Teacher Preparation Programs on the Honor Roll of the National Council on Teacher Quality. Source: National Council on Teacher Quality

Teacher Preparation Programs on the Honor Roll of the National Council on Teacher Quality. Source: National Council on Teacher Quality

California’s teacher training programs were excoriated as among the worst in a nation of poor-quality programs in a report released Tuesday, immediately sparking a debate about the validity of the report’s methodology and findings.

Nearly every teacher preparation program in California, at both public and private colleges and universities, received poor ratings in the report, which was issued by the National Council on Teacher Quality, a Washington, D.C., nonprofit. The report was published as a new educational rating category by U.S. News & World Report, which publishes widely followed rating lists whose methodologies have been criticized by some educators.

Of the 52 teacher credentialing programs offered at California State University campuses, 20 received one star out of a possible four, designating mediocre at best, while 24 were deemed so weak they did not receive any stars at all and were instead tagged with yellow caution triangles, described in the report as “consumer alerts.” University of California campuses in Riverside, Santa Barbara and Santa Cruz each received one star for their programs in elementary education.

Three California programs scored well and made the report’s “honor roll,” with the University of San Diego receiving 3½ stars for its program in secondary education and UC Berkeley and UC Irvine each receiving three stars for programs in secondary education.

More broadly, the report issues a scathing indictment of education schools across the United States. Teacher preparation is described as “an industry of mediocrity” that accepts applicants who generally are not high achievers and churns out first-year teachers grossly lacking in the classroom management skills and content knowledge needed to serve students.

Students assigned to first-year teachers experience significant learning loss, said Julie Greenberg, senior policy analyst at the National Council on Teacher Quality. “More grievously, a high percentage of kids assigned to first-year teachers are poor and minority children in schools with high teacher turnover,” Greenberg said. “If we are going to close the achievement gap in this country, we are going have to get much more vigilant about the effectiveness of first-year teachers.”

Methodology criticized

Many education leaders in California assailed both the methodology and the motivation behind the report.

“They really, really got it wrong,” said Beverly Young, assistant vice chancellor for academic affairs at Cal State, which educates the vast majority of the state’s teachers. “I think it’s important that people understand this work for what it is. It really is just a piece of work with a political agenda. It’s not a real study, it’s not research, but unfortunately it’s being presented that way.”

Young said the evaluation shows a misunderstanding of California’s teacher preparation system. For example, she said the NCTQ gave only 11 percent of California’s programs top marks for the quality and depth of instruction in science, technology, engineering and math courses – known as the STEM fields – compared to 35 percent nationwide.

The problem, Young said, is that California is the only state where teacher credentialing takes place in graduate school. There’s no undergraduate major in education. By the time students are admitted to a program, they’ve already earned a bachelor’s degree in whatever subject they plan to teach, and therefore it’s inaccurate to conclude that students haven’t received intense instruction in specific subjects.

The report’s authors said that the evaluation was based on whether the teacher preparation programs had systems in place to accurately determine how much training prospective elementary teachers had achieved in math, science and other subjects. California does not have those systems, they said.

Bill Lucia, president of Edvoice, a Sacramento-based education advocacy group that endorsed the report, acknowledged that the report probably didn’t capture all the relevant information about the state’s teacher preparation programs. But he said that disparities in the quality of the programs are well-known.

“Teachers, school superintendents, and principals know that not all CSU campuses’ teacher prep programs produce the same quality and effectiveness of multiple-subject elementary and secondary credentialed teachers,” Lucia said.

He added, “Ultimately it’s about having adults effectively prepared to serve children, so that school districts don’t have to go to extraordinary lengths to retrain new teachers.”

Linda Darling-Hammond

Linda Darling-Hammond

California does have some weak programs, acknowledged Stanford education professor Linda Darling-Hammond, chair of the California Commission on Teacher Credentialing, which accredits credential programs in the state. She also agrees that the standards used by the NCTQ are appropriate. The Council evaluated programs on 18 measures including classroom management, lesson planning, quality of student teaching and ability to teach specific subjects. On their face, the standards are the right ones to examine, Darling-Hammond said. The problem with the study is how the information is collected and analyzed, she said.

The NCTQ based its evaluation on whether a topic appears on a piece of paper rather than how that topic is taught, Darling-Hammond said. For example, one university might cover a subject with expert teachers modeling the lesson followed by students trying it out and then critiquing each other’s work; while another school might cover it in a 20-minute lecture. “Just having a topic on a syllabus, or having a book listed, doesn’t tell you much about the quality of instruction,” she said.

The teacher commission is also reevaluating the standards required to become a fully credentialed teacher, including whether the state’s one-year limit on the length of a teacher preparation program should be lifted, as EdSource Today has previously reported.  It’s an acknowledgement, said Darling-Hammond, that more time is needed to fit in courses that meet new expectations for teachers “in dealing with special education, English learners, technology, Common Core standards, child development, content pedagogy, positive discipline, child mental health, and everything else we are asked to ensure that teachers learn.”

Stanford University and CSU campuses were among some 700 colleges that refused to voluntarily participate in the evaluation because of what they described as serious flaws in the research.

“The work of NCTQ has to-date been characterized by questionable research methodology, inappropriate tactics in data collection, and a lack of opportunity for institutions to correct errors in data,” wrote then-CSU Chancellor Charlie Reed, together with the chancellors of the State University of New York and the University System of Maryland, in a February 2011 letter to the editor of U.S. News & World Report, explaining their reservations about the evaluation.

A top administrator at UC Santa Barbara’s teacher education program compiled a thick list of NCTQ’s inaccuracies in its review of that program including giving the school zero ratings for instruction on teaching English learners and for student teaching even though they have a four-course series devoted to the former and a full-year, 1000-hour supervised program for the latter.

Kate Walsh, president of the National Council on Teacher Quality, said the report was a valuable service for applicants to education schools as well as school districts and parents.

Walsh added that Search Soft Solutions, an Indiana-based company that provides employee hiring software and systems to some school districts in California and across the nation, would include the rating of the program the candidate attended in the candidate’s employment profile.

“Part of our motivation is to make sure school districts are pressuring teacher preparation programs to deliver better teachers,” Walsh said.

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  1. terribletruth 11 years ago11 years ago

    EdSource must be held accountable for failing to include who paid for the study:
    Carnegie Corporation of New York
    Gleason Family Foundation
    Laura and John Arnold Foundation
    Michael & Susan Dell Foundation
    Searle Freedom Trust
    The Eli and Edythe Broad Foundation
    The Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation
    The Teaching Commission
    Anonymous (2)

    Why does EdSource shill for the education profiteers???

  2. navigio 11 years ago11 years ago

    I wonder how long it will take for someone to point out that teacher quality has improved during the budget crisis wih someone else claiming its the result of districts having laid off most of their newer, less experienced teachers. Then having someone else musing as to how much teacher quality we’ve lost by districts trying to convince more experienced teachers to retire as a budget gap plugging mechanism..

  3. Barry 11 years ago11 years ago

    Beverly Young is in error. Since the late 90s, undergraduates enrolled in approved “blended” programs (liberal studies major) can receive a preliminary teaching credential. They will have 5-years to complete an additional 30 post B.A.to receive a clear credential

  4. Ross Mitchell 11 years ago11 years ago

    Here is an important bit of evidence - a quotation from Aaron Pallas at Teachers College, Columbia University, New York, New York - about the inherent flaws in the execution of the report's methodology (see http://nepc.colorado.edu/blog/trouble-nctq%E2%80%99s-ratings-teacher-prep-programs): My institution, Teachers College at Columbia University, didn’t receive a summary rating of zero to four stars in the report, but the NCTQ website does rate some features of our teacher-prep programs. I was very gratified to see that our … Read More

    Here is an important bit of evidence – a quotation from Aaron Pallas at Teachers College, Columbia University, New York, New York – about the inherent flaws in the execution of the report’s methodology (see http://nepc.colorado.edu/blog/trouble-nctq%E2%80%99s-ratings-teacher-prep-programs):

    My institution, Teachers College at Columbia University, didn’t receive a summary rating of zero to four stars in the report, but the NCTQ website does rate some features of our teacher-prep programs. I was very gratified to see that our undergraduate elementary and secondary teacher-education programs received four out of four stars for student selectivity. Those programs are really tough to get into—nobody gets admitted. And that’s not hyperbole; the programs don’t exist.

    That’s one of the dangers of rating academic programs based solely on documents such as websites and course syllabi. You might miss something important—like “Does this program exist?”

  5. Paul 11 years ago11 years ago

    One problem with the traditional pathway in California is that neither the law, nor the regulations, nor the program standards establish strict parameters for student teaching. Placement length, selection criteria for cooperating teachers, and level of responsibility for student teachers all vary tremendously. "The portion of the [program] standards that address length calls [sic.] for 'one K-12 grading period, including a full-day teaching assignment of at least two weeks.' The Commission's 2010-11 Title II report found … Read More

    One problem with the traditional pathway in California is that neither the law, nor the regulations, nor the program standards establish strict parameters for student teaching. Placement length, selection criteria for cooperating teachers, and level of responsibility for student teachers all vary tremendously.

    “The portion of the [program] standards that address length calls [sic.] for ‘one K-12 grading period, including a full-day teaching assignment of at least two weeks.’ The Commission’s 2010-11 Title II report found that the average number of clock hours required for student teaching ranged widely from 140 hours to 1600 hours with an average of 558 hours.” [ http://www.ctc.ca.gov/commission/agendas/2013-06/2013-06-4D.pdf#page=23 ]

    This is one reason why I am such a staunch advocate of California’s internship pathway, which includes the same coursework, but also requires a 50 to 100%-time assignment as teacher of record, for one to three school years. By the time teachers receive their regular credentials, the former intern has had much more experience than his or her traditionally-prepared counterpart.

    Now, this is not to say that the NCTQ’s inquiry was thorough enough to discern differences in student teaching experiences within California, or between California and other states. duluthjubei likewise offers only generalizations.

    The NCTQ is correct on at least one point: teacher preparation programs in the United States are (still) non-selective. This is consistent with ETS research: http://www.ets.org/Media/Education_Topics/pdf/TQ_full_report.pdf#page=22

    It is amusing to contrast Linda Darling-Hammond’s critique of the NCTQ report with the views and actions of her very own Commission on Teacher Credentialing.

    She writes, on the CTC home page: “[W]hile the NCTQ checklist is based largely on the design of undergraduate programs (tallying subject matter courses required during the program), California moved long ago to strengthen teacher education by requiring graduate level programs, which require subject matter competency BEFORE entering preparation. The means by which the state ascertains teachers’ competency — through college majors, approved subject matter programs, and rigorous state-developed tests — are ignored in the NCTQ ratings.”

    But the CTC decided two months ago not to oppose Senate Bill 5, which would restore the Bachelor of Arts Degree in Elementary Education. This month, most Commissioners raved about the recommendations of the Teacher Preparation Advisory Panel (TAP), which include “re-authorizing Elementary Subject Matter programs.” Man cannot serve God and mammon. The Commissioners cannot have it both ways: either a major in elementary education is desirable, or it is not. Since the early 1960s, California has led the nation by requiring prospective teachers to major in subject matter fields, rather than allowing them to major in the nebulous field of “elementary education”. [ http://www.ctc.ca.gov/commission/files/CTC-history.pdf#page=64 ]

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  6. duluthjubei 11 years ago11 years ago

    I know Californians don't want to hear this, but it's true. Coming from a state that required hours of documented classroom volunteering before even being considered for the Education program, plus about 2 years of student teaching at various levels with master teachers, I still struggled my first few years of teaching. I can't imagine what it would be like for a student who is put in a class with an intern teacher in California, … Read More

    I know Californians don’t want to hear this, but it’s true. Coming from a state that required hours of documented classroom volunteering before even being considered for the Education program, plus about 2 years of student teaching at various levels with master teachers, I still struggled my first few years of teaching. I can’t imagine what it would be like for a student who is put in a class with an intern teacher in California, who has no experience and no support. It’s a joke. It makes me cringe to think what other states could be like. California teachers complain about the BTSA program because it is “so much work.” I’m sorry people, but you have no idea what teacher preparation even is, It is pathetic, and that puts it lightly.

    Replies

    • Richard ONeill 11 years ago11 years ago

      You seem not to have the facts about new teacher support in CA.

    • terribletruth 11 years ago11 years ago

      @duluthjubei - You fail to realize that BTSA was installed as a method to pull more money, $1000 per teacher, to pay former administrators extra money. In fact the districts paid state senators to pass a state law that made it illegal to participate in more rigorous outside programs in order to ensure that new teachers were forced to participate in the district's BTSA program. In fact you fail to realize that BTSA … Read More

      @duluthjubei – You fail to realize that BTSA was installed as a method to pull more money, $1000 per teacher, to pay former administrators extra money. In fact the districts paid state senators to pass a state law that made it illegal to participate in more rigorous outside programs in order to ensure that new teachers were forced to participate in the district’s BTSA program. In fact you fail to realize that BTSA weeds out good teachers, those who spend extra time preparing lessons/giving extra tutoring/sponsor clubs/community activities, while encouraging lazy teachers, those who arrive 1 minute before required time/leave 1 minute after required time/no preparation/no participation. Your blanket statements about the BTSA program are laughable at best.