Questions on Hiring of Non-Certified Teachers

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Note: This is a guest post by Mrs. Venetia Sneed, MISD Coordinator of Personnel for Recruiting and Retention.

In response to the questions regarding Mansfield ISD’s hiring of non-certified teachers, I would like to share the following:

Mansfield ISD considers fully certified teachers for all of its open positions. “Fully certified” means that an applicant has completed all of their university or teacher preparation coursework, passed their content and pedagogy state exams, fulfilled their student teaching or one year of internship requirement and has been issued a Standard Teacher Certification from SBEC (the State Board for Educator Certification Agency.)

Teachers issued a Probationary Certificate are still in the process of completing one of the aforementioned components. Currently, MISD does not have an in-house Alternative Certification Program nor do we officially partner with Teacher Preparation Programs to hire their interns or provide the one year internship opportunity.

Once a teacher has obtained a Standard Certification, whether it was acquired via the University Education route (or "Traditional Certification" as mentioned in Dr. Cunningham's previous post) or an Alternative Certification Program, they are eligible to apply and be considered for any MISD opening they are certified to teach.

Having said this, if we are unable to fill a shortage area with a fully certified teacher, we will consider an applicant who is still in the process of obtaining their standard certification. As a matter of fact, we hired a few teachers in this category this school year in the areas of Special Education, Foreign Language, Career Technology, Math and Science. These content areas are typically our high shortage areas.

MISD Substitutes and Aides are encouraged to complete the requirements for their standard certification, as well, so they can be considered for open positions in their certification area.

~ Venetia Sneed