Middle School Teacher Preparation : Arizona

Delivering Well Prepared Teachers Policy

Goal

The state should ensure that middle school teachers are sufficiently prepared to teach appropriate grade-level content.

Meets a small part of goal
Suggested Citation:
National Council on Teacher Quality. (2011). Middle School Teacher Preparation : Arizona results. State Teacher Policy Database. [Data set].
Retrieved from: https://www.nctq.org/yearbook/state/AZ-Middle-School-Teacher-Preparation--6

Analysis of Arizona's policies


Arizona only requires that middle school teachers, who are allowed to teach on a generalist K-8 license, complete a teacher preparation program. Teachers with secondary licenses may also teach single subjects in middle school. The state does not explicitly require a major or minor in the subject areas that the candidates plan to teach. Arizona offers an optional middle grades endorsement (grades 5-9) for teachers who already have either an elementary or secondary certificate "to expand the grades a teacher is authorized to teach on an elementary or secondary certificate."

All new middle school teachers whose primary assignments are in academic subjects are required to pass a subject-matter portion of the Arizona Educator Proficiency Exam, the state's licensing test, to attain licensure.

Citation

Recommendations for Arizona

Eliminate K-8 generalist license.
Arizona should not allow middle school teachers to teach on a generalist license that does not differentiate between the preparation of middle school teachers and that of elementary teachers. These teachers are less likely to be adequately prepared to teach core academic areas at the middle school level because their preparation requirements are not specific to the middle or secondary levels and they need not pass a subject-matter test in each subject they teach. Adopting middle school teacher preparation policies for all such teachers will help ensure that students in grades 7 and 8 have teachers who are appropriately prepared to teach grade level content, which is different and more advanced than what elementary teachers teach.  

Strengthen middle school teachers' subject-matter preparation.
Arizona should encourage middle school teachers who plan to teach multiple subjects to earn two minors in two core academic areas. Middle school candidates who intend to teach a single subject should earn a major in that area. 

State response to our analysis

Arizona recognized the factual accuracy of this analysis.

Research rationale

A report published by the National Mathematics Advisory Panel (NMAP) concludes that a teacher's knowledge of math makes a difference in student achievement. U.S. Department of Education. Foundation for Success: The Final Report of the National Mathematics Advisory Panel. Washington, D.C.: U.S. Department of Education (2008).

For additional research on the importance of subject matter knowledge, see Dee and Chodes, "Out-of-Field Teaching and Student Achievement; Evidence from Matched-Pairs Comparisons." Public Finance Review (2008); as B. Chaney, "Student outcomes and the professional preparation of 8th grade teachers," in NSF/NELS 88: Teacher transcript analysis (Rockville, MD: Westat, 1995); H. Wenglinsky, How Teaching Matters: Bringing the Classroom Back Into Discussions of Teacher Quality (Princeton, NJ: Educational Testing Service, 2000). For information on the "ceiling effect," see D. Goldhaber and D. Brewer, "When should we reward degrees for teachers?" in Phi Delta Kappan 80, No. 2 (1998): 134-138.