Only 11 states have licensing tests that measure whether both special and general educators at the elementary level have mastered the specific building blocks of reading instruction.
That analysis comes from the Washington-based National Council on Teacher Quality, which analyzed the licensing tests for elementary teachers nationwide for references to comprehension, fluency, phonemic awareness, phonics, and vocabulary.
It found, in some cases, that teachers can pass their licensing test without having to demonstrate that knowledge at all. And in five states—Alabama, Minnesota, Mississippi, and New Hampshire, and New Mexico—NCTQ found that general elementary education teachers are asked to demonstrate their knowledge of the science of reading, but special education teachers are not.
