A report from the Education Commission of the States details the work of 14 states that are requiring teachers to demonstrate mastery of reading instruction before they are licensed.
“This is a shift in focus,” the Denver-based organization says in a statement released with its findings. “Typically, states have concentrated on the student rather than the teacher by pursuing policies that identify struggling readers for special instruction.”
The report says this new wave of state policies targets new teachers, rather than those who have been teaching for a while. The policies require all teachers of young children—not just reading specialists—to show mastery of teaching reading. And they do it with a special test, rather than through a subset of items within a larger teacher-certification exam.
