Middle School Teacher Preparation: Florida
Delivering Well Prepared Teachers Policy
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 in Florida are also required to pass a specific subject-area test, one of the "Florida Teacher Certification Examination" tests, to attain licensure.
Commendably, Florida does not offer a K-8 generalist license.
Florida addresses some of the instructional shifts toward building content knowledge and vocabulary through careful reading of
informational and literary texts associated with the state's college- and
career-readiness standards for students through its required assessment, the Florida Teacher Certification Examination. Both the Middle Grades FTCE English test and the state's reading competencies include only vague references to informational texts.
Florida's
competencies for its Professional Education test require "knowledge of
effective literacy strategies that can be applied across the curriculum
to impact student learning," which includes the following:
- Apply effective instructional practices to develop text reading skills in the appropriate content area
- Select instructional practices for developing and using content area vocabulary
- Determine instructional practices to facilitate students' reading comprehension through content areas
- Apply appropriate literacy strategies for developing higher-order critical thinking skills
- Select appropriate resources for the subject matter and students' literacy levels
- Differentiate instructional practices based on literacy data for all students.
Regarding struggling readers, Florida requires teachers to "apply appropriate instructional practices determined by the student's strengths and needs, text structure, and the reading demands of domain specific text."
Recommendations for Florida
Ensure that middle school teachers are prepared to meet the instructional requirements of college- and career-readiness standards
for students.
Incorporate informational text of increasing complexity into classroom instruction.
Florida's
testing standards and competencies fail to capture the major
instructional shifts of college- and career-ready standards. The state
is therefore encouraged to strengthen its teacher preparation
requirements and ensure that all middle school English candidates have the
ability to adequately incorporate complex informational text into
classroom instruction.
Incorporate literacy skills as an integral part of every subject.
To
ensure that middle school students are capable of accessing varied
information about the world around them, Florida should also include
more specific requirements regarding literacy skills and using text as a
means to build content knowledge in history/social studies, science,
technical subjects and the arts.
Support struggling readers.
Florida
should articulate more specific requirements ensuring that middle school
teachers are prepared to intervene and support students who are
struggling. While college- and career-readiness standards will increase
the need for all secondary teachers to be able to help struggling
readers to comprehend grade-level material, training for English
language arts teachers in particular must emphasize identification and
remediation of reading deficiencies.
State response to our analysis
Florida was helpful in providing NCTQ with facts that enhanced this analysis.
Florida also noted that all state-approved teacher preparation programs must abide by statutory regulations that specify a uniform core curricula that includes scientifically researched reading instruction and content literacy, as well as the state-adopted content standards, the Florida Standards.
The state added that the Reading K-12 subject-area examination is currently undergoing development with the same focus on rigor as the other examinations that include reading competencies.
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Florida
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Delivering Well Prepared Teachers
- Admission into Teacher Preparation
- Elementary Teacher Preparation
- Elementary Teacher Preparation in Reading Instruction
- Elementary Teacher Preparation in Mathematics
- Early Childhood
- Middle School Teacher Preparation
- Secondary Teacher Preparation
- Secondary Teacher Preparation in Science and Social Studies
- Special Education Teacher Preparation
- Special Education Preparation in Reading
- Assessing Professional Knowledge
- Student Teaching
- Teacher Preparation Program Accountability
Expanding the Pool of Teachers
Identifying Effective Teachers
- State Data Systems
- Evaluation of Effectiveness
- Frequency of Evaluations
- Tenure
- Licensure Advancement
- Equitable Distribution
Retaining Effective Teachers
Exiting Ineffective Teachers
Pensions
Research rationale
States must
differentiate middle school teacher preparation from that of elementary
teachers.
Middle school grades are critical years of schooling. It is
in these years that far too many students fall through the cracks. However,
requirements for the preparation and licensure of middle school teachers are
among the weakest state policies. Too many states fail to distinguish the
knowledge and skills needed by middle school teachers from those needed by an
elementary teacher. Whether teaching a single subject in a departmentalized
setting or teaching multiple subjects in a self-contained setting, middle
school teachers must be able to teach significantly more advanced content than
elementary teachers do. The notion that someone should be identically prepared
to teach first grade or eighth grade mathematics seems ridiculous, but states
that license teachers on a K-8 generalist certificate essentially endorse this
idea.
College- and career-readiness standards require 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. 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 text. While most states have not ignored teachers' need for training and professional development related to these instructional shifts, few states have attended 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. Because middle school teachers in most states can be licensed either to be multi-subject teachers or generalists, middle school teachers need specialized preparation. Particularly for single subject teachers of areas other than English language arts, these instructional shifts may be especially acute.
Middle School Teacher Preparation: Supporting Research
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. Foundations 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 T. Dee and S. Cohodes, "Out-of-Field Teachers and Student Achievement: Evidence from Matched-Pairs Comparisons." Public
Finance Review, Volume 36, No. 1, January 2008, pp. 7-32; B.
Chaney, "Student outcomes and the professional preparation of eighth-grade teachers in science and mathematics," in NSF/NELS:88 Teacher transcript analysis, 1995, ERIC, ED389530, 112 p.; 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, Volume 80, No. 2, October 1998, pp. 134, 136-138.
For an extensive summary of the research base supporting the instructional shifts associated with college- and career-readiness standards, see "Research Supporting the Common Core ELA Literacy Shifts and Standards" available from Student Achievement Partners.