Secondary Teacher Preparation Policy
Informational Texts: Minnesota's preparation standards and tests for all middle and secondary school teachers do not address the instructional shifts associated
with college- and career-readiness standards toward building content
knowledge
and vocabulary through careful reading of informational and literary
texts.
Literacy Skills: Minnesota Teacher Licensure Examinations (MTLE)
middle school and secondary tests in other content areas address literacy skills. For example, its secondary life science and chemistry assessments and the middle school general science test require teachers to "understand the content and methods for developing students' content-area reading skills to support their reading and learning" in the applicable science subject. Similar requirements are also articulated in the frameworks for the middle and secondary social studies tests. Further, Minnesota's standards require all teacher preparation programs to include "research-based best practices in reading ... that enable the licensure candidates to know how to teach reading in the candidate's content areas."
Ensure that middle and secondary 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.
Minnesota should specifically address the instructional shifts toward building content knowledge and vocabulary through increasingly complex informational texts and careful reading of informational and literary texts associated with the state's college- and career-readiness standards for students. The state may consider addressing these shifts either through testing frameworks in tests taken by all middle or secondary teachers regardless of subject area (such as a teaching methods tests), or through teacher preparation standards.
Minnesota declined to respond to NCTQ's analyses.
3C: Adolescent Literary
The state should ensure that all middle and secondary teachers are sufficiently prepared for the ways that college- and career-readiness standards affect instruction in all subject areas. Specifically,
States must ensure that middle school and secondary teacher preparation programs prepare teachers to incorporate complex text into instruction and student practice. These are critical years of schooling when far too many students fall through the cracks.
With that said, college- and career-readiness standards are influencing 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.[1] 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 texts. While most states have not ignored teachers' need for training and professional development related to these instructional shifts, states must also attend 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.