Conclusions and Recommendations

A model state policy to improve educator professional development and advancement systems, in part through the incorporation of MCs, must take a comprehensive approach to addressing current issues with these systems. The highest-potential strategy includes three separate but synergistic components related to recognizing and rewarding competency through formal advancement, utilizing license renewal as a tool to ensuring teachers hold key evidence-based competencies, and personalizing ongoing PD. These include:

1. Career pathways and advanced educator designations accompanied by a significant financial incentive (base salary increase) and clear, defined role and responsibilities. Prescribed stacks of high-quality MCs could fulfill prerequisites for obtaining some of these roles.
2. A short list of MCs recognized for fulfilling license renewal requirements for each endorsement area. These MCs should focus on standards and/or areas of teaching that are newer (i.e., most, if not all, educators did not learn these concepts in pre-service training) and have a positive expected impact on student outcomes, ideally based on research. Each topic area should include a stack of MCs with the ability to go deeper in a specific area. State resources should be made available for LEAs who choose this approach. The MCs that LEAs propose to focus on should be based on evidence of likely impact in their specific context, determined in consultation with educators and administrators at the school level to ensure relevance. Given that engaging in MCs is likely to result in higher value to teachers’ practice than the standard activities used for license renewal, states can also incentivize LEAs and teachers to opt in by only requiring a few MCs to meet relicensure requirements.
3. The use of professional learning goals and/or plans to promote ongoing development. MCs are included as one option for fulfilling aspects of the plan (and are rewarded with a very small stipend). The state will recognize any MCs in its curated database for professional learning purposes, and teachers will have the option to submit other MCs to be vetted for possible addition to the database.

Based on our research,¹ the following criteria must also be in place to ensure success with educator MCs:

Process for Ensuring Quality

For educator micro-credentials to be successful in the long run, they must be portable between schools and LEAs, at least within a given state. This requires that educators and employers alike trust that MCs carry real value, both in impact and in currency—and the most critical condition for building that trust is that the level of quality is relatively high and consistent from MC to MC.

• Quality guidelines should be consistent to ensure that an MC earned for one application(e.g., ongoing professional learning), could also meet requirements for another (e.g., license renewal or advancement requirements).
• The value that MCs hold must be investigated and assured through formal processes. The market is not a sufficient quality control mechanism, as popularity does not necessarily translate to effectiveness.
• Ensuring that digital badges or other MC documentation can be thoroughly verified by potential employers will ensure transparency around quality and allow for MCs to hold currency.

Time

The state and LEAs will need to ensure adequate time is given to teachers to engage in MCs and to collaborate with peers and instructional leaders.

• Consult national resources outlining best practices for allocating teacher time and develop guidance and support for LEAs to put these models in place in a financially sustainable way.²

Human Capital

Implementing the various MC system elements will require significant staffing resources, from identifying and training coaches and PGP assessors, to hiring additional staff to cover classes while teachers get dedicated time to focus on skill development.

• Start by using MCs to develop and identify coaches and other teacher leaders who can help lead MC and other professional learning work. Regional networks can help develop virtual learning communities where expert teachers can help support each other.

Financial Investment

Significant investments will need to be made by states, LEAs, and schools to ensure adequate staff time, human capital, and infrastructure.

• Policymakers must take the long view on budgeting. Costs could be offset over time through reduced teacher attrition and reduced outlays on other PD efforts (hiring outside PD consultants, etc.). The state may also require maintenance of effort from non-high-need LEAs after seed funds are exhausted (i.e., LEAs are expected to find ways to sustainably finance the work after a specified period of time).

Support for Equity

Opt-in policies surrounding MCs could further exacerbate gaps in equitable access to quality teaching, if only more affluent and/or larger LEAs have access to the resources to engage in MCs and put the necessary structures around them. States need to consider how to combat potential inequities by providing additional technical assistance and financial support to lesser-resourced LEAs.

• The state should offer additional resources and support to "high-need" LEAs that it believes would most benefit.³ Selection criteria could be student academic outcomes, or perhaps schools and LEAs with exceptionally low years of teacher experience.

In addition, longer-term state policy and practice approaches should:

• Consider automatically incorporating stacks of MCs on teacher certificates.
• Consider MCs as a vehicle for demonstrating competency for other educator roles, such as novice school leaders as part of an induction program.
• Require and fund the collection of robust data and use it to study the initial phase(s) of rollout and associated impact and outcomes. The proposed design of the license renewal segment lends itself particularly well to study, with some LEAs continuing with the traditional approach and others moving to a MC-driven approach. States that adopt MCs in support of multiple human capital processes and priorities should evaluate the effectiveness of MCs for these various policy purposes.

State approaches should NOT:

• Assign CEUs or other PD points for all MCs. One primary objective of incorporating MCs into human capital systems is to move away from a compliance-oriented, time-based approach and move toward a focus on what teachers know and are able to do. Any attempt to convert MCs to CEUs would be arbitrary because the length of time it takes educators to complete a MC depends on a variety of factors, including their initial level of expertise.
• Allow educators in LEAs that are awarded grants through the innovative license renewal initiative to choose between completing MCs and completing a seat-time option to meet license renewal requirements. Doing so would reduce the likelihood that educators would choose the difficult, riskier MC approach. Some teachers may still choose to engage in graduate coursework, attend conferences, and so forth, to gain the knowledge and skills needed to successfully earn the MC, but attending those events themselves would not count toward renewal requirements.
• Offer MCs for demonstrating skills in the use of basic software or hardware, or other administrative skills. While figuring out how to use learning management systems (LMS) such as Google Classroom or Canvas or how to fill out required discipline documentation may be a necessary part of the job, putting these skills on par with MCs for competencies that have a clearer impact on student learning undermines the value of MCs overall. That said, the various training providers may still award a digital badge for successfully completing an assessment on the use of such technical tools.