Delivering Well Prepared Teachers Policy
New Hampshire offers a middle school (grades 5-8) license for middle school teachers and allows teachers with secondary certificates to teach single subjects.
Although the state allows middle school teachers to teach on a generalist K-8 license, candidates must have a content concentration in English/language arts, mathematics, social studies or general science and must obtain a passing score on the applicable Praxis II middle school single-subject content test. In addition, these candidates are required to pass the content test for elementary education. Although subscores are provided, this assessment does not adequately assess the content knowledge required of middle school teachers.
New Hampshire 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.
Testing
frameworks in other content areas do not address incorporating literacy
skills. However, according to the state's standards, social studies
teachers must "promote adolescent literacy by using literacy strategies
in order to foster comprehension and develop social studies
skills." Middle-level science teachers must be able to "design
activities and investigations which teach literacy through integrating"
the following:
Require content testing in all core areas.
New Hampshire should require subject-matter testing for all middle school teacher candidates in every core academic area they intend to teach as a condition of initial licensure.
Eliminate the generalist license.
New Hampshire should not
allow middle school teachers to teach on a generalist license that does
not differentiate between the preparation of middle school teachers and
that of elementary teachers. Requiring K-8 candidates to complete a core
concentration and pass a Praxis II middle school level subject area
exam is a step in the right direction. However, there is no assurance that candidates will have mastered middle-school level content in the other subject areas they are licensed to teach. Stronger policy would be to eliminate the generalist license altogether.
Adopting middle school teacher preparation
policies for all such teachers will help ensure that students in grades 7
and 8 have teachers who are appropriately prepared to teach grade-level
content, which is different and more advanced than what elementary
teachers teach.
Encourage middle school teachers licensed to teach multiple subjects to earn two subject-matter minors.
This would allow candidates to gain sufficient knowledge to pass state licensing tests, and it would increase schools' staffing flexibility. However, middle school candidates in New Hampshire who intend to teach a single subject should earn a major in that area.
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
New Hampshire'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.
New Hampshire recognized the factual accuracy of this analysis. The state also acknowledged the potential weakness of the generalist K-8 elementary education license for grades 7-8. New Hampshire noted that the K-8 license is maintained, in part, to assist with staffing challenges in small, rural schools. New Hampshire stated that requiring at least one content concentration as a requirement for the K-8 license is a move toward increased rigor and that the state encourages educators to achieve the middle school-grade-range endorsements for specialized teaching assignments.
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.