Dianavan, under the "No Child Left Behind" law, certified has taken on a whole new meaning. All teachers must have, at the minimum, a baccalaureate, and that is no change. This difference is the subject-matter requirement: to teach History, for example, the teacher must have a history degree; English, an English degree and so forth. This is in addition to the individual's credentials as a teacher. A person with an Education BA who has been teaching history for the past twenty years can continue to do so, but he or she can no longer be "certified" in the subject without returning to college and taking at some subject-matter courses (in the copious free time available to the typical teacher). As you can visualize, this is a major problem at smaller schools where an individual may teach classes in more than one discrete subject.

It seems ridiculous to me that I, with a couple of degrees in history but no public school teaching experience, would have an easier time getting certified to teach that subject at the secondary school level than a person who has been teaching high school history for his entire lifetime but whose degree is in public education!