I recently had the pleasure of taking my first LE firearms instructor course from the NRA. This one is focused on the handgun and was held in Hoquiam Washington. The tuition for the course was $595 and required 1200 rounds of ammo, 800 for your primary gun and 400 for you off duty/concealed gun. One thing they did not mention, is if you want to actually be certified then you also need to be a member of the NRA. While I believe that everyone that enjoys firearms should be a member about half of the class had to sign up upon class completion. The NRA cert is good for 3 years. After that time you must "recert" which requires you to have taken 24 hours of instruction and pay a $30 fee to remain an instructor.
This course was taught by Jeff Hall. He is a retired Alaska State trooper and Vietnam vet. Though I hadn't heard of him as a trainer previously, I did recognize him from the Sniper: Deadliest encounters show I had watched on the history channel (his piece starts at 1:55 in the video below). He also has his own training company, Force Options.
http://www.forceoptions.net/about.php
The class consisted of roughly 44 hours of training, which was a combination of both classroom and range drills. The classroom presentations consisted of Handgun Marksmanship fundamentals, Handgun Handling techniques, Coaching techniques, Firearms Safety and Range Organization, NRA programs, Prep and Construction of Lesson plans, Legal outline, and Developing and Conducting Practical Range Training. There was also a great course on how to create your own live fire FATS simulator with Power point, a projector and a large reflective surface. We were also required to give a presentation on the last day of class on how to perform a firearms related task, i.e. I did mine on Type II malfunctions and how to clear them.
Range work consisted of Coach/Shooter Drills, Multiple concealed carry drills, Support hand shooting and weapon manipulation, One handed shooting, Moving while shooting, Multiple targets, trigger reset and Immediate action drills. We also constantly tested zero and accuracy with one whole drills.
By the end of the class I felt very confident in my coaching ability and my shooting ability. While the schools specifically say they are not a shooting school as you should already be a good shooter, it is always nice to see how you stack up against LEOs outside of your department. Because our class was a bit more advanced than most we ended up with a decent amount of ammo left. Even with this fact I felt that I shot enough in this class and was glad to have ammo for my own practicing. The one thing I will say is I would recommend taking an LE only class. While we only had one private security guy in the class, he was our only "Delbert" and nearly put a bullet through his ass and/or leg while doing concealed carry drills. While I understand there are some squared away guys in the private sector and a lot of "Delberts" in the LE sector, all of the LE guys in the class were squared away.
I would definitely take another NRA class in the future, especially if it was taught by Jeff. I feel like the cost vs. training you get from the NRA schools makes them well worth it.