Teacher Preparation Policy
Minimum Standards of Performance: In the Teacher Preparation Program Effectiveness Measures (TPPEM), Georgia sets level of performance for each category. Programs are assigned ratings based on their performance in the following outcome measures: teacher observation data, employer perceptions of preparation, inductee perceptions of performance, assessment of teaching skills, and assessment of content knowledge.
Program Accountability: Georgia holds programs accountable for their performance. Programs are categorized on four levels: Level 4 Exemplary, Level 3 Effective, Level 2 At-risk of Low Performing, and Level 1 Low Performing, based on their performance on the data collected as part of the Preparation Program Effectiveness Measures program. Programs will be evaluated annually and educator preparation programs rated as Level 2 or Level 1 over a three-year period "may result in a recommendation to the Commission for revocation of approval."
State Report Cards: Georgia reports Teacher Preparation Program Effectiveness Measures (TPPEM) for each institution and program on an annual basis. The reports include program-level data as well as the program accountability ratings.
Program Approval Process: Georgia allows overlap of national accreditation and state approval. Preparation programs have the option of obtaining state-only accreditation or regional, national, or specialized accreditation. Regardless of the accreditation authority, programs must meet CAEP standards.
Maintain full authority over the process for approving teacher preparation programs.
Georgia should not cede any of its approval authority to another accrediting body; instead, the state should ensure that it is the entity that directly considers all the evidence of program performance and makes the final determination of whether programs should continue to be authorized to prepare teachers.
Georgia did not respond to NCTQ's request to review this analysis for accuracy.
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]