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[barred_owl]

To find out what any state's plan is to achieve the NCLB-mandated goal of having "100% Highly Qualified Teachers" in every K-12 classroom (which at least indirectly answers Glowdart's question with "requirements vary from state to state"), select from this list:

http://www2.ed.gov/programs/teacherqual/hqtplans/index.html#oh

According to the Federal Dept. of Education website, states received a 'smackdown' of sorts for not having completed their respective plans for achieving that goal; it's unclear whether or not the states have since come closer to achieving 100% HQT in every classroom.

[gennimom]

Just some observations:

I started teaching before NCLB, so I watched it come in and originally thought, "hey, this won't affect me as I'm not an academic teacher." Bad idea. Teachers like me are in danger of losing their jobs if schools perceive that students could better use that time taking another academic class (which was one basis of my diss). In my field, you would get quite a lot of hours in classes that are field specific. But now, to broaden the appeal, states are trying to offer these classes for science credit. I'm having a problem with that however. I've seen, say, Texas' requirements to be a science teacher. Teachers in my area do not get enough hours in science even if you count the field-specific classes which are heavy in science themselves. So I have my doubts about many of our teachers' ability to teach for science credit. We do however, try to teach critical thinking. We want students to be able to apply knowledge learned in one place to something done some place else. This has always been one of the foundations of my field.

Now all that aside, students in my field are taught in the College of Ag, not the College of Ed. I've seen the graduates who come out of our College of Ed. I've noticed that, predominately, the students who can, teach secondary in a specific field. The students who seem to be less able, go elementary. There are some people who genuinely want to teach the little ones, but the others continue to give those a bad name. But until we get pay up enough (and ensure discipline in the classroom) to attract people who would teach for the love of it, we'll keep attracting those who want a pay check for minimal effort.

Polly, I'm glad you found some use in those websites. I didn't hear about it until I left the classroom so I never got to try it out. I work in a department whose job it is to write statewide curricula for career and technical programs. Everything we put out these days is done with Webb's DOK in mind. Since we also write the final assessments for these programs, we can determine what kinds of evaluations are appropriate for each level. We're moving toward the unheard of step of having students do a portfolio/final project (which will be required to reach DOK4) that will be turned in on cds for evaluation by a group of teachers selected for the purpose. Considering we have between 11,000 and 15,000 students complete career and technical programs each year, this is a daunting task.

This is one thing I don't like about NCLB. The requirement for assessment. The Perkins Act was aligned to NCLB and requires states to develop valid and reliable assessments for all completers of career and technical education students. People who see that everything today requires some form of standardized assessment may decide that removes the enjoyment from teaching. Teachers can no longer teach for the joy of it when they have to be constantly aware of what students need to accomplish for the state assessments.

[glowdart]

Interesting (and what a conflict between the states and the federal government!)  Thanks gennimom, mtg & barred owl. 

Perhaps what I thought was a state requirement is instead a school requirement.  (You can't "major in Education" here at the undergraduate level; you have to have a content area major, and then you take all of your education classes on top of that standard major). 

[msparticularity]

Perhaps what I thought was a state requirement is instead a school requirement.  (You can't "major in Education" here at the undergraduate level; you have to have a content area major, and then you take all of your education classes on top of that standard major). 

It may actually be a state-level requirement, too. A lot depends upon where the content-area faculty is housed, and this is highly dependent upon state regulations. In the state where I was before, the content-area specialists were in the College of Ed, and you could do an undergrad major in, say, secondary social studies education or secondary science education. Where I am now, the content-area specialists are housed in the content-area departments, so students major in (say) history, with a minor in secondary ed if they want to teach. I have to say, too, that my personal experiences and some actual research data indicate that the latter is a far better approach to secondary education.

[gennimom]

Exactly. Most of our programs are of the former, MsP, but I've heard that the Big Land Grant to the southwest has recently moved all of their education programs to the latter. I wish they'd do all that in our state.

[msparticularity]

As far as NCLB and single-subject competency, here's the guidelines for California (where I got my CLAST after my BA):

Options for demonstrating NCLB core academic subject competency for middle/high school teachers
Single Subject Credentialed Teachers – Middle/High School
“New” middle/high school teachers have two options to demonstrate subject-matter competency:

Exam option: Pass a CTC-approved subject-matter exam in the NCLB core academic subject area.

Course work option:
a)
CTC-approved single subject matter program in the core area;
b)
Major in the core area;
c)
Graduate degree in the core area; or
d)
Major equivalent in the core area (32 non-remedial units earned with a grade of C or higher); (It is recommended that districts use the CTC’s guidelines for issuing a supplementary or subject matter authorization when determining which courses should count. The guidelines are found on the CTC’s Web site at http://www.ctc.ca.gov/credentials/manuals.html).
e)
Advanced certification (National Board Certification) in the core area

I just want to follow up on this, because it leaves the impression that one can be licensed to teach in a core area on the basis of an exam. While this may be true for certain content areas in which there are shortages in California (although I believe it either has already changed or is about to), it is NOT true in other states. That particular reg is a remnant of the older licensing system. Further, a person licensed under this provision in California is not eligible for reciprocal licensing in other states. It really and truly is the case that one simply must have the equivalent of an undergrad major in a subject (typically 33-36 credits) to be licensed to teach it.

There are several states with oddball emergency licensing procedures like this. Florida and Georgia, for example, will grant a provisional license immediately to someone with an undergrad degree, giving them 3-4 years to complete the pedagogical coursework--and they don't require an internship at all under that system. Unfortunately, again, one is not eligible for reciprocal licensure anywhere else.

I have worked with people caught in these situations several times now, and it can get very ugly. In one case (when I was the building union rep at a high school) we had a math teacher hired from California at the last minute as the school year was starting. It was good faith on everyone's part; our principal thought his license would transfer, and so did the teacher. It didn't. The state came and yanked him out of his classroom halfway through October when the paperwork came from California indicating his license was based upon an exam. In the meantime, he had resigned his old job, sold his house, and moved his family--and now he had no job at all.

Similarly, I have a grad student from Florida who has been unable to get a license here. Although she completed all of the coursework and has several years of experience, she never did an internship. In the long term this could create hiring problems for her when she's ready to go on the market, since a number of states (North Carolina and some others) require that any faculty in K-12 education positions be licensed in that state.

[polly_mer]

Now all that aside, students in my field are taught in the College of Ag, not the College of Ed. I've seen the graduates who come out of our College of Ed. I've noticed that, predominately, the students who can, teach secondary in a specific field. The students who seem to be less able, go elementary. There are some people who genuinely want to teach the little ones, but the others continue to give those a bad name. But until we get pay up enough (and ensure discipline in the classroom) to attract people who would teach for the love of it, we'll keep attracting those who want a pay check for minimal effort.

This is my observation as well.  My best students from the science for teachers class last semester were not majoring in elementary education; they were majoring in a subject and getting a teaching license for middle school and high school.  My very best student was an English major/music minor picking up a secondary education license.

Now, contrary to someone's contention upthread, the upperclassmen elementary ed majors that I see are not usually unintelligent or incapable.  Instead they are initially very unmotivated to succeed in my class because they don't see why they should have to do something that they find difficult when they have had science in elementary school that doesn't look like what I am trying to teach them.  If reading the book and filling out some worksheets was good enough for their teachers, why isn't it good enough for them to do?  Why am I being such a jerk about teaching them a weird, hard way instead of the normal way?  After all, it's not as though they will be teaching F=ma and how to convert pounds to newtons to their students. 

Eventually, most of them get excited when they realize that "duh, yeah, we're going to roll balls in kindergarten and we're going to talk about motion using the words and observations, not the math.  Bubble blowing is science if we talk about why.  Cooking simple things by following a recipe teaches fractions, following instructions, reading comprehension, and a little chemistry.  Oh, yeah, I'm definitely going to do these lessons based on guided inquiry using fun activities that the students want to do to discuss why these things happen instead of spending nearly as much time on reading the book to complete a dull worksheet."

I'll ding my elementary ed students for being unmotivated and for often using that lack of motivation while pointing experiences in comparable classes as excuses for why my class is not just hard, but irrelevant, but I won't characterize those students as less intelligent than my engineering students who are highly motivated to do lots of class participation and work problems in small groups.  Of course, as others have mentioned, I do have a non-negligible fraction of the declared elementary education majors who are in college with that major for reasons other than wanting to be a good teacher.  Those students do tend to be even less motivated and amenable to my methods than the prospective teachers who are just taken aback by my methods.  While I cannot comment on the native intelligence of those students, I will remark that I have little evidence to back up their assertions that their poor class performance is solely due to my poor teaching instead of an unfortunate combination of incompatible teaching/learning behaviors and abilities.

[concordancia]

It really and truly is the case that one simply must have the equivalent of an undergrad major in a subject (typically 33-36 credits) to be licensed to teach it.

Our major is a whopping 24 hours. And no, that is not enough.

[msparticularity]

It really and truly is the case that one simply must have the equivalent of an undergrad major in a subject (typically 33-36 credits) to be licensed to teach it.

Our major is a whopping 24 hours. And no, that is not enough.

Wow--but is that 24 hours within your department accompanied by a great deal of collateral coursework in related fields? That would make sense to me (but then I tend to think in interdisciplinary terms anyway).

And Polly, I totally agree that a lot of the resistance we see to coursework by students (not just elementary ed ones) comes from their sense that it is irrelevant to their actual needs. I see this all the time with our math ed students, who deeply resent having to take anything beyond calc, apparently. They think they should be getting more coursework on teaching math (which does make a certain amount of sense), but not have to actually do any college-level math personally. I keep trying to tell them that deep immersion in a field is what makes it possible to think about alternative and creative approaches to teaching it, but they totally refuse to consider this. But, truthfully, I don't think I was competent to teach high school history until after my master's, since it wasn't until then that we got into the really good stuff on historiography.

[concordancia]

It really and truly is the case that one simply must have the equivalent of an undergrad major in a subject (typically 33-36 credits) to be licensed to teach it.

Our major is a whopping 24 hours. And no, that is not enough.

Wow--but is that 24 hours within your department accompanied by a great deal of collateral coursework in related fields? That would make sense to me (but then I tend to think in interdisciplinary terms anyway).

Nope, just 24 hours. The minor is 15 hours.

I should look at the education major requirements - it would be funny if they needed more coursework in the department than the majors do!

[concordancia]

I missed the modify window: high school teachers to be choose a major and complete a sequence in the College of Education.

[polly_mer]

It really and truly is the case that one simply must have the equivalent of an undergrad major in a subject (typically 33-36 credits) to be licensed to teach it.

Our major is a whopping 24 hours. And no, that is not enough.

Wow--but is that 24 hours within your department accompanied by a great deal of collateral coursework in related fields? That would make sense to me (but then I tend to think in interdisciplinary terms anyway).

And Polly, I totally agree that a lot of the resistance we see to coursework by students (not just elementary ed ones) comes from their sense that it is irrelevant to their actual needs. I see this all the time with our math ed students, who deeply resent having to take anything beyond calc, apparently. They think they should be getting more coursework on teaching math (which does make a certain amount of sense), but not have to actually do any college-level math personally. I keep trying to tell them that deep immersion in a field is what makes it possible to think about alternative and creative approaches to teaching it, but they totally refuse to consider this. But, truthfully, I don't think I was competent to teach high school history until after my master's, since it wasn't until then that we got into the really good stuff on historiography.

What I find very strange about that attitude is that I would give teaching most high school topics a whirl if I could get a position with a Hogwarts-style, "it's a privilege to be here so get with the program or be expelled" school, even though there's no way that I would be qualified in the sense of taking enough college credits for anything but math and science.   I didn't take many formal humanities classes after high school, but I did do outside reading, take on cool projects while in high school, and learn more stuff through informal places like museums and documentaries.   While I'm painfully aware of the difference between knowing a topic as a competent layperson, knowing a topic as an expert, and knowing how to teach a topic, I'm somewhat bemused by the idea that anyone who wants to teach doesn't eagerly embrace lots of areas of new knowledge instead of focusing narrowly on "this is what the book says and this is what my class in that topic at that level covered so I just want the credential that states I'm qualified to teach".  Sure, not everyone wants to know every detail about everything under the sun, but the attitude of "I'm an X teacher candidate so I only want to be presented with a list of topics to cover and prechewed lesson plans to follow" disturbs me.  

I'm not sure that people need a master's degree to teach a high school subject, but I certainly know that the kind of attitude and work ethic that gets you through that master's degree in an academic subject is the kind of attitude and work ethic that I want to see more aspiring teachers have.

I'm not sure whether I am disturbed or not by the 24 credit limit.  Technically, I'm teaching college level physics with a mere 11 undergraduate/9 graduate credit hours in that topic, which puts me below the 24 credit cut-off.  And, based on some of my friends' experiences with the subject tests to be qualified to teach certain topics in certain states, I'm pretty sure that I could pass the subject tests for high school history and English without too much trouble even though I have a whopping 3 credits of college history (and that's was a special topics course of History of Spain in America) and 6 credits of college English.  I probably wouldn't be the first choice to teach those subjects and I'm sure my students wouldn't get the best possible education by my doing so, but based on some of my students' demonstrated abilities, I'm not convinced that their college coursework in those areas makes them even as qualified to teach those subjects than I am.

[jonesey]

The thing is, K-12 teachers have a set schedule handed down from the District, with every single minute of every single day accounted for.  You don't need advanced coursework in, say, Biology as much as you need gold star classroom management skills.  They'll tell you what to teach, on what day, outlining the entire school year for you on your first day. 

People who earn masters degrees tend to get frustrated at that level of micromanagement.

[polly_mer]

The thing is, K-12 teachers have a set schedule handed down from the District, with every single minute of every single day accounted for.  You don't need advanced coursework in, say, Biology as much as you need gold star classroom management skills.  They'll tell you what to teach, on what day, outlining the entire school year for you on your first day. 

People who earn masters degrees tend to get frustrated at that level of micromanagement.

While I know that's true in some districts, I'm still somewhat disheartened to think that the majority of the people majoring in pretertiary education have already adopted that attitude.  If the only skills I need to be a teacher are the ability to read and follow instructions and not hurt the kids too badly, then why do we even have teacher training programs?  Why can't just anyone off the street after passing a background check and a literacy exam be a pretertiary teacher?  I assure you that either classroom management skills are taught very late in the education program here or they are not taught at all because my students cannot manage a classroom of their peers when they are put in charge.

[jonesey]

If the only skills I need to be a teacher are the ability to read and follow instructions and not hurt the kids too badly, then why do we even have teacher training programs?  Why can't just anyone off the street after passing a background check and a literacy exam be a pretertiary teacher? 

And you've just hit the major issue going on right now in Education schools.  What does, say, Teacher's College offer for all that money students pay if none of it actually gets used in an average classroom?