Middle School Teacher Preparation: Louisiana

Analysis of Louisiana's policies

Louisiana requires a middle grades certificate (grades 4-8) for all middle school teachers. Candidates must focus on two in-depth teaching areas that include language arts, science, social studies and mathematics. Each focus area consists of 19 credit hours total, including general education and focus-area coursework. The state also allows secondary teachers to teach middle school but they must earn a total of 31 hours of combined general education and focus-area coursework in the primary teaching area. They must also earn a total of 19 hours of coursework in a secondary teaching area.

All new middle school teachers in Louisiana are also required to pass a single-subject Praxis II content test to attain licensure; a general content knowledge test is not an option.

Commendably, Louisiana does not offer a K-8 generalist license.

Louisiana 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 for middle school English teachers, the Praxis II Middle School English Language Arts (5047) test.

Neither state competencies nor other middle school content tests address incorporating literacy skills into all content areas.

Louisiana's competencies fully address the needs of struggling readers by requiring teacher candidates to know how to:

• Use assessment information to identify students' proficiencies and needs
• Group students for small groups based on data, including small flexible intervention groups
• Develop instruction that is targeted and linked to student deficits visible through screening assessments

Citation

Praxis Test Requirement www.ets.org Louisiana Administrative Code, Title 28, Bulletin 746, Section 209, 211, 609; Bulletin 113, Section 209

Recommendations for Louisiana

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. Although Louisiana's English language arts content test for middle school teachers addresses informational texts, the state should strengthen its policy and ensure that teachers are able to challenge students with texts of increasing complexity.

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, Louisiana should also include literacy skills and using text to build content knowledge in history/social studies, science, technical subjects and the arts.

Close the loophole that allows teachers to add middle-grade levels to an existing license without demonstrating content knowledge.
Louisiana allows teachers to add middle school area endorsements to certificates with either 30 credit hours in the area or a passing score on a content test. The state is urged to require that all teachers who add the middle-grade levels to their certificates pass a rigorous subject-matter test to ensure content knowledge of all subject areas before they are allowed in the classroom.

Ensure meaningful content tests.
To ensure meaningful middle school content tests, Louisiana should make certain that its passing scores reflect high levels of performance.

State response to our analysis

Louisiana asserted that the state is preparing new teachers to incorporate informational text of increasing complexity into classroom instruction and is preparing new teachers to incorporate literacy skills as an integral part of every subject.

Louisiana indicated that the state requires all teachers to add middle school-area endorsements to certificates with 30 credit hours in the area or a passing score on a middle school content test, in addition to six semester hours of reading or the Praxis Teaching Reading exam and the Principles of Learning and Teaching 5-9. The state also referenced its Reading and Language Competencies.

Louisiana noted that only the undergraduate middle grades 4-8 require two in-depth teaching areas. The three alternate paths focus on one teaching area, and the secondary grades 6-12 focus on one teaching area.

In addition, the state pointed out that Board of Elementary and Secondary Education policy requires all teacher preparation programs to address State Content Standards, which are the Common Core State Standards. The Common Core State Standards require programs to prepare candidates who are sufficiently prepared to incorporate informational text into instruction and ensure that all new teachers are prepared to incorporate literacy skills as an integral part of every subject.

The state added that teacher preparation programs are required to realign the teacher preparation curriculum to prepare preservice teachers to teach to the new CCSS, Compass and assessments. The CAEP and LDOE Partnership Agreement states that "Louisiana standards and institutional standards must be applied in the CAEP accreditation process."

Louisiana also noted that an ongoing review of this alignment is occurring as campuses provide documentation for their national NCATE/TEAC/CAEP accreditation and ongoing state approval. The state then referenced Bulletin 996: Standards for Approval of Teacher Education Programs Chapter 7.