Middle School Teacher Preparation: Utah

Analysis of Utah's policies

Utah requires a secondary license (grades 6-12) for middle school teachers. Candidates must complete a major (30 semester hours of credit). Endorsements are granted for all subjects in which candidates have at least a minor (16 semester hours of credit). Regrettably, the state also allows middle school teachers to teach on a generalist 1-8 license, if they are in self-contained classrooms.

All new middle school teachers in Utah are also required to pass a Praxis II subject-matter test to attain licensure. However, because the state allows middle school teachers to teach on a generalist license, these candidates are only required to pass the general elementary content test. Although subscores are provided, this assessment does not adequately assess the content knowledge required of middle school teachers. Therefore, there is no assurance that all middle school teachers will have sufficient knowledge in each subject they teach. Secondary teacher candidates teaching middle grades are required to take subject-specific assessments. 

Citation

Praxis Test Requirement www.ets.org Utah Administrative Code R277-504-5

Recommendations for Utah

Require content testing in all core areas.
Utah 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. To ensure meaningful middle school content tests, the state should set its passing scores to reflect high levels of performance.

Eliminate the generalist license.
Utah 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. These teachers are less likely to be adequately prepared to teach core academic areas at the middle school level because their preparation requirements are not specific to the middle or secondary levels and they need not pass a subject-matter test in each subject they teach. 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 Utah who intend to teach a single subject should earn a major in that area.

State response to our analysis

Utah recognized the factual accuracy of this analysis. The state added that the generalist license is extremely limited and used primarily in Necessarily Existent Small Schools in remote rural areas. Utah noted that the need for flexibility in these unique situations outweighs the need for a requirement that is already voluntarily followed (7th and 8th grade in secondary settings, which requires an endorsement and test) by the vast majority of the state. 

Last word

NCTQ is certainly not advocating against K-8 schools and can see why such configurations are particularly advantageous for rural areas. But middle school-level students in a K-8 school still need teachers who are well prepared to teach middle school-level subject matter.