General Teacher Preparation Policy
Minimum Standards of Performance: Georgia does not currently set minimum standards of performance for the categories of data that programs must report.
Program Accountability: Georgia holds programs accountable for their performance. Programs will be categorized on four levels: Exemplary, Proficient, At-risk of Low Performing and Low Performing based on their performance on the data collected as part of the Preparation Program Effectiveness Measures program. Cut-scores and consequences for the different levels have yet to be defined. Georgia does specify that program performance levels will affect approval status and approval review procedures.
State Report Cards: Georgia requires that the state's Preparation Program Effectiveness Measures (PPEM) information "will be provided to the public annually" online, but these data are not yet available online.
Program Approval Process: Georgia maintains full authority over educator preparation program approval. The state also conducts its own program reviews.
Establish the minimum standards of performance for each category of data.
Georgia should establish precise minimum standards for teacher preparation program performance for each category of data it collects to help clarify expectations regarding program quality.
Publish an annual report card on the state's website.
Georgia requires public reporting of the state's Preparation Program Effectiveness Measures and is making progress. The state should continue to make progress in this area and make it a priority to provide program performance data online.
Georgia was helpful in proving NCTQ with facts that enhanced this analysis; however, this analysis was updated subsequent to the state's review.
1D: Program Reporting Requirements
The state should examine a number of factors when measuring the performance of and approving teacher preparation programs.[1] Although the quality of both the subject-matter preparation and professional sequence is crucial, there are also additional measures that can provide the state and the public with meaningful, readily understandable indicators of how well programs are doing when it comes to preparing teachers to be successful in the classroom.[2]
States have made great strides in building data systems with the capacity to provide evidence of teacher performance.[3] These same data systems can be used to link teacher effectiveness to the teacher preparation programs from which they came. States should make such data, as well as other objective measures that go beyond licensure test pass rates, central components of their teacher preparation program approval processes, and they should establish precise standards for performance that are more useful for accountability purposes.[4]
National accrediting bodies, such as CAEP, are raising the bar, but are no substitute for states' own policy. A number of states now have somewhat more rigorous academic standards for admission by virtue of requiring that programs meet CAEP's accreditation standards. However, whether CAEP will uniformly uphold its standards (especially as they have already backtracked on the GPA requirement) and deny accreditation to programs that fall short of these admission requirements remains to be seen.[5] Clear state policy would eliminate this uncertainty and send an unequivocal message to programs about the state's expectations.[6]