General Teacher Preparation Policy
Student Growth Data: Rhode Island requires educator preparation programs to collect and report data on the performance and effectiveness of program graduates, as measured by student growth data. Completers must "demonstrate a positive impact on student learning on all applicable measures and demonstrate strong ratings on measures of professional practice and responsibilities."
Additional Program Data: Rhode Island collects other objective, meaningful data to measure the performance of teacher preparation programs. Programs are required to annually report metrics, including program completer surveys, employment data, principal surveys, retention data, and candidate diversity.
As a result of Rhode Island's strong data collection policy for its teacher preparation programs, no recommendations are provided.
Rhode Island recognized the factual accuracy of this analysis.
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]