Middle School Teacher Preparation: North
Dakota

Analysis of North Dakota's policies

North Dakota offers middle-level certification (grades 5-8) for middle school teachers; candidates must earn a middle level major, which includes 24 semester hours of content coursework in one content area. Regrettably, the state also allows middle school teachers to teach on a generalist 1-8 license.

All new middle school teachers in North Dakota 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 1-8 license, these candidates are only required to pass the general content test for elementary education, in which subscores are not provided. Therefore, there is no assurance that all middle school teachers will have sufficient knowledge in each subject they teach.

North Dakota addresses some of the instructional shifts toward building content knowledge and vocabulary through careful reading of informational and literary texts associated with the state's college- and career-readiness standards for students through its required assessment for middle school English teachers, the Praxis II Middle School English Language Arts (5047) test.

Neither teacher standards nor testing frameworks in other content areas address incorporating literacy skills.  

Regarding struggling readers, North Dakota's middle school English content test requires that a teacher "knows commonly used research-based approaches to grouping and differentiated instruction to meet specific instructional objectives in English Language Arts" and "understands commonly used research-based strategies for teaching adolescent reading."

Citation

North Dakota Administrative Code 67.1-02-02-02 North Dakota Century Code 15.1-18-07

Recommendations for North Dakota

Require content testing in all core areas.
North Dakota 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. 
North Dakota 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.  

Strengthen middle school teachers' subject-matter preparation. 
North Dakota should also encourage middle school teachers who plan to teach multiple subjects to earn two minors in two core academic areas, rather than a single major. Further, although North Dakota requires middle school candidates who intend to teach a single subject to earn a major in that area, its requirement of only 24 credit hours falls short of the standard definition of a subject area major.

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 North Dakota's English language arts content test for middle school teachers addresses informational texts, the state should strengthen its policy and ensure that teachers are able to challenge students with texts of increasing complexity. Further, generalist K-8 teachers who are teaching the middle grades should also be held to this same standard.

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, North Dakota 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. 
North Dakota 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