In some points, teacher certification in Indonesia is beneficial for stakeholders such as teachers, education institutions, and the government, but it is a kind of dilemma because the disadvantages are higher than its benefits in practice. Since article no 19 year 2007 from the ministry of Indonesian education has been implementing a new standard of certification for teachers, they assert that this assessment results in a significant achievement of their teaching performance. On the other hand, some observations conducted to check the real significances in the field show the controversy.

It is doubtful that government succeeds in making competition through this kind of intelligent game “certification”. Instead of improving the teachers’ personality, the teachers are blissful to submit a pile of portfolios from regional, national, or international seminars or institutions for the shake of points. In fact, the certificates have diverse value, thus the teachers need to run until reaching 850 points to get the title of certified teachers. Surprisingly, some friends of mine even asked me whether I had some certificates which are anonymous so they can use that. In addition, the others are willing to pay Rp 50.000,- for such a piece of paper. As result, the condition above shapes goal-oriented culture within teachers do not respect the process of getting something but solely how to achieve the goal using any methods, no matter what they are – good or bad.

Money used as a reward is still a controversial phenomenon in any field. This is what is happening now in Indonesian education. Clearly, in the article is stated that teachers will get profession allowance if they are certified. Nevertheless, in some cases, the certified teachers do not have parallel relation to their teaching qualities like what had happened in East Java that the number of failed students slightly increased. In addition, the certified teachers are found still lazy, monotonous, not professional, and indisciplined. The reality shows that some teachers are not studying continuously because what they find in the class is a daily routine and they have memorized everything consecutively for years. They may say that there is nothing new. When the government launched the certification program, teachers have external motivation to show their achievement through a pile of portfolios. Apparently, external motivation temporarily affects their achievement.

The assessment of portfolios is merely based on examining material and physical evidence. It is an injustice condition because 20 year experienced teachers can not be certified due to incomplete data. They are professional in practice, but they do not have good management in keeping the certificates, published papers, teaching experience letters, and so on. In addition, teachers who live in disaster areas such as in Aceh complain that they can submit nothing because their possession has been swept away by tsunami in 2004. On the contrary, the fresh graduate teachers who diligently attend meetings, seminars, and other events have ample requirements to be certified. Astonishingly, they are marked as professional teachers due to material and physical evidence.

To summarize, this kind of certification must be changed into a new method. The method must be based not only on material and physical evaluation but also on conscience. It means that the government must give consideration for certain real conditions that happen toward teacher personally. Eventually, the government must supervise the program periodically, so the teachers will keep their teaching performance as the profession allowance is ongoing.