Middle School Teacher Preparation : Florida

Delivering Well Prepared Teachers Policy

Goal

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

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

Analysis of Florida's policies

Florida requires middle grades certification (grades 5-9) for all middle school teachers. The state offers middle grades certification for four specific subject areas: English, math, science and social science. Candidates must earn a major or complete 18 credit hours in their intended teaching field.

All new middle school teachers are required to pass a specific subject-area test, one of the "Florida Teacher Certification Examination" tests, to attain licensure.

Florida has approved the repeal of its middle grades integrated curriculum certification, which will now ensure specific content certification rather than an integrated model. 

Citation

Recommendations for Florida

State response to our analysis

Florida was helpful in providing NCTQ with the facts necessary for 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.