Micro-credentials for Educators

In the United States, current approaches to help teachers engage in ongoing skill development—and to equitably reward teachers with advanced career opportunities aligned to their particular skill sets—are often woefully ineffective, and sometimes even non-existent.

“Micro-credentials” are a recent addition to the mix of potential solutions to these issues. Like many buzz-words in education, this term has been used to describe a variety of different activities related to the recruitment, development, and retention of educators. New America’s PreK-12 Education team has been working to identify the potential and challenges of micro-credentials in the various ways they’ve been defined and implemented with one ultimate goal: to help educators and education decision-makers at all levels make choices that will meet educators’ needs, and even more importantly, the needs of the students they serve.

Below you’ll find a variety of resources on what we’ve been learning and contributing to the ongoing conversation on this promising new addition to the education landscape.