Secondary Teacher Preparation in Social
Studies: Idaho

Delivering Well Prepared Teachers Policy

Goal

The state should ensure that social studies teachers know all the subject matter they are licensed to teach.

Does not meet goal
Suggested Citation:
National Council on Teacher Quality. (2011). Secondary Teacher Preparation in Social Studies: Idaho results. State Teacher Policy Database. [Data set].
Retrieved from: https://www.nctq.org/yearbook/state/ID-Secondary-Teacher-Preparation-in-Social-Studies-6

Analysis of Idaho's policies

Idaho offers secondary social studies teachers a Social Studies endorsement. However, they must first have an endorsement in one of the following: American government/political science, economics, history or geography—plus at least 12 credit hours in each of the remaining areas. In addition to the Praxis II area-specific test required for the initial endorsement, teachers also have to pass the Praxis II "Social Studies: Content Knowledge" test. Teachers with this license are not limited to teaching general social studies but rather can teach any of the topical areas.

Middle school social studies teachers in Idaho may teach on a generalist K-8 license. A "Ninth Grade Endorsement" is available for elementary teachers who complete the requirements for a subject-area endorsement; this allows teachers to teach that subject through grade 9. Elementary teachers seeking this endorsement are required to pass the Praxis II "Middle School Social Studies" test.

Citation

Recommendations for Idaho

Require secondary social studies teachers to pass tests of content knowledge for each social studies discipline they intend to teach.
States that allow general social studies certifications—and only require a general knowledge social studies exam—are not ensuring that these secondary teachers possess adequate subject-specific content knowledge. Idaho's required general assessment combines all subject areas (e.g., history, geography, economics) and does not report separate scores for each subject area. Therefore, if a teacher is initially endorsed in economics, she could answer many—perhaps all—history questions, for example, incorrectly, yet still be licensed to teach history to high school students.

Require middle school social studies teachers to pass a test of content knowledge that ensures sufficient knowledge of social studies.

State response to our analysis

Idaho recognized the factual accuracy of this analysis.

Research rationale

Carlisle, J. F., Correnti, R., Phelps, G., & Zeng, J., "Exploration of the contribution of teachers' knowledge about reading to their students' improvement in reading." Reading and Writing: An Interdisciplinary Journal, 22, 459-486 (2009) includes evidence specifically related to the importance of secondary social studies knowledge.
 
In addition, research studies have demonstrated the positive impact of teacher content knowledge on student achievement.  For example, see D. Goldhaber, "Everyone's Doing It, But What Does Teacher Testing Tell Us About Teacher Effectiveness?" Journal of Human Resources, vol. XLII no.4 (2007).  Evidence can also be found in White, Presely, DeAngelis "Leveling up: Narrowing the teacher academic capital gap in Illinois," Illinois Education Research Council (2008); D. Goldhaber and D. Brewer, "Does teacher certification matter? High School Certification Status and Student Achievement." Educational Evaluation and Policy Analysis. 22: 129-145. (2000); and D. Goldhaber and D. Brewer, "Why Don't Schools and Teachers Seem to Matter? Assessing the impact of Unobservables on Educational Productivity." Journal of Human Resources (1998). See also Harris, D., and Sass, T., "Teacher Training, Teacher Quality and Student Achievement." Teacher Quality Research (2007).