Middle School Teacher Preparation: Idaho

Delivering Well Prepared Teachers Policy

Goal

The state should ensure that middle school teachers are sufficiently prepared to teach appropriate grade-level content and for the ways that college- and and career-readiness standards affect instruction of all subject areas.

Meets a small part of goal
Suggested Citation:
National Council on Teacher Quality. (2015). Middle School Teacher Preparation: Idaho results. State Teacher Policy Database. [Data set].
Retrieved from: https://www.nctq.org/yearbook/state/ID-Middle-School-Teacher-Preparation-69

Analysis of Idaho's policies

Idaho allows middle school teachers to teach on a generalist K-8 license. Candidates must complete a minimum of 24 semester hours in "the philosophical, psychological and methodological foundations and in the professional subject matter of elementary education." Teachers with secondary certificates may also teach single subjects in middle school; they must earn a minimum of 20 semester hours in "the philosophical, psychological and methodological foundations, in instructional technology, and in the professional subject matter of secondary education."

In addition to passing the Praxis II Elementary Education: Multiple Subjects (5001) test, Idaho also requires generalist candidates to pass a single-subject content test at either the middle school or secondary level. This is part of the state's requirement that all candidates seeking an elementary education endorsement earn a subject-area endorsement (allowing the teaching of that subject through grade 9) or a K-12 endorsement as outlined in the requirements for a secondary certificate.

Idaho's assessment for middle school English teachers, the Praxis II Middle School English Language Arts (5047) test, includes some of the instructional shifts associated with these standards. In addition, the state's secondary English content assessment, the Praxis II English Language Arts: Content Knowledge (5038) test, addresses informational texts as well (see "Secondary Teacher Preparation" analysis and recommendations).

Idaho's standards for initial certification require all teachers to be able to develop and implement "supports for learner literacy development across content areas."

The middle school English content test requires that a teacher be able to group students and differentiate instruction. However, it does not specifically address the ability either to identify struggling readers or provide appropriate intervention.

Citation

Recommendations for Idaho

Require content testing in all core areas.
Idaho 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. Although the state's new policy is a step in the right direction, it does not ensure that middle school teachers teaching on the generalist license have the requisite subject-matter knowledge in all core content areas. 

Eliminate the generalist license. 
Idaho 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 Idaho 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 Idaho's content tests address informational texts, the state should strengthen its policy and ensure that teachers are able to adequately challenge students with texts of increasing complexity.

Incorporate literacy skills as an integral part of every subject. To ensure that middle school students are capable of accessing varied information about the world around them, Idaho should also—either through testing frameworks or teacher standards—include literacy skills and using text to build content knowledge in history/social studies, science, technical subjects and the arts.

Support struggling readers. Idaho should articulate more specific requirements ensuring that middle school teachers are prepared to intervene and support students who are struggling. While college- and career-readiness standards will increase the need for all middle school teachers to be able to help struggling readers to comprehend grade-level material, training for English language arts teachers in particular must emphasize identification and remediation of reading deficiencies.

State response to our analysis

Idaho recognized the factual accuracy of this analysis. However, this analysis was updated subsequent to the state's review.

Research rationale

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.