General Teacher Preparation Policy
Student Growth Data: New Mexico requires educator preparation programs to collect and report data on the performance and effectiveness of program graduates, as measured by student growth data. This data has not yet been made available.
Additional Program Data: New Mexico collects other objective, meaningful data to measure the performance of teacher preparation programs. Programs are required to annually report metrics, including teacher retention, the percentage of candidates who pass the New Mexico teacher assessment for initial licensure on the first attempt, the percentage of secondary and elementary core academic classes taught by teachers who demonstrate subject mastery by means of a rigorous content area assessment, and the number of teachers trained in math, science, and technology.
Continue building systems to collect and report data that connect student growth to teacher preparation programs, when those programs are large enough for the data to be meaningful and reliable.
New Mexico is to be commended for taking strides toward collecting, reporting, and using the student achievement data of program candidates in program approvals. As the state builds this system, it should ensure that the academic achievement gains of students taught by programs' graduates are averaged over the first three years of teaching, when the programs produce enough graduates for those data to be meaningful and reliable. In addition, it should ensure that data are disaggregated by the specific program, rather than aggregated at the institution level, so that this data can be better used for accountability and continuous improvement purposes.
New Mexico recognized the factual accuracy of this analysis.
The state noted that New Mexico Public Education Department (NMPED)'s education reforms (see New Mexico's response to 1-A: Program Entry) do not just collect this relevant data on the performance of educator preparation program (EPP) completers but also use it in the context of EPP approvals, reviews, and scorecards. The state added that NMPED has entered into Memorandums of Understanding (MOU) with each EPP to share relevant candidate level data.
NCTQ looks forward to reviewing the state's progress in future editions of the Yearbook.
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]