Performance-Based Licensure

The Mississippi Department of Education (MDE) is a state education agency that administers policy and performance systems to support the leadership and learning of Mississippi’s approximately 466,000 public school students. Like states across the country, critical teacher diversity, geographic, and content area shortages have stymied the agency’s efforts to ensure every school has effective teachers and leaders. In an effort to increase teacher diversity and effectiveness while mitigating teacher shortages, the MDE has launched the nation’s first performance-based approach to educator licensure as an alternative to current standardized exam requirements. Prior to the start of residency, I led district focus groups to prototype a performance-based licensure (PBL) model and co-authored a grant with senior MDE leaders for the W.K. Kellogg Foundation to fund the pilot. I then returned to the MDE to lead the planning, implementation, evaluation, improvement, and communications for the PBL pilot. This Capstone examines efforts within the MDE’s Office of Teaching and Leading to: employ more equitable practices in human capital innovation, consider evidence in weighing future PBL pilot expansion, and support individuals in becoming licensed educators based on their demonstrated effectiveness. My work draws on research on the benefits of teacher diversity and the disadvantages of standardized exams used for licensure. Using John Kingdon’s multiple streams theory and Caroline Hill, Michelle Molitor, and Christine Ortiz’s equityxdesign framework to inform and analyze my work, I describe the implications of my residency for the American PreK-12 education sector, the MDE, and my personal leadership.