The Missouri Department of Elementary and Secondary Education believes that lowering a GPA requirement for teachers will improve teacher recruitment and retention without reducing educator quality
BY: ANNELISE HANSHAW
Missouri Independent
Missouri educators will no longer need a 3.0 grade-point average in their subject area to teach in public schools beginning in July, the State Board of Education unanimously voted Tuesday.
The threshold to be qualified to teach in the state is now a 2.5 grade-point average in the teacher’s content area. The only exception will be special-education teachers, who will still be required to meet the 3.0 mark.
Officials with the Missouri Department of Elementary and Secondary Educations say the change is intended to increase the number of certificated teachers coming into public schools. Commissioner of Education Karla Eslinger said in a statement that the change would remove “unnecessary barriers to the teaching profession.”
“There is no evidence tying a particular GPA in the content area to more effective teaching,” Daryl Fridley, the department’s education preparation coordinator, told the board on Tuesday. “Most of the non-teaching professional options in sciences, math and history do not require such a high GPA.”
A 3.0 GPA requirement most impacts teachers in STEM subjects, he said. When the department looked at teacher candidates who met other requirements but didn’t meet the GPA standard, nearly a quarter of those disqualified were in STEM.
Teacher candidates still must pass a performance assessment, with a test of subject knowledge, to be certified. Of those who didn’t meet the GPA requirements, 90% passed the performance assessment, Fridley said.
The department hopes the new requirements will bring more teachers into the profession. Currently, almost 44% of first-year teachers are certified in Missouri. Over a quarter are serving as a substitute teacher, 6% have no certification and the rest have alternative certifications.
“Discussions about this issue often include the question, ‘Isn’t this a case of lowering standards?’” Fridley said. “We maintain that with a third of the state’s first year teachers having no more than a substitute teacher certificate and some with even less, any action that leads to a higher proportion of first-year teachers completing the preparation program is actually a net gain for the overall quality of teachers.”
In the midst of low teacher retention rates and poor recruitment, the change is welcome, the department reiterated.
“Both quantity and quality of teachers are really important to the learning of students,” Paul Katnik, assistant commissioner of educator quality, said during Tuesday’s meeting.
The department reiterated that it doesn’t believe the lower GPA threshold will affect teacher quality.
