Measuring Teacher Effectiveness When Comparing Alternatively and Traditionally Licensed High School Technology Education Teachers in North Carolina

According to No Child Left Behind (NCLB), the definition of a highly qualified teacher includes three components: obtaining a bachelor’s degree; having full licensure as defined by the state; and demonstrating competency, as defined by the state, in each subject taught (U.S. Department of Education, 2004). However, NCLB does not specifically include career and technical education, of which technology education is a part. In North Carolina, all fields of career and technical education, except trade and industrial, follow NCLB’s requirements for achieving the highly qualified teacher status (North Carolina Association of Teachers, 2005; North Carolina Department of Public Instruction, 2009). Due to the difficulty of filling all teaching positions with highly qualified teachers, an alternative licensure program was established to allow individuals without an education degree from a university-based teacher preparation program to transfer their skills from the workplace into the classroom (Hoepfl, 2001).