The article reveals the prerequisites of appearance of alternative ways to train teachers in the USA at the end of the XX century as main mechanisms to increase qualitative and quantitative characteristics of teaching staff. The author concentrates the attention on the advantages and disadvantages of non-traditional ways to acquire teaching profession. The peculiarities of the development in different states of the country, main characteristics of the training with the help of alternative programs have been found as well as the target groups have been described. Such research is clearly needed, both by policymakers and by practitioners, to determine the appropriateness of alternative certification training models in training educators to deliver quality educational programming to students, as well as their effectiveness in addressing the critical teacher shortages by increasing the pool of available teachers and reducing the turnover and retention problems. Proponents of alternative certification have asserted that such models encourage talented people from other fields to enter teaching and increase the potential supply of teachers available to reduce shortages, and that traditional teacher education programs have little substance or value in training teachers while alternative models provide intensive training and supervision focused on critical skills needed for successful teaching.