General Teacher Preparation Policy
Student Growth Data: New Hampshire does not collect or publicly report data that connect student growth to teacher preparation programs.
Additional Program Data: New Hampshire collects other objective, meaningful data to measure the performance of teacher preparation programs, including retention rates in the profession.
Collect data that connect student growth to teacher preparation programs, when those programs are large enough for the data to be meaningful and reliable.
As New Hampshire works to collect data that reflect the success and effectiveness of program graduates, it should specifically consider collecting the academic achievement gains of students taught by programs' graduates, averaged over the first three years of teaching, when the programs produce enough graduates for those data to be meaningful and reliable. Data that are aggregated at the institution level (e.g., combining elementary and secondary programs), rather than disaggregated by the specific preparation program, have less utility for accountability and continuous improvement purposes than more specific data because institution-level data 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, the strongest state systems ensure that data are collected on multiple, objective program measures. As New Hampshire expands the pool of data it collects and reports on to measure how well programs are preparing candidates for success in the teacher preparation programs, it should consider metrics such as:
New Hampshire recognized the factual accuracy of this analysis.
The state also provided that the data it has preliminarily identified to support its institutions of higher education in continuous improvement goes well beyond the list NCTQ outlines here. A recent NH work session with Regional Educational Laboratory Northeast and Islands (REL-NEI) has identified data elements in the following categories: Placement, Retention, Graduate Success and Effectiveness, Coursework, Field Experiences, Knowledge, Skills and Dispositions, Educator Support, and Supply-Demand-Distribution-Shortages.
The state added that, as part of its state-based Network for Transforming Educator Preparation (NTEP) plan, its goal is to develop a data system that provides reports on topics such as supply and demand as well as performance reports for institutions of higher education to support their continuous improvement. In addition, New Hampshire is now part of the REL-NEI project to develop a "data catalog on educator preparation" to support higher education institutions and the hiring and retention of the state's public school teachers. The state asserted that with the infusion of REL in the state's NTEP action plan, it is poised to offer both technical assistance and funding to deliver a state based data system supporting higher education and the hiring and retention of beginning educators in the state's public and charter schools.
1C: Program Performance Measures
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]