Many years ago when I lived in Midland, Mich., I knew a man who was a retired chemist who had worked at Dow. He once mentioned to me that he wanted to spend some of his time teaching chemistry to students in Midland’s public high schools. He had offered, but was turned away because he did not have a teaching license from the state. His knowledge and ambition to teach was of no value (at least in public schools) unless he was willing to spend the years it would take to earn his teaching credentials in an approved education school.

What Michigan lacked then (and perhaps still — I don’t know) is any lateral-entry program to allow people like that chemist to quickly obtain the obligatory credentials. But North Carolina recently did institute such a program and in today’s Martin Center article, Jenna Robinson writes about it.

The new program, called Pathway to Practice, is competency based rather than seat-time based, so participants aren’t required to spin their wheels, moving along at the pace set by instructors. “Competency-based education,” Robinson writes, “allows universities to harness technological advances in ways that student credit hour models do not. When the focus is on mastery of the material, education can be personalized, self-paced, and happen anytime, anywhere.”

Pathway to Practice is pretty new and we don’t yet have a track record to evaluate, but at least this shows some willingness on the part of the higher-education system to try something different. It seems that it could help to get some potentially excellent teachers into classrooms who’d otherwise be kept out. Moreover, since education schools are notorious for their “progressive” slant (check out Heather Mac Donald’s classic essay “Why Johnny’s Teacher Can’t Teach”), the less time future teachers spend in them the better.