Secondary Teacher Preparation in Science:
Oklahoma

Delivering Well Prepared Teachers Policy

Goal

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

Nearly meets goal
Suggested Citation:
National Council on Teacher Quality. (2011). Secondary Teacher Preparation in Science: Oklahoma results. State Teacher Policy Database. [Data set].
Retrieved from: https://www.nctq.org/yearbook/state/OK-Secondary-Teacher-Preparation-in-Science-6

Analysis of Oklahoma's policies

Although Oklahoma commendably does not offer a secondary certification in general science, it does offer a physical science certification area. The state requires a subject-area major that includes 18 hours in each assigned area. Candidates are required to pass the OSAT "Physical Science" test.

Middle school science teachers in Oklahoma may opt for certification in middle level science. Candidates must earn a major in a content-related area and, commendably,  must also pass the OSAT "Middle Level Science" test. Regrettably, however, Oklahoma allows middle school science teachers to teach on a generalist 1-8 license (see Goal 1-E).

Citation

Recommendations for Oklahoma

Require secondary science teachers to pass tests of content knowledge for each science discipline they intend to teach.
States that allow combination licenses across multiple science disciplines—and require only a comprehensive content test—are not ensuring that these secondary teachers possess adequate subject-specific content knowledge. Oklahoma's assessment combines both physics and chemistry and does not report separate scores for each subject. Therefore, a candidate could, for example, answer many physics questions incorrectly on the combination content test, yet still be licensed to teach physics to high school students.

State response to our analysis

Oklahoma asserted that chemistry, physics and physical science have separate subject-area certification exams, and candidates cannot teach chemistry or physics without the successful completion of the individual exam. The state also pointed out that successful completion of the physical science exam certifies candidates to teach physical science, general science and concepts of general science essentials.  

Last word

Oklahoma's policies to ensure that secondary science teachers know the subject-matter they teach are better than most states. However, the physical science certification falls short. Physical science teachers are expected to teach both chemistry and physics and should be required to demonstrate content knowledge in each subject area. Oklahoma's physical science test combines chemistry and physics without reporting subscores; therefore, the state cannot guarantee requisite content knowledge in either subject. 

Research rationale

For an examination of how science teacher preparation positively impacts student achievement, see Goldhaber, D., & Brewer, D. (2000). Does teacher certification matter? High school certification status and student achievement, Educational Evaluation and Policy Analysis, 22, 129-145; Monk, D. (1994). Subject area preparation of secondary mathematics and science teachers and student achievement, Economics of Education Review, 12(2):125-145; Rothman, A., (1969). Teacher characteristics and student learning. Journal of Research in Science Teaching, 6(4), 340-348.  

See also, NCTQ "The All-Purpose Science Teacher: An Analysis of Loopholes in State Requirements for High School Science Teachers."(2010). 

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).  See also Harris, D., and Sass, T., "Teacher Training, Teacher Quality and Student Achievement". Teacher Quality Research (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, "Why Don't Schools and Teachers Seem to Matter? Assessing the impact of Unobservables on Educational Productivity." Journal of Human Resources (1998).