A new study from the Hoover Institution demonstrates that teacher certification is not a reliable route to ensuring teacher quality. Given that schools of education are notoriously out of kilter, perhaps this finding should not be surprising. Still, it is clear evidence that the ways most states are complying with the federal No Child Left Behind Act, which requires that each classroom be led by a “highly qualified teacher,” are not likely to result in educational improvement.

It’s not that formal training has no measurable influence at all. But whatever initial advantages in preparation traditionally certified teachers bring to the classroom, they fade quickly when compared against teachers who didn’t enter the classroom via schools of education. According to a New York Sun account, researchers found that “while alternatively certified and uncertified teachers do worse at first, they appear to improve at faster rates than traditionally certified teachers in their first years on the job. By the teachers’ third year on the job, students of alternatively certified and uncertified teachers are performing just as well as those of traditionally certified teachers.”