Teaching What They Know?

Wouldn’t you hope that the standards for entry into the legal, medical, and accounting professions are rigorous? Wouldn’t you also want rigorous standards and a high bar for entering the teaching profession? It matters that educators know the content they teach, particularly in core subjects at the secondary level. Now, new analysis by Ed Week’s Steven Sawchuk ramps up concerns about our new teachers’ level of content knowledge.

After analyzing a random sample of seven states, Sawchuk found that the average scores of teacher candidates on state-required licensing exams are uniformly higher, often significantly so, than the pass scores states require of teachers on these exams. One could interpret this to mean our teachers are highly prepared to deliver content and instruction. We suspect something else is going on. The score discrepancy, combined with the  extraordinarily high pass rates — 96 percent in 2008-09, according to the U.S. Department of Education — suggests the bar for passing these tests is likely too low to ensure teachers are mastering the content they teach.

One reason for our concern is that the very high pass rates stand in stark contrast to those of other professions. The point is not that we should aspire to lower passage rates for teachers on state exams, but rather that we must ensure all teachers are held to, and prepared to meet, a high bar. This is especially important given the impending implementation of more rigorous college and career ready standards in most states. These standards raise the bar on student content knowledge.  Maintaining a low bar for how well prepared teachers need to be to deliver this content is a recipe for disaster.

— Sarah Almy and Paula Amann