Education's Weak Link

SREB report exposes the wide-spread lack of proper training and certification for teachers at the middle-school level in the South

By Karin Chenoweth

When students leave the middle grades with low academic achievement, they are often guided into less challenging classes by their high schools and are consequently less prepared for college work. This is a common phenomenon — and one with particular resonance for African Americans and Latinos, who are often sorted out of honors and advanced math and science classes.
A new report from the Southern Regional Education Board (SREB) provides some clues as to why so many students leave the middle grades with low academic performance. Among the most prevalent problems is the fact that teachers are often unprepared to teach the subjects they are assigned. One of the most startling findings was that many middle school English teachers did not major in English or language arts. Instead, they majored in either elementary education or home economics.
"We were shocked," says Sondra S. Cooney, the author of the report. "We expected the math and science data to look like it does. We had just assumed the language arts would be okay."
Cooney is quick to add that she is not saying that those home economics teachers "are not well-educated people, but they have probably not taken writing classes and the literature classes that give them strategies to teach English to middle-school students."
According to the report, 36 percent of eighth-grade English teachers in one southern state are certified in elementary education. An additional 42 percent are certified in subjects other than elementary or secondary education — but did not major in English. Most of that 42 percent are home economics majors.
In eighth-grade science, the teachers without a major in science are mostly health and physical education majors, according to the report.
The state from which this data were gathered is not identified, Cooney says, because she believes that it should not be punished for the fact that it gathers the data. She expects that most of the other states would have similar data if they were to collect it.
"One of our questions is why all the states are not collecting this data," she says.
The SREB, which consists of the governors and their appointees of eleven states in the South, has been gathering data on schools since 1948, when it was formed to try to bring education in the South up to the standards of the rest of the country. The board's latest report, Improving Teaching in the Middle Grades: Higher Standards for Students Aren't Enough, is the third in a series of reports on middle grades, which it calls "education's weak link."
One of the report's major recommendations is that states require teachers of students in the middle grades — roughly sixth through eighth grade, though some places include fifth and ninth grades in the middle years — to have a specific license designed for the middle schools. Such a requirement would spur changes in schools of education and offer special classes geared specifically to the middle grades, says Dr. Lynn Cagle, associate dean for teacher education at University of Tennessee-Knoxville.

Sacrificing Adolescents' Needs
Tennessee, which is one of the 11 states in the SREB, last year did adopt a middle school license. Schools of education in Tennessee are now preparing to apply to the state for the right to offer such a license.
Cagle says that whereas elementary school teachers are supposed to be generalists and high school teachers are supposed to be content specialists, middle school teachers need to combine those two.
"I talked with principals — very good principals — across Tennessee. Their point is that they want people who are flexible enough to work across disciplines and who won't get lost in their own content," claims Cagle, who says that kind of flexibility requires its own kind of training.
Dr. Ken McEwin, professor of curriculum and instruction at Appalachian State University and program review coordinator for the National Middle School Association agrees that universities will change their offerings to match state licensure.
"The type of license that is available drives what is offered," he says. "In North Carolina, since there is a middle school license, all schools of education have special courses for middle levels."
One of the reasons more states do not have specialized licenses for the middle grades, McEwin says, is because superintendents and principals like to have the "flexibility" that broader certification offers. For example, a third-grade teacher licensed to teach from kindergarten to eighth grade can be used as a middle school teacher if a school system needs that.
"We're sacrificing what adolescents need — specialized teachers — for administrative convenience," McEwin says.
The SREB report cites research done by Dr. Richard Ingersoll of the University of Georgia, in which he found that low-income public schools have higher levels of that kind of out-of-field teaching than schools from more affluent areas. He also found that out-of-field teaching is more prevalent in seventh- and eighth-grade classes than in high school.

Demanding Accountability
Because of a new provision in the Higher Education Reauthorization Act, colleges and universities that receive funding from the federal government will have those funds withheld if the graduates of their teaching programs do not pass state licensure exams. This kind of accountability will force universities to pay more attention to their schools of education, according to Stephanie Korcheck, director of policy and planning for the Texas State Board for Educator Certification.
Texas has already begun holding their universities accountable for the quality of their teacher graduates. For the first time in decades, Korcheck says, university presidents are interested in colleges of education.
"We're sacrificing what
adolescents need — specialized teachers —
for administrative convenience,"
—Dr. Ken McEwin,
program review coordinator 
National Middle
School Association

"I think we're way far ahead," says Korcheck, who notes that in September, Texas issued a report card on all its colleges and universities that train teachers.
Accreditation is being withheld from any institution where at least 70 percent of its graduates do not pass the licensure exam. And that figure is applied across all demographic groups.
The 70 percent passing rate is "not just for all the population, but by group," says Korcheck. "We want to be sure that 70 percent of African Americans and 70 percent of Hispanics and 70 percent of males [pass the exam]. And if you don't meet that standard, you've got some problems."
This is an extension of the accountability that Texas has imposed on its public schools. During the first year of accountability, the gap between African Americans and Whites was large. Between 1993 and 1998, however, the gap has decreased.
"The gap between White students and minority students, particularly African American students, has closed," says Korcheck, "because, for the first time, folks were being held accountable for the performance of those students. People [complained] and moaned about it, and said the tests weren't fair, but they changed."
Citing that experience, Korcheck says that even though the pass rate for African American entering teachers was lower than for Whites this year, she expects that gap will close as colleges and universities adjust to the new standards. (To see the Texas report card, go to Texas' department of education's Web page on teacher certification <www.state.tx.uf>.)
The SREB report is the latest in a wave of research on the importance of teacher quality to student achievement in general and, more specifically, the elimination of significant gaps in achievement between African American and White students.
Report author Cooney says, "We really need to focus on academic achievement. Otherwise what we're doing is sending [some students] into high school with all their options closed. If we send them out of eighth grade unprepared, some way of sorting them in high school will be used on them — whether that's right or wrong. And it's absolutely devastating to kids when schools close off options.