Delivering Well Prepared Teachers Policy
Alabama offers an elementary license to teach K-6. Alabama requires all elementary teacher candidates to pass the Praxis II Elementary Education: Multiple Subjects (5001) test, which is comprised of four subtests with individual scores in math, reading and language arts, science and social studies. Candidates must pass each subtest to be eligible for licensure.
Alabama does not require its elementary teacher candidates to earn an academic content specialization.
Ensure that content tests adequately measure sufficient knowledge in all subjects.
Alabama should ensure that its new subject-matter test for elementary teacher candidates is well aligned with college- and career-readiness standards. To make the test meaningful, Alabama should also ensure that the passing scores on each subtest reflect high levels of performance.
Require elementary teacher candidates to complete a content specialization in an academic subject area.
In addition to enhancing content knowledge, this requirement would ensure that prospective teachers in Alabama take higher-level academic coursework. The requirement also provides an important safeguard in the event that candidates are unable to successfully complete clinical practice requirements. With an academic concentration (or better still a major or minor), candidates who are not ready for the classroom and do not pass student teaching can still be on track to complete a degree.
Ensure that teacher preparation programs deliver a comprehensive program of study in broad liberal arts coursework.
Alabama should either articulate a more specific set of standards or establish comprehensive coursework requirements for elementary teacher candidates that align with college- and career-readiness standards to ensure that candidates will complete coursework relevant to the common topics in elementary grades. An adequate curriculum is likely to require approximately 36 credit hours in the core subject areas of English, science, social studies and fine arts. Alabama requires all candidates to complete coursework in humanities, social studies and science. Elementary teacher candidates, specifically, must complete 12 credit hours each in English language arts, science and social studies, but these requirements lack the needed specificity to guarantee relevancy in the elementary classroom. (For math requirements, see "Elementary Teacher Preparation in Mathematics" analysis and recommendations.) The standards also mention areas in science, such as physical, life and earth science, and in social studies, such as geography, economics and political science. However, crucial areas, such as American and world history; American, world and children's literature; and art history, are missing. The testing framework for the newly adopted Praxis II elementary test is also far from complete.
Alabama recognized the factual accuracy of this analysis.
Elementary teachers
need liberal arts coursework that is relevant to the PK through 6 classroom.
College-and career-readiness standards, adopted by nearly all
states, represent an effort to significantly raise expectations for the
knowledge and skills American students will need for post-high school success and
global competitiveness. However, many
states' policies fail to ensure that elementary teacher candidates will have
the subject-area knowledge to teach to these K-12 standards. Even when
states specify liberal arts requirements for teacher candidates, the regulatory
language can be quite broad, alluding only minimally to conceptual approaches
such as "quantitative reasoning" or "historical
understanding." Another common but inadequate approach that states take is
to specify broad curricular areas like "humanities" or "physical
sciences." A humanities course could be a general overview of world
literature—an excellent course for a prospective elementary teacher—but it
could also be "Introduction to Film Theory." Likewise, a physical
science course could be an overview of relevant topics in physics, chemistry and
astronomy, or it could focus exclusively on astronomy and fail to give a
teacher candidate an understanding of the basic concepts of physics. Too few
states' requirements distinguish between the value gained from a survey course
in American history, such as "From Colonial Times to the Civil War,"
and an American history course such as "Woody Guthrie and Folk Narrative
in the Great Depression."
In addition to the common-sense notion that teachers ought
to know the subjects they teach, research supports the benefits to be gained by
teachers being broadly educated. Teachers who are more literate—who possess
richer vocabularies—are more likely to be effective. In fact, of all the
measurable attributes of a teacher, teacher literacy correlates most
consistently with student achievement gains. Some states still require that
elementary teacher candidates major in elementary education, with no
expectation that they be broadly educated. Others have regulatory language that
effectively requires the completion of education coursework instead of liberal
arts coursework by mandating only teaching methods courses in subject areas
without also requiring content-based coursework in the areas themselves.
Standards-based
programs can work when verified by testing.
Many states no longer prescribe specific courses or credit
hours as a condition for teacher candidates to qualify for a license. Instead,
they require teacher candidates to complete an approved program that meets
state-specific standards or standards set forth by accrediting bodies and leave
it at that. The advantage of this "standards-based" approach is that
it grants greater flexibility to teacher preparation programs regarding program
design.
However, a significant disadvantage is that the
standards-based approach is far more difficult to monitor or enforce. While
some programs respond well to the flexibility, others do not. Standards are
important but essentially meaningless absent rigorous tests to ensure that
teacher candidates have met them. Not all states that have chosen the
standards-based approach have not implemented such tests. In their absence,
verifying that teacher preparation programs are teaching to the standards
requires an exhaustive review process of matching every standard with something
taught in a course. This approach is neither practical nor efficient. Tests of
broad subject matter are also not the solution or tests that require only a
passing composite, given that it is possible to pass without necessarily
demonstrating knowledge in each subject area. For instance, on many tests of
teacher content knowledge, a passing score may be possible while answering every
mathematics question incorrectly.
Mere alignment with
student learning standards is not sufficient.
Another growing trend in state policy is to require teacher
preparation programs to align their instruction with the state's student
learning standards, and this is likely to increase with the introduction of new college- and career-readiness standards.. In many states, this alignment exercise is the only
factor considered in deciding the content to be delivered to elementary teacher
candidates. Alignment of teacher preparation with student learning standards is
an important step but by no means the only one. For example, a program should
prepare teachers in more than just the content that the state expects of its
fourth graders. Also critical is moving past alignment and deciding the broader
set of knowledge a teacher needs to be able to effectively teach fourth grade.
The teacher's perspective must be both broader and deeper than what he or she
will actually teach.
An academic
concentration enhances content knowledge and ensures that prospective
elementary teachers take higher-level academic coursework.
Few states require prospective elementary teachers to major
or minor in an academic subject area. Consequently, in most states these
teachers can meet subject-matter requirements without taking any advanced-level
coursework. At minimum, states should require a concentration in an academic
area. In addition to deepening subject-matter knowledge in a particular area,
building this concentration into elementary education programs ensures that
prospective teachers complete academic coursework on a par with peers earning
bachelor's degrees in other areas.
A concentration also provides a fallback for education
majors whose programs deem them unready for the classroom. In most education
programs, virtually all coursework is completed before candidates begin student
teaching. The stakes are high once student teaching begins: if a candidate
cannot pass, he or she cannot meet requirements for a major or graduate. This
may create a perverse incentive for programs to set low standards for student
teaching and/or pass candidates whose clinical experience is unsatisfactory. If
they were required to have at least an academic concentration, candidates who
failed student teaching could still complete a degree with minimal additional
coursework.
Elementary Teacher Preparation: Supporting Research
Numerous
research studies have established the strong relationship between teachers'
vocabulary (a proxy for being broadly educated) and student achievement. For
example: A.J. Wayne and P. Youngs, "Teacher characteristics and student achievement gains: A review," Review of Educational Research, Volume 73, No. 1, Spring 2003, pp. 89-122. See also G.J. Whitehurst, "Scientifically based research on teacher quality: Research on teacher preparation and professional development," presented at the 2002 White House Conference on Preparing Tomorrow's Teachers; R. Ehrenberg and D. Brewer, "Did Teachers' Verbal Ability and Race Matter in the 1960s? Coleman Revisited," Economics of
Education Review, Volume 14, No. 1, March 1995, pp. 1-21.
Research
also connects individual content knowledge with increased reading
comprehension, making the capacity of the teacher to infuse all instruction
with content of particular importance for student achievement. See Willingham,
D. T., "How knowledge helps: It speeds and strengthens reading comprehension, learning—and thinking," American Educator, Volume 30, No. 1, Spring 2006.
For
the importance of teachers' general academic ability, see R. Ferguson,
"Paying for Public Education: New Evidence on How and Why Money
Matters," Harvard Journal on Legislation Volume 28, Summer 1991, pp. 465-498; L. Hedges, R. Laine and R. Greenwald, "An Exchange: Part I: Does Money Matter? A Meta-Analysis of Studies of the Effects of Differential School Inputs on Student Outcomes," Educational Researcher, Volume 23, No. 3 April 1994, pp. 5-14; E. Hanushek, "Teacher Characteristics and Gains in Student Achievement: Estimation Using Micro Data," The American Economic Review Volume 61, No. 2, May 1971, pp. 280-288; E. Hanushek, "A More Complete Picture of School Resource Policies," Review of Educational Research, Volume 66, Fall 1996, pp. 397-409; H. Levin, "Concepts of Economic Efficiency and Educational Production," in Education as an Industry, eds. J. Froomkin, D.
Jamison, and R. Radner, 1976, pp. 149-198; D. Monk,
"Subject Area Preparation of Secondary Mathematics and Science Teachers and Student Achievement," Economics of Education Review, Volume 13, No. 2, June 1994, pp. 125-145; R. Murnane, "Understanding the Sources of Teaching Competence: Choices, Skills, and the Limits of Training," Teachers
College Record, Volume 84, No. 3, 1983, pp. 564-569; R. Murnane and B. Phillips, Effective
Teachers of Inner City Children: Who They Are and What Are They? (Princeton,
NJ: Mathematica Policy Research, 1978); R. Murnane and B. Phillips, "What Do Effective Teachers of Inner-City Children Have in Common?" Social
Science Research Volume 10, No. 1, March 1981, pp. 83-100; M. McLaughlin and D. Marsh,
"Staff Development and School Change," Teachers College
Record, Volume 80, No. 1,1978, pp. 69-94; R. Strauss and E. Sawyer, "Some New Evidence on Teacher and Student Competencies," Economics of
Education Review, Volume 5, No. 1, 1986, pp. 41-48; A. A. Summers and B.L. Wolfe,
"Which School Resources Help Learning? Efficiency and Equity in Philadelphia Public Schools," Business Review (Federal
Reserve Bank of Philadelphia, February 1975).
Sandra
Stotsky has documented the fact that teacher candidates often make
inappropriate or irrelevant coursework choices that nonetheless satisfy state requirements.
See S. Stotsky with L. Haverty, "Can a State Department of Education Increase Teacher
Quality? Lessons Learned in Massachusetts," in Brookings Papers on Education Policy: 2004, ed. Diane Ravitch
(Washington, D.C.: Brookings Institution Press, 2004).
On
the need for colleges and universities to improve their general education
coursework requirements, see The Hollow Core: Failure of the General Education Curriculum (Washington, D.C.: American Council of Trustees
and Alumni, 2004). For a subject-specific example of institutions' failure to
deliver solid liberal arts preparation see, The Coming Crisis in Citizenship: Higher Education's Failure to Teach America's History and Institutions (Wilmington, DE: Intercollegiate Studies Institute,
2006).
For
information on teacher licensing tests, see The Academic Quality of Prospective Teachers: The Impact of Admissions and Licensure Testing (Princeton,
NJ: Educational Testing Service, 1999). A study by C. Clotfelter, H. Ladd, and
J.Vigdor of elementary teachers in North Carolina also found that teachers with
test scores one standard deviation above the mean on the Elementary Education
Test as well as a test of content was associated with increased student
achievement of 0.011 to 0.015 standard deviations. "How and Why Do Teacher
Credentials Matter for Student Achievement?" The Calder Institute (2007).
For
information on where states set passing scores on teacher licensing tests
across the U.S., see chart on p. 13 of NCTQ "Recommendations for the Reauthorization of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act, Removing the Roadblocks: How Federal Policy Can Cultivate Effective Teachers," (2011).