Colleges Fall Short in Preparing Early Education Teachers

For some time now, education schools have come under fire for the quality of teachers they prepare and graduate. Just this fall, multiple critical reports have been released, calling for these programs to improve clinical practice and coursework in the developmental sciences, and better reflect the issues, initiatives and reforms that are becoming more popular in school districts. In addition, U.S. News & World Report and the National Council on Teacher Quality announced a joint effort in January to rate the 1,400 education schools across the country.

Last week, we at the New America Foundation’s Early Education Initiative added our own analysis on problems with the preparation and licensing of teachers who work specifically with young children in pre-kindergarten, kindergarten, first-, second- and third-grade classrooms. The report, “Getting in Sync: Revamping Licensure and Preparation for Teachers in Pre-K, Kindergarten and the Early Grades,” shows that there is little assurance that education schools are adequately preparing teachers who are assigned to pre-kindergarten through third grade (PreK-3^rd) classrooms to work with young children.

At New America, we believe that teachers at all grade levels must be equipped with knowledge and skills that show a deep understanding of how children develop. But this is especially critical for PreK-3rd teachers. These instructors must learn about the science of early-childhood development (including a focus on social-emotional growth) and family engagement, as well as gain experience in how to provide effective instruction in subjects such as early science, early literacy and the building blocks of mathematics. Unfortunately, we have found that when courses on these topics are offered, they often lack depth and are disconnected from prospective teachers’ practical experience working with children.

We have also found that:

• Preparation programs are not currently designed to produce teachers who have a strong understanding of child development and how it should inform instruction and the learning environment.

• Prospective teachers who choose to transfer from a community college with an associate’s degree in early childhood to a bachelor’s degree teacher preparation program face obstacles to getting their early childhood coursework accepted, and, in many cases, they must repeat some of courses at the university level.

• Preparation programs have weak admission requirements for prospective teachers and offer them few opportunities to gain practical experience with children in the younger grades.

• Teachers who obtain elementary school licenses may not be adequately prepared to engage families and use playful learning techniques with younger children while introducing them to new content.

While these obstacles exist, the news isn’t all bad. In our report, we point to several promising practices such as an “immersion-style” teacher preparation program at Arizona State University that merges coursework and practical experience, providing teacher candidates with about 1400 hours of work with children and observation in classroom.  We also describe a statewide articulation agreement between community college and university early childhood preparation programs in Pennsylvania, where students will no longer face the barrier of having to retake the same courses. In addition, we highlight efforts by Florida State University to strengthen its admission requirements for its education school so that only the most-qualified applicants are enrolled. At FSU, elementary and early childhood teacher preparation programs base enrollment decisions on more than just the candidate’s scores on a general knowledge test and their current GPA. Students applying for admission must also submit their SAT or ACT scores, a personal statement, and a record of their work with children.

We make 15 recommendations in the report to ensure better preparation of PreK-3rd teachers. For example, we suggest that teacher preparation programs should hire faculty who have extensive teaching experience in the early grades and raise the bar on admission requirements, ensuring that elevated requirements also apply to early-childhood preparation. We also recognize that states play an important role in encouraging teacher preparation programs to improve their quality. We recommend that states, for instance, should:

• Require approved early-childhood preparation programs to provide multiple field experiences that are woven into content and methods, classroom management and child development coursework.

• Consider adopting standards for early-childhood teacher preparation programs that are aligned with those designed by national early-childhood education organizations.

The report concludes that young children in pre-kindergarten through the third grade need teachers who understand how they learn, know how to engage them in learning, and know how to engage their families in learning. Equally important, they need teachers who have a strong base of content knowledge in math, reading, social studies, and science coupled with a keen understanding of what academic and social skills they will need to succeed as they progress through the upper grades of elementary and beyond.

One of the first steps to ensuring that young children have these types of well-prepared teachers is to rethink the design of teacher preparation programs at our nation’s colleges and universities.