Last week’s release of the National Council on Teacher Quality’s first-ever review of U.S. teacher preparation programs met with hisses and boos from many education experts.
Gerardo M. Gonzalez, dean of Indiana University School of Education, said in a statement, “”Despite the relatively strong rating our programs received, we categorically reject NCTQ’s methodology and related findings. … Put simply, the NCTQ study is fatally flawed and its conclusions, fundamentally invalid. It is not worthy of serious consideration by anyone interested in an honest assessment of teacher education program quality.”
American Federation of Teachers President Randi Weingarten said, “Best-of and worst-of lists always garner attention, so we understand why NCTQ would use that device … (but) it’s hard to see how it will help strengthen teacher preparation programs or elevate the teaching profession.”
The review of 1,130 graduate and undergraduate education programs set out to answer an essential question: “More than 200,000 candidates graduate each year from teacher preparation programs, having spent on average two years and thousands of tuition dollars to qualify for a teaching credential. Did their preparation make them more effective teachers than they would have been without the experience?”
Nationwide, four programs — none in Georgia, and all focused on training teachers for high schools — earned the council’s top rating of four stars. One program in Georgia earned 3.5 stars: Clayton State University’s graduate secondary ed program. Three programs in this state won 3 stars: the University of Georgia’s undergraduate and graduate secondary education programs, and Mercer University’s undergraduate secondary ed program.
I understand the criticisms of how the council formulated its ratings — reviewing data and documents such as syllabuses, student-teaching manuals and textbooks — but am still surprised at the outrage over the overall conclusion that the colleges aren’t equipping teachers for what awaits them in the classroom.
Haven’t teachers been telling us for years that their training falls short of the challenges?
Among the comments from teachers when I asked them about whether their training was sufficient:
• “My first year teaching was like being thrown into the deep end of the pool with no prior water experience. My education classes did little to prepare me to interpret curriculum standards and decide how to teach them.”
• “I graduated from a ‘good’ program with the expertise of being able to discuss child development theory, multicultural issues (and) special ed issues, and was also equipped through my practicum to be able to have a surface-level discussion for an interview on reading/language arts and math buzz words and general concepts. After two months in my first classroom, panic set in as I realized that my ability to discuss educational issues was not going to help me teach kids to read or multiply.”
• “When I went through my program, there was no instruction in classroom management, which turned out to be one of my greatest needs in the actual classroom. You can’t count on sending students to the office these days. You need to be able to handle a lot on your own.”
“Classroom management is an area beginning teachers, including those in Fulton County, often cite as their biggest challenge,” said Fulton Superintendent Robert Avossa, an adviser to the National Council on its review. “Time and experience often help these new teachers learn effective strategies, but our colleges and universities can do more to prepare them.”
In a conference call with the news media, NCTQ President Kate Walsh said the reform movement hasn’t paid enough attention to teacher training, which has been the key to transforming the once-mediocre education systems in places like Finland and Singapore.
Saying she agreed with critics that her organization’s review was not comprehensive, Walsh said, “We have scratched an inch deep into the surface of these programs and found fundamental flaws and weaknesses. I think that tells you something about the high degree of weaknesses and problems with these program that have got to be addressed.”
New teachers need to arrive “classroom-ready on Day One,” said Walsh, “but I don’t think training for the first day of class is part of the charge of teacher preparation programs. If we are going to be serious about closing the achievement gap and becoming globally competitive, we simply have to start addressing teacher quality and specifically, teacher preparation.”
