Teacher Prep Review Paints Grim Picture, but with Possible Silver Lining

Yesterday, the National Council on Teacher Quality (NCTQ) released its second annual Teacher Prep Review, attempting to score and rank many of the nation’s 2,400 traditional teacher preparation education programs on the quality of training they provide to their aspiring teachers. NCTQ’s inaugural 2013 Review was met with outcry and criticism from many teacher education programs, in part due to NCTQ’s methodology, but likely also in part due to its findings: very few programs performed well and many programs performed poorly on NCTQ’s standards. According to NCTQ, the current Review’s findings continue to “paint a grim picture of teacher preparation in the United States.” Despite this, for those who believe (or at least hope) that such a review could have a positive impact on the quality of teacher preparation, NCTQ’s findings also present some reasons for optimism.

NCTQ reviewed programs on 19 standards, seven to nine of which could impact scores, depending on whether the program is preparing elementary, secondary, or special education teachers (see NCTQ chart below). “Key standards” affect all programs’ scores—positively or negatively—while “booster standards” can only affect standard scores in a positive direction, when available.

NCTQ used a new reporting system this year (one focused on ranking programs rather than rating them) and employed a few scoring shifts that make direct comparisons between the 2013 and 2014 Reviews difficult. However, looking at the proportion of programs meeting a high bar on each individual standard confirms that NCTQ’s 2014 findings for traditional preparation programs are similarly “grim” to those it reported in the 2013 report. For example, the average program score on elementary math content, on a 0-4 scale, was 1.3 points for undergraduate elementary programs and 0.1 points for graduate elementary programs—identical average scores as seen in 2013.

This may surprise some given that the sample of scored programs changed rather significantly in 2014’s Review compared to 2013, including:

• Nearly 40 percent more institutions of higher education (836 vs. 608) with programs able to be scored on all key standards, for a total of 1,668 individual programs versus last year’s 1,200; and
• 2.5 times more programs in private institutions of higher education which were able to be scored on all key standards relative to last year’s Review (628 vs. 255 programs, respectively).

However, of the 1200 programs NCTQ rated last year, only 10 percent (118) chose to submit new data on at least one of NCTQ’s standards for evaluation in this year’s Review. As a result, it appears that NCTQ would have only updated scores in 2014 for about one-third of scored programs (586) relative to 2013, with the exception of scores that changed as a result of modifications to NCTQ’s standards and/or scoring strategies.

And this year, NCTQ also undertook a pilot study of secondary-level alternative certification providers of teacher preparation that were housed outside of institutions of higher education, which some education reformers have pointed to as a better model of teacher training. But NCTQ concluded that, of the programs it reviewed, the “alt cert” programs were actually weaker than traditional ones, overall.

While NCTQ’s findings may seem grim, there may be a silver lining, primarily based on the fact that:

1. Many programs’ scores were unlikely to change given that they were evaluated on the same data as in 2013;
2. According to NCTQ, the programs that did submit new data in 2014 “have often taken considerable pains to orient themselves to the nature and framing” of NCTQ’s standards, and a number of these programs improved (particularly in the areas of “classroom management” and “assessment and data”). This indicates that the Review is having some of its intended impact by focusing programs on improving training in select areas;
3. More programs are now being scored—providing more information to prospective teachers, hiring schools and districts, and the programs themselves about where teacher prep programs stand on training their students in critical areas of teaching practice; and
4. Now that secondary alternative certification programs are part of the Review, programs and states may turn more of a focus to ensuring their quality.

In an Education Week article yesterday, Kate Walsh, president of NCTQ commented that, "Ultimately, states, [the Council for the Accreditation of Educator Preparation], the feds can push as much as they want, but until higher education realizes it's their duty to produce the teachers that meet the needs of districts, these efforts will fail." So, not surprisingly, NCTQ provides recommendations for how programs can use results from its Review to make planning improvements. NCTQ also encourages aspiring teachers and school districts to use the Review’s findings to make decisions about which program(s) to attend or to hire from, respectively—a move that could put pressure on programs to focus on better alignment with the Review’s standards.

And despite Walsh’s comment to Education Week, the Review also offers recommendations to state policymakers, including collecting and reporting data on new teacher success and designing teacher preparation accountability systems. Earlier this year, my colleague Laura Bornfreund and I issued recommendations for the role the federal government can play in encouraging states to take on some of these very same aims, which you can read more about here.