Teacher Preparation Program Accountability:
Minnesota

Analysis of Minnesota's policies

Minnesota's approval process for its traditional and alternate route teacher preparation programs could do more to hold programs accountable for the quality of the teachers they produce.

All preparation programs, including alternate route programs, produce a biannual report that must include pass rates on pedagogy and content exams, as well as the edTPA for accountability purposes. Candidates must be measured in three areas: planning for instruction and assessment, engaging students and supporting learning and assessing student learning.

In addition, Minnesota passed legislation in 2015 that requires each institution to submit an annual, publicly accessible report on its teacher preparation programs. Report cards must include the summative evaluation rating for all teachers who finished their probationary period and accepted a continuing contract position with the district. The annual report must also include a number of other measures, including but not limited to the licensure areas for probationary teachers whose contracts were not renewed or who were released by a district, the percentage of program completers who were hired to teach full time in their licensure field, students' pass rates on skills and subject-matter exams and satisfaction levels of program completers and school principals or supervising teachers. Unfortunately, these annual reports have not yet been funded. As of now, the state is working to determine how to meet this demand for information.

Minnesota does not, however, apply any transparent, measurable criteria for conferring program approval. Further, in the past three years, no programs in Minnesota have been identified as low performing.

Minnesota maintains control over its approval process.

Citation

Minnesota Rule 8700.7600 2015 Omnibus Bill, Article 1, Sec. 10, Subd. 4a. (a) & (b)

Recommendations for Minnesota

Collect data that connect student achievement gains to teacher preparation programs.
While Minnesota requires programs to report the summative evaluation rating for all teachers who finished their probationary period and accepted a continuing contract position with the district, this provides a rather narrow slice of teacher effectiveness data as it reflects only one subset of teachers at one point in time. Minnesota should consider expanding its efforts to connect student achievement gains to teacher preparation programs. As one way to measure whether programs are producing effective classroom teachers, Minnesota should consider the academic achievement gains of students taught by programs' graduates, averaged over the first three years of teaching. Data that are aggregated to the institution (e.g., combining elementary and secondary programs) rather than disaggregated to the specific preparation program are not useful for accountability purposes. Such aggregation can mask significant differences in performance among programs.

Establish the minimum standard of performance for each category of data. 
Merely collecting data is insufficient for accountability purposes. The next and perhaps more critical step is for Minnesota to establish precise minimum standards for teacher preparation program performance for each category of data. Programs should be held accountable for meeting rigorous standards, and there should be consequences for failing to do so, including loss of program approval. Although Minnesota now requires programs to report a variety of data, without standards for performance, it lacks any usefulness for accountability purposes.

Prioritize funding for program accountability system.
NCTQ points out that this Yearbook is based on the existence of regulations, not on the implementation of them. Although Minnesota's new legislation includes important elements of an accountability system for teacher preparation programs, it also appears that funding has not been provided to implement these requirements. NCTQ encourages the state to prioritize funding for program accountability.

State response to our analysis

Minnesota noted that any pass rates on exams below 80 percent or edTPA pass rates below 70 percent flag the program for additional review by a program review panel, requiring a deeper explanation of program performance by the institution or organization. Rules supporting have been informally in place since 2013 and 2014, respectively, but neither has been codified in Rule. The state expects that to happen shortly, when this process become effective January 1, 2016.

The state added that while it does not rate its programs as low performing, there have been a number of programs discontinued or institutions moved to "conditional approval" status with improvement measures identified. The 2015 Omnibus bill will now require the Board of Teaching as well as the Board of School administrators to provide report cards on programs.

The state indicated that evaluation of candidate performance in student teaching is built into the identified assessments of each program, required across all approved providers. An annual technical report providing testing pass rates is available on the Board of Teaching website.