Teacher Preparation Policy
Minimum Standards of Performance: Nebraska does not set minimum standards of performance for the categories of data that institutions must report. Institutions must report data for "Program Quality Indicators" that include: Candidate Admission and Completion, Content Knowledge, Graduate Follow up, and Employer Follow-up. However, the state does not set minimum standards of performance for these data.
Program Accountability: Although Nebraska does not set minimum standards of performance, Nebraska does delineate
consequences including denial of approval. Institutions have one year to correct areas of noncompliance. If they fail to do so, they may receive a designation of approval on probation. If, after a year on approval on probation, the Commissioner may recommend denial of approval if all area of noncompliance are not resolved.
State Report Cards: Nebraska produces annual institutional reports that contain content test pass rates. The state has also published 1st Year Teacher Employment Surveys, but these data appear to be aggregated across all institutions.
Program Approval Process: Nebraska allows overlap of CAEP accreditation and state approval. Educator preparation programs have the option of obtaining CAEP accreditation. CAEP review findings are utilized by the state to "make a decision on continued state approval," and are the sole requirement for continuing program approval.
Establish the minimum standards of performance for each category of data.
Nebraska should establish precise minimum standards for teacher preparation program performance for each category of data it collects to help clarify expectations regarding program quality.
Ensure program accountability decisions are based on minimum standards of performance.
While Nebraska has the structure of a program accountability system,
including follow-up actions for programs failing to meet standards, it
has not set minimum standards it can use to implement this
accountability process. As Nebraska further develops its accountability
system, it should ensure that the system is sufficient to differentiate
performance among programs, including alternate route programs, and that
it is clear at what point a program's approval will be revoked. For
programs exceeding minimum standards, Nebraska should consider finding
effective ways to disseminate best practices..
Maintain full authority over the process for approving teacher preparation programs.
Nebraska 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.
Nebraska asserted that the words "meaningful" and "unfortunately" are subjective and should be removed from the analysis.
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]