Thanks, Combest, for linking to an article about this excellent legislation:

Sen. Luann Ridgeway, R-Smithville, sponsored a bill to give the American Board for Certification of Teacher Excellence the authority to certify professional people looking for careers in education in Missouri. [...]

Through ABCTE, a non-profit organization based in Washington, D.C., and funded through federal grants, people can obtain a teaching certificate without having a bachelor’s degree in education.

This alternative certification program could help relieve teacher shortages at the middle-school and high-school levels. (ABCTE doesn’t certify elementary or special-education teachers.) That would be a big help to the districts that currently struggle to fill math and science positions.

This might not be as big as the initiative in California, but it’s a step in the right direction.