Elementary Teacher Preparation: Alaska

Delivering Well Prepared Teachers Policy


The state should ensure that its teacher preparation programs provide elementary teachers with a broad liberal arts education, providing the necessary foundation for teaching to the Common Core or similar state standards.

Does not meet
Suggested Citation:
National Council on Teacher Quality. (2013). Elementary Teacher Preparation: Alaska results. State Teacher Policy Database. [Data set].
Retrieved from: https://www.nctq.org/yearbook/state/AK-Elementary-Teacher-Preparation-20

Analysis of Alaska's policies

Alaska does not ensure that its elementary teacher candidates are adequately prepared to teach a broad range of elementary content geared to college and career-readiness standards.

Alaska requires candidates to pass the Praxis II general elementary content test but not until after they have taught for three years. The state's test does not report teacher performance in each subject area, meaning that it is possible to pass the test and still fail some subject areas, especially given the state's low passing score for the test.

In addition, Alaska does not require its elementary teacher candidates to earn an academic content specialization.


Recommendations for Alaska

Require elementary teacher candidates to pass a subject-matter test designed to ensure sufficient content knowledge of all subjects.

Alaska should require both a rigorous content test as a condition of initial certification and separate, meaningful passing scores for each area on the test. Use of a composite passing score offers no assurance of adequate knowledge in each subject area. A candidate may achieve a passing score and still be seriously deficient in a particular subject area.

Ensure that teacher preparation programs deliver a comprehensive program of study in broad liberal arts coursework.

Alaska should either articulate a more specific set of standards or establish comprehensive coursework requirements for elementary teacher candidates to ensure that candidates will complete coursework relevant to the common topics in elementary grades. An adequate curriculum is likely to require approximately 36 credit hours in the core subject areas of English, science, social studies and fine arts. Alaska does not specify any coursework requirements for elementary teacher candidates, except for coursework in Alaska studies and either multicultural education or cross-cultural communications. The state relies on NCATE/CAEP standards, suggesting that the state uses the Association for Childhood Education International (ACEI) standards for approving its elementary programs. Unfortunately, ACEI standards fall far short of the mark by offering no mention of world and American history; world, British and American literature; American government; or grammar and composition. ACEI standards do mention important topics in science, but even in those areas, the standards consist mainly of extremely general competencies that programs should help teacher candidates to achieve.

Require elementary teacher candidates to complete a content specialization in an academic subject area. 

In addition to enhancing content knowledge, this requirement would ensure that prospective teachers in Alaska take higher-level academic coursework. The requirement also provides an important safeguard in the event that candidates are unable to successfully complete clinical practice requirements. With an academic concentration (or better still a major or minor), candidates who are not ready for the classroom and do not pass student teaching can still be on track to complete a degree.

Close the loophole that allows teachers to add elementary grade levels to an existing license without demonstrating content knowledge.

Alaska allows teachers to add new grade levels to certificates based only on institutional recommendation. The state is urged to require that all teachers who add the elementary grade levels to their certificates pass a rigorous subject-matter test to ensure content knowledge of all subject areas before they are allowed in the elementary classroom. Of particular concern is the fact that teachers already teaching at other grade levels may only be prepared to teach a single subject and not the multiple subjects required at the elementary level.

State response to our analysis

Alaska asserted that all approved elementary teacher preparation programs are aligned to ACEI standards, which require teacher candidates to demonstrate content knowledge and teaching proficiency in literacy, math, science (life, physical and earth), social studies, physical education, health, and the arts. 

The state also contended that all approved elementary teacher preparation programs require candidates to pass the Praxis II content test in order to qualify for an institutional recommendation, which is needed for licensure. Alaska's approved endorsement programs use the Praxis II series as a condition of completion and as a prerequisite for issuing of an institutional recommendation.

Alaska added that all districts must ensure that employed teachers are highly qualified, and the only path for a new elementary teacher to gain a highly qualified designation is to take the Praxis II Elementary Education exam. 

The state also included a statement from the University of Alaska reiterating the information articulated above in the state's response. 

Last word

If it is the case that all state programs require passage of the content test before recommending candidates for licensure, it is unclear why Alaska would maintain the allowance that these tests need not be passed for three years. Waiting until professional licensure to demonstrate content knowledge puts students at risk of having teachers with inadequate knowledge of the subjects they teach. 

Research rationale

Elementary teachers need liberal arts coursework that is relevant to the PK through 6 classroom.

The Common Core State Standards, adopted by nearly all states, represent an effort to significantly raise expectations for the knowledge and skills American students will need for college readiness and global competitiveness.  However, many states' policies fail to ensure that elementary teacher candidates will have the subject-area knowledge to teach to the Common Core Standards. Even when states specify liberal arts requirements for teacher candidates, the regulatory language can be quite broad, alluding only minimally to conceptual approaches such as "quantitative reasoning" or "historical understanding." Another common but inadequate approach that states take is to specify broad curricular areas like "humanities" or "physical sciences." A humanities course could be a general overview of world literature—an excellent course for a prospective elementary teacher—but it could also be "Introduction to Film Theory." Likewise, a physical science course could be an overview of relevant topics in physics, chemistry and astronomy, or it could focus exclusively on astronomy and fail to give a teacher candidate an understanding of the basic concepts of physics. Too few states' requirements distinguish between the value gained from a survey course in American history, such as "From Colonial Times to the Civil War," and an American history course such as "Woody Guthrie and Folk Narrative in the Great Depression."

In addition to the common-sense notion that teachers ought to know the subjects they teach, research supports the benefits to be gained by teachers being broadly educated. Teachers who are more literate—who possess richer vocabularies—are more likely to be effective. In fact, of all the measurable attributes of a teacher, teacher literacy correlates most consistently with student achievement gains. Some states still require that elementary teacher candidates major in elementary education, with no expectation that they be broadly educated. Others have regulatory language that effectively requires the completion of education coursework instead of liberal arts coursework by mandating only teaching methods courses in subject areas without also requiring content-based coursework in the areas themselves.

Standards-based programs can work when verified by testing.

Many states no longer prescribe specific courses or credit hours as a condition for teacher candidates to qualify for a license. Instead, they require teacher candidates to complete an approved program that meets state-specific standards or standards set forth by accrediting bodies and leave it at that. The advantage of this "standards-based" approach is that it grants greater flexibility to teacher preparation programs regarding program design.

However, a significant disadvantage is that the standards-based approach is far more difficult to monitor or enforce. While some programs respond well to the flexibility, others do not. Standards are important but essentially meaningless absent rigorous tests to ensure that teacher candidates have met them. Most states that have chosen the standards-based approach have not implemented such tests. In their absence, verifying that teacher preparation programs are teaching to the standards requires an exhaustive review process of matching every standard with something taught in a course. This approach is neither practical nor efficient. Tests of broad subject matter are also not the solution or tests that require only a passing composite, given that it is possible to pass without necessarily demonstrating knowledge in each subject area. For instance, on many tests of teacher content knowledge, a passing score is possible while answering every mathematics question incorrectly.

Mere alignment with student learning standards is not sufficient.

Another growing trend in state policy is to require teacher preparation programs to align their instruction with the state's student learning standards, and this is likely to increase with the introduction of the Common Core Standards. In many states, this alignment exercise is the only factor considered in deciding the content to be delivered to elementary teacher candidates. Alignment of teacher preparation with student learning standards is an important step but by no means the only one. For example, a program should prepare teachers in more than just the content that the state expects of its fourth graders. Also critical is moving past alignment and deciding the broader set of knowledge a teacher needs to be able to effectively teach fourth grade. The teacher's perspective must be both broader and deeper than what he or she will actually teach.

An academic concentration enhances content knowledge and ensures that prospective elementary teachers take higher-level academic coursework.

Few states require prospective elementary teachers to major or minor in an academic subject area. Consequently, in most states these teachers can meet subject-matter requirements without taking any advanced-level coursework. At minimum, states should require a concentration in an academic area. In addition to deepening subject-matter knowledge in a particular area, building this concentration into elementary education programs ensures that prospective teachers complete academic coursework on a par with peers earning bachelor's degrees in other areas.

A concentration also provides a fallback for education majors whose programs deem them unready for the classroom. In most education programs, virtually all coursework is completed before candidates begin student teaching. The stakes are high once student teaching begins: if a candidate cannot pass, he or she cannot meet requirements for a major or graduate. This may create a perverse incentive for programs to set low standards for student teaching and/or pass candidates whose clinical experience is unsatisfactory. If they were required to have at least an academic concentration, candidates who failed student teaching could still complete a degree with minimal additional coursework.

Elementary Teacher Preparation: Supporting Research







For information on where states set passing scores on teacher licensing tests across the U.S., see chart on p. 13 of NCTQ "Recommendations for the Reauthorization of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act, Removing the Roadblocks: How Federal Policy Can Cultivate Effective Teachers," (2011).