Secondary Teacher Preparation Policy
Informational Texts: California's preparation standards for secondary school teachers address some of the instructional shifts associated with college- and career-readiness standards toward building content knowledge and vocabulary through careful reading of informational and literary texts. Single-Subject Credential holders are required to teach students to "read a variety of informational texts and reference works, including but not limited to magazines; newspapers; online information; instructional manuals; consumer, workplace, and public documents."
See Goal 2-C: Elementary Teaching Reading for a discussion of college- and career-readiness requirements for teachers teaching middle grades on
California's Multiple Subjects Credential.
Literacy Skills: California's educator preparation standards address the incorporation of literacy across core content areas. Teachers with either a Multi-Subjects or Single Subjects credential must be able to "teach students to independently read and comprehend instructional materials that include increasingly complex subject-relevant texts and graphic/media representations presented in diverse formats." This requirement is repeated in all educator preparation standards related to multiple and single subject credentials in core subject areas, including: reading/language arts, science, and social science.
Single-Subject credential candidates must be able to:
Incorporate informational text of increasing complexity into classroom instruction.
Although California's preparation standards address a secondary
teacher's ability to challenge students with texts of increasing
complexity, the state should strengthen its policy and ensure that
secondary teachers are able to do so with informational texts.
California declined to respond to NCTQ's analyses.
3C: Adolescent Literary
The state should ensure that all middle and secondary teachers are sufficiently prepared for the ways that college- and career-readiness standards affect instruction in all subject areas. Specifically,
States must ensure that middle school and secondary teacher preparation programs prepare teachers to incorporate complex text into instruction and student practice. These are critical years of schooling when far too many students fall through the cracks.
With that said, college- and career-readiness standards are influencing significant shifts in literacy instruction.
College- and career-readiness standards for K-12 students adopted by nearly all states require from teachers a different focus on literacy integrated into all subject areas.[1] The standards demand that teachers are prepared to bring complex text and academic language into regular use, emphasize the use of evidence from informational and literary texts, and build knowledge and vocabulary through content-rich texts. While most states have not ignored teachers' need for training and professional development related to these instructional shifts, states must also attend to the parallel need to align teacher competencies and requirements for teacher preparation so that new teachers will enter the classroom ready to help students meet the expectations of these standards.