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Teacher Preparation Program Accountability :
Maine

Delivering Well Prepared Teachers Policy

Look at National Findings
Goal

The state's approval process for teacher preparation programs should hold programs accountable for the quality of the teachers they produce.

Does not meet goal
Suggested Citation:
National Council on Teacher Quality. (2011). Teacher Preparation Program Accountability : Maine results. State Teacher Policy Database. [Data set].
Retrieved from: https://www.nctq.org/yearbook/state/ME-Teacher-Preparation-Program-Accountability--6

Analysis of Maine's policies

Maine's approval process for its traditional and alternate route teacher preparation programs does not hold programs accountable for the quality of the teachers they produce.

Most importantly, Maine does not collect value-added data that connect student achievement gains to teacher preparation programs.

The state also fails to collect other objective, meaningful data to measure the performance of teacher preparation programs, and it does not apply any transparent, measurable criteria for conferring program approval. 

Finally, Maine's website does not include a report card that allows the public to review and compare program performance.

Citation

Recommendations for Maine

Collect data that connect student achievement gains to teacher preparation programs.
To ensure that programs are producing effective classroom teachers, Maine should consider academic achievement gains of students taught by the programs' graduates, averaged over the first three years of teaching.

Gather other meaningful data that reflect program performance.
In addition to knowing whether programs are producing effective teachers, other objective, meaningful data can also indicate whether programs are appropriately screening applicants and whether they are delivering essential academic and professional knowledge. Maine should gather data such as the following: average raw scores of graduates on licensing tests, including basic skills, subject matter and professional knowledge tests; satisfaction ratings by school principals and teacher supervisors of programs' student teachers, using a standardized form to permit program comparison; evaluation results from the first and/or second year of teaching; and five-year retention rates of graduates in the teaching profession.

Establish the minimum standard of performance for each category of data.
Programs should be held accountable for meeting these standards, with articulated consequences for failing to do so, including loss of program approval after appropriate due process. 

Publish an annual report card on the state's website.
To inform the public with meaningful, readily understandable indicators of how well programs are doing, Maine should present all the data it collects on individual teacher preparation programs.  

State response to our analysis

Maine pointed out that it is the recipient of a multi-year, multi-million dollar grant for the development of its state longitudinal data system (SLDS). The state added that its growth model has been developed, and it enables parents, schools, districts and the state to understand how individual students are progressing from year to year and provides a common measure to show how much growth is needed for each student to reach state standards. This data source is designed to enable the match of individual student records with individual teacher records.  

    • Best practice
    • Meets goal
    • Nearly Meets goal
    • Meets goal in part
    • Meets a small part of goal
    • Does not meet goal

  • Maine

    Maine map
Alternate Route Eligibility
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Delivering Well Prepared Teachers
Expanding the Pool of Teachers
Identifying Effective Teachers
Retaining Effective Teachers
Exiting Ineffective Teachers
Research rationale

For discussion of teacher preparation program approval see Andrew Rotherham's chapter "Back to the Future: The History and Politics of State Teacher Licensure and Certification." in A Qualified Teacher in Every Classroom. (Harvard Education Press, 2004).

For evidence of how weak state efforts to hold teacher preparation programs accountable are, see data on programs identified as low-performing in the U.S. Department of Education, Secretary's Seventh Annual Report on Teacher Quality 2010 at:
http://www2.ed.gov/about/reports/annual/teachprep/t2r7.pdf 

For additional discussion and research of how teacher education programs can add value to their teachers, see NCTQ, Tomorrow's Teachers: Evaluation Education Schools, available at http://www.nctq.org/p/edschools.

For a discussion of the lack of evidence that national accreditation status enhances teacher preparation programs' effectiveness, see D. Ballou and M. Podgursky, "Teacher Training and Licensure: A Layman's Guide," in Better Teachers, Better Schools, ed. Marci Kanstoroom and Chester E. Finn. Jr. (Washington, D.C.: Thomas B. Fordham Foundation, 1999), 45-47. See also No Common Denominator: The Preparation of Elementary Teachers in Mathematics by America's Education Schools (NCTQ, 2008) and What Education Schools Aren't Teaching About Reading and What Elementary Teachers Aren't Learning (NCTQ, 2006).

See NCTQ, Alternative Certification Isn't Alternative (2007) regarding the dearth of accountability data states require of alternate route programs.

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