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Middle School Teacher Preparation : Ohio

Delivering Well Prepared Teachers Policy

Look at National Findings
Goal

The state should ensure that middle school teachers are sufficiently prepared to teach appropriate grade-level content.

Nearly meets goal
Suggested Citation:
National Council on Teacher Quality. (2011). Middle School Teacher Preparation : Ohio results. State Teacher Policy Database. [Data set].
Retrieved from: https://www.nctq.org/yearbook/state/OH-Middle-School-Teacher-Preparation--6

Analysis of Ohio's policies

Ohio requires a middle childhood license (grades 4-9) for middle school teachers; candidates must earn "areas of concentration" in at least two content areas. Teachers with secondary certificates are allowed to teach single subjects in middle school. Those candidates must earn an academic major in all areas to be taught.

All new middle school teachers in Ohio are also required to pass a Praxis II subject-matter test to attain licensure. However, only those candidates who wish to be certified in a particular area must pass the single subject test. Candidates who are "middle school generalists" are only required to pass the Praxis II Elementary Education: Content Knowledge test, which does not adequately test requisite knowledge of middle school teachers. In addition, subscores are not provided; therefore, there is no assurance that these middle school teachers will have sufficient knowledge in each subject they teach.

Citation

Recommendations for Ohio

Clarify middle school subject-matter preparation policy.
Ohio is commended for not allowing middle school teachers to teach on a K-8 generalist license. However, it should clarify the meaning of "areas of concentration" to ensure that candidates are earning the equivalent of two minors. 

Require appropriate subject-matter testing for middle school teacher candidates.
Ohio should also require adequate subject-matter testing for all middle school teacher candidates in every core academic area they intend to teach, as a condition of initial licensure, rather than the elementary assessment currently required of middle school generalists.

State response to our analysis

Ohio recognized the factual accuracy of this analysis.

    • Best practice
    • Meets goal
    • Nearly Meets goal
    • Meets goal in part
    • Meets a small part of goal
    • Does not meet goal

  • Ohio

    Ohio map
Secondary Teacher Preparation
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Delivering Well Prepared Teachers
Expanding the Pool of Teachers
Identifying Effective Teachers
Retaining Effective Teachers
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Research rationale

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. Foundation 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 Dee and Chodes, "Out-of-Field Teaching and Student Achievement; Evidence from Matched-Pairs Comparisons." Public Finance Review (2008); as B. Chaney, "Student outcomes and the professional preparation of 8th grade teachers," in NSF/NELS 88: Teacher transcript analysis (Rockville, MD: Westat, 1995); 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 80, No. 2 (1998): 134-138.

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