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In recent years, some state higher education systems have negotiated agreements that allow community colleges to award associate of arts in teaching degrees (A.A.T.). This step has come in response to critical K-12 teacher shortages in the last few years and a perception that traditional articulation procedures were creating unreasonable barriers. According to a survey of state community college leaders conducted by Deborah L. Floyd and David A. Walker of Florida Atlantic University, six states allow two-year colleges to offer the A.A.T.

AAT Successes: One successful approach to the AAT has been to negotiate the knowledge, attitudes and competencies that any student regardless of institution should have acquired at the end of the first two years in a teacher education major.

The A.A.T. degree (or in some cases an associate of arts with an emphasis in teacher education) allows community college students who transfer to any participating four-year institution within the state to receive full credit for their approved lower-division education courses. The state intent is to encourage a larger, more diverse pool of students who want to become teachers. A.A.T. does this by allowing students to test their interest in teaching early in their academic career and to shorten the time it takes them to obtain their degree. The freshman- and sophomore-year curriculum in these new community college degree programs typically mirror the first two years of the four-year college education degree. They may include educational psychology, special education, introduction to education, educational technology or other theory courses atypical of traditional community college offerings for education majors.

An additional feature of some new degree programs is to give lower-division students opportunities to begin their practical field experience in local public school classrooms early in their pursuit of a teaching degree. Researchers have long argued that keeping students from classroom field experience until their practice teaching practicum, which traditionally has occurred at the end of the four-year education degree program, contributes to significant problems in retaining teachers in the field. The early practical exposure, they argue, helps students make better informed career decisions that in turn improve retention rates among new teachers.

Typically, responsibility for designing these new statewide agreements belongs to faculty committees from the two- and four-year sectors, organized by discipline. One successful approach has been to negotiate the knowledge, attitudes and competencies that any student, whether he or she started in the four-year college or at a community college, should have acquired at the end of the first two years in a teacher education major. This approach differs considerably from traditional articulation approaches that compare syllabi course by course.