From: David Kullman To: Members of the Math Education Committee On Friday, February 7, John Nichelson from the Ohio Department of Education spoke to the Ohio Mathematics and Science Coalition about the new Ohio licensure standards. All persons who begin a teacher licensure program in the fall of 1998 or later will be required to meet these standards. His first remarks were that Ohio has increased the content requirements for middle school teachers and that "we will no longer have generalists teaching content at the middle school level." When questioned about this, he admitted that there will probably be some self-contained classrooms in grades 4 and 5 "for the next 25 years." But, he said, such schools will be able to hire some of the presently certified elementary (grades 1-8) teachers. Newly licensed middle school teachers will be "snapped up" by middle schools that use a teaming approach. The mathematics and science content courses for middle school teacher candidates who are not working on a concentration in one of these areas will most likely be limited to their general studies (e.g. Miami Plan foundation) courses. If a teacher is assigned to teach subjects for which he or she is not licensed, it will generate a "red flag" on the annual ODE reports electronically submitted by that school. What constitutes a "concentration"? Ohio is aligning itself with the NCATE standards, and NCATE has adopted the standards put forth by the learned societies (NCTM in the case of middle and secondary school mathematics). Colleges and universities must meet these standards to get their licensure programs approved. This approval will be granted on a content area by content area basis. What is "integrated mathematics"? Nobody knows. The word was probably inserted for purposes of homogeneity (c.f. "integrated science" et al.). Quite a bit of time was spent discussing the entry year program and its assessment. The state will fund the required mentorship activites. Current plans are to use PRAXIS III, with the cutoff score yet to be determined. Some members of local school boards are concerned that this may interfere with local autonomy in the matter of hiring and retaining teachers.