Park City School District in Utah is the latest school district I’ve heard of that is requiring new teachers to get an English-as-a-second-language endorsement. Deseret News reports that the district is requiring all new teachers to get an ESL endorsement within the first three years of their employment.
Only three states—Arizona, Florida, and New York—require all prospective teachers to show they are competent to teach English-language learners, according to Quality Counts 2009, “Portrait of a Population: How English-Language Learners Are Putting Schools to the Test.”
But one by one, school districts are approving policies that require their teachers to have training to work with ELLs, even if their states don’t require it. See my earlier posts of schools districts with these policies here and here.