools
North Carolina Gov. Pat McCrory signed legislation that lets charter schools hire more elementary teachers without teaching certificates. The new law decreases the number of required elementary charter school teachers with teacher certification from 75 percent to 50 percent. That rate was revised several times throughout the legislative process, until a last-minute request by the governor brought the final number from 25 percent to 50 percent for all K-12 charter school teachers (unchanged at the high school level).
The controversial change stems from the ideas that non-licensed people can make really great teachers, and charter schools are an appropriate place to try out innovative ideas, said bill author and state Sen. Jerry Tillman (R-Randolph). He describes an engineer neighbor who wanted to teach but didn’t want to spend time or
