Findings: Broad subject preparation
While Illinois requires that elementary teacher candidates take coursework that addresses content, the vast majority of undergraduate (70 percent) and graduate (90 percent) elementary programs we evaluated fail to meet this standard. The greatest deficiencies are in world/American literature, music history and art history.
Somewhat ironically, the institutions that had the greatest number of deficiencies were five liberal arts institutions, an outgrowth of the fact that institutions of this type tend to have either fewer general education requirements than other institutions of higher education or allow a wide variety of courses to satisfy their requirements. Nonetheless, there should not be an inherent contradiction in a liberal arts institution ensuring that prospective elementary teachers are well-equipped to teach the K-9 Illinois curriculum. A clear catalog statement to prospective teachers about the required areas of content mastery that must be demonstrated by coursework or testing and the rationale for the requirements could conciliate the liberal arts college's mission with the mission of the teacher preparation program on its campus.
Graduate elementary programs failed because they did not even conduct a review of candidates' undergraduate transcripts to assess broad content preparation (25 percent) or conducted an inadequate review. For example, the University of Illinois at Chicago indicated that its transcript review process required one course each in English, mathematics, science (no lab necessary) and social studies. Courses such as business writing or accounting could apparently satisfy, for example, the very general requirement in mathematics.
How Illinois institutions fare on this standard
