Secondary Teacher Preparation in Social
Studies: Michigan

Delivering Well Prepared Teachers Policy

Goal

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

Meets goal in part
Suggested Citation:
National Council on Teacher Quality. (2011). Secondary Teacher Preparation in Social Studies: Michigan results. State Teacher Policy Database. [Data set].
Retrieved from: https://www.nctq.org/yearbook/state/MI-Secondary-Teacher-Preparation-in-Social-Studies-6

Analysis of Michigan's policies

Michigan offers secondary certification in general social studies. Candidates must earn either a social studies group major of 36 semester hours, or a comprehensive group major, with a minimum of 50 semester hours. They must also pass the MTTC "Social Studies" test, which combines all social studies areas but does not report individual scores for specific subjects. 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 Michigan have the option of earning the elementary social studies endorsement, which requires a group major of 36 semester hours. Commendably, candidates must also pass the MTTC "Social Studies" test. Unfortunately, the state also allows middle school teachers to teach on a generalist K-8 license (see Goal 1-E).

Citation

Recommendations for Michigan

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 do not require content tests for each area—are not ensuring that these secondary teachers possess adequate subject-specific content knowledge. Michigan's required assessment combines all subject areas (e.g., history, geography, economics) and does not report separate scores for each subject area. Therefore, candidates could answer many history questions, for example, incorrectly, yet still be licensed to teach history to high school students.

State response to our analysis

Michigan recognized the factual accuracy of this analysis. The state added that NCTQ did not distinguish K-8 self-contained authorization from K-8 departmentalized classrooms, in which middle school teachers with an elementary certificate would be required to hold an additional content endorsement. 

Last word

The issue of K-8 licenses is addressed and factored into the score in Goal 1-E. For the purposes of this goal, it is only mentioned to point out that middle school teachers on that license need not have passed the "Social Studies" test. This is equally problematic whether middle school-level social studies is taught in a self-contained or departmentalized classroom.   

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).