By Julia Van Susteren

Owatonna People’s Press

ST. PAUL — Lawmakers have introduced bills in a bipartisan way that would ease the licensing process for out-of-state teachers to include alternative assessments for qualification.

Sen. Greg Clausen, DFL-Apple Valley, and Rep. Kelly Fenton, R-Woodbury, are sponsoring legislation aimed at re-examining the methods used by the Minnesota Board of Teaching to grant licenses to teachers with previous experience in other states.

But one DFL Iron Range legislator, Rep. Tom Anzelc of Balsam Township, said he has concerns the bills would lower Minnesota’s strong teaching standards.

The legislation joins a variety of issues at the Capitol affecting Minnesota education, such as teacher and counselor shortages especially among rural areas of the state.

Under the bills, the Minnesota Board of Teaching would take into account alternative measures to evaluate an out-of-state license.

“The Board of Teaching will take a look at an individual’s qualifications for an out-of-state license,” Clausen said. “They would see if this is a teacher with excellent credentials and reports from their supervisor and their teaching has led to student improvement.”

Barry Olson, Blooming Prairie High School principal, said under the current system, many qualifications that would certify teachers from other states count for much less in Minnesota. Olson particularly criticized the disproportional difficulty of certain subjects on the licensing test.

“We have a lot of different licensing categories … we have different ones for different subjects … but if you have someone teaching seventh grade science and they don’t have our in-state qualifications, they can’t teach that subject,” said Olson “And that’s crazy.”

Olson said what brought attention to the licensing issue was rural Minnesota’s struggle to find teachers.

According to the 2015 Minnesota Department of Education’s “Teacher Supply and Demand” report, in the last two years the percentage of school districts reporting difficulty in hiring teachers in hard-to-fill positions has doubled. Ten years ago, Olson said, dozens of teachers would apply for one position, while today some areas will see fewer than 10.