NC schools commission turns to teacher licensing, weighs scrapping exams

The North Carolina Blue Ribbon Commission on Public Education turned its attention to teacher licensing on June 22, with a state official telling members that teachers can spend an entire career in the classroom without ever passing the state’s licensing exams.

Tom Tomberlin — senior director of educator preparation, licensure, and performance at the Department of Public Instruction (DPI) — laid out the math for the 30-member commission at its third working meeting, held at North Carolina State University’s Friday Institute.

State law gives teachers three years to pass a required content or pedagogy exam. After that, a district can place them on a renewable, limited license indefinitely.

“Hypothetically, a teacher could spend their whole career never having passed the license,” Tomberlin said.

The commission — which is focused on how the state trains, tests, and keeps its teachers — was created in March by executive order from Gov. Josh Stein in conjunction with Senate Leader Phil Berger, R-Rockingham; and House Speaker Destin Hall, R-Caldwell.

Licensure exams

Members of the commission weighed whether the state’s required exams actually track teacher effectiveness in the classroom.

Tomberlin pointed to the edTPA, a portfolio-based assessment that is currently the only nationally normed test of teaching practice after a competing exam was discontinued — leaving the state “kind of forced into using” it.

Teachers often pay roughly $300 out of pocket to take it, Tomberlin said. Several on an afternoon teacher panel described it as a stressful, master’s-level lift that did little to improve their teaching.

“There are plenty of false negatives,” Tomberlin said, with teachers who can’t pass the exam still showing strong, measurable gains with their students.

The discussion dovetails with legislation already on the move at the General Assembly. Senate Bill 840, Teacher Licensure Modifications, cleared the Senate Education/Higher Education Committee on April 29 and would loosen several of the same barriers.

The bill would repeal the Praxis Core basic-skills exam required to enter a teacher-prep program, while fast-tracking licensure for out-of-state teachers from states with “substantially similar” requirements. The measure would also allow limited-license teachers to convert to a permanent license if their growth-score data shows strong classroom performance.

Even so, Tomberlin cautioned that fewer than 40% of teachers receive an individual EVAAS growth score — the state’s value-added measure of teacher effectiveness — and under 18% at the high-school level.

Emerging consensus on reading

The commission also addressed the question of a standardized reading curriculum. The backdrop is challenging: North Carolina students have lost ground in reading every year since the state’s 2021 science-of-reading law took effect, even as math scores rebounded into the top 10 nationally, according to a district-level analysis released in May by researchers at Harvard, Stanford, and Dartmouth.

Co-chair Anne Faircloth, a Sampson County farmer and business owner, said members are coalescing around a recommendation to “explore establishing a standardized, evidence-based curriculum for reading in grades K through three,” paired with the teacher training to deliver it.

Some members suggested linking a common curriculum with tighter limits on the materials districts may use. At one table, members recommended the state restrict approved reading programs to a vetted set of research-based options — weeding out programs flagged as ineffective — a step they said could be state-led.

Getting a new curriculum into existing classrooms would require retraining. Members asked whether the state could retrain teachers on a single K-3 reading program over a summer, possibly through universities across the state.

Several members also pushed to extend reading support beyond third grade. Under the Read to Achieve law, students not proficient by the end of third grade receive transitional help as fourth graders. But that support largely ends after that grade.

Co-chair Don Martin, chairman of the Forsyth County Board of Commissioners, also questioned whether the state’s summer reading programs reach the students who need them most. He floated the idea of compulsory, intensive summer interventions for struggling students.

Others argued the larger fix is earlier — stronger early-grade screening to catch struggling readers before third grade, when remediation becomes more challenging.

“NC schools commission turns to teacher licensing, weighs scrapping exams” was originally published on www.carolinajournal.com.