Delivering Well Prepared Teachers Policy
Mississippi'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, Mississippi does not collect or report data that connect student achievement gains to teacher preparation programs. The state does rely on some objective, meaningful data to measure the performance of traditional teacher preparation programs; for example, it requires an annual "teacher education performance report," with one component consisting of a job-satisfaction survey rating the job performance of all first-year teachers. Programs that do not receive a satisfactory rating of 80 percent over a three-year period must prepare a plan of improvement. Mississippi also collects programs' annual summary licensure test-pass rates (80 percent of program completers must pass their licensure exams). This 80 percent pass-rate standard, while common among many states, sets the bar quite low and is not a meaningful measure of program performance.
However, the state does not collect these data for its alternate routes. Further, there is no evidence that the state's standards for program approval are resulting in greater accountability. In the past three years, no programs in Mississippi have been identified in required federal reporting as low performing.
Mississippi does not publicly report data that compare program effectiveness.
In Mississippi, there is some overlap of accreditation and state approval. National accreditation may be substituted for state approval.
Collect data that connect student achievement gains to teacher preparation programs.
As one way to measure whether programs are producing effective classroom teachers, Mississippi 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.
Gather other meaningful data that reflect program performance.
Although measures of student growth are an important indicator of program effectiveness, they cannot be the sole measure of program quality for several reasons, including the fact that many programs may have graduates whose students do not take standardized tests. The accountability system must therefore include other objective measures that show how well programs are preparing teachers for the classroom. Mississippi should expand its requirements to also include such measures as:
1. Evaluation results from the first and/or second year of teaching
2. Average raw scores of teacher candidates on licensing tests, including academic proficiency, subject matter and professional knowledge tests
3. Number of times, on average, it takes teacher candidates to pass licensing tests
4. Five-year retention rates of graduates in the teaching profession.
Establish the minimum standard of performance for each category of data.
Merely collecting the types of data described above is insufficient for accountability purposes. The next and perhaps more critical step is for Mississippi to establish precise minimum standards for teacher preparation program performance for each category of data. Illinois should be mindful of setting rigorous standards for program performance, as its current requirement that 80 percent of program graduates pass the state's licensing tests is too low a bar. Programs should be held accountable for meeting rigorous standards, and there should be consequences for failing to do so, including loss of program approval.
Publish an annual report card on the state's website.
Mississippi should produce an annual report card that shows all the data the state collects on individual teacher preparation programs, which should be published on the state's website at the program level for the sake of public transparency. Data should be presented in a manner that clearly conveys whether programs have met performance standards.
Maintain full authority over teacher preparation program approval.
Mississippi should ensure that it is the state that considers the evidence of program performance and makes the decision about whether programs should continue to be authorized to prepare teachers.
Mississippi commented that it is currently developing a longitudinal data system to correlate student achievement, teacher evaluation scores and the teacher preparation programs to aid in reforming the teacher pipeline in Mississippi.
States need to hold
programs accountable for the quality of their graduates.
The state should examine a number of factors when measuring
the performance of and approving teacher preparation programs. 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.
States have made great strides in building data systems with
the capacity to provide evidence of teacher performance. These same data can be used to provide
objective evidence of the performance of teacher preparation programs. States should make such data, as well as
other objective measures that go beyond licensure pass rates, a central
component of their teacher preparation program approval processes, and they
should establish precise standards for performance that are more useful for
accountability purposes.
Teacher Preparation Program Accountability: Supporting Research
For
discussion of teacher preparation program approval see Andrew Rotherham and S. Mead'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,The 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's, Teacher Prep Review, 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, eds. Marci Kanstoroom and Chester
E. Finn., Jr., (Washington, D.C.: Thomas B. Fordham Foundation, 1999), pp. 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.