Teacher Preparation Policy
Student Growth Data: As part of its Title II reporting, South Carolina collects data on the performance of program graduates, as measured by Assisting, Developing, and Evaluating Professional Teaching (ADEPT) formal evaluation results, which include student growth data. The student growth data is one of several indicators used to determine whether a program is "low-performing" as part of Title II reporting requirements. These data on performance of program graduates are not publicly available. Additionally, the collection of this data is based on federal Title II reporting requirements, not state policy.
Licensure Exam Pass Rates: South Carolina does not collect and publish meaningful pass rate data that inform a reasonable judgment of the performance of each approved teacher preparation
program, including first-time or final pass rate data for all test takers at the
program or institutional level.
Collect data that connect student growth to teacher preparation programs, when those programs are large enough for the data to be
meaningful and reliable.
South Carolina should formally adopt a policy requiring the collection and publication of 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.
Publish first-time and final pass rate data at the program level for all test takers.
South Carolina should publicly report first-time and final pass rate data for all test
takers at the program level. Doing so allows the state, programs,
and prospective teacher candidates to analyze the strength of programs'
ability to prepare teachers in core content areas. Prospective teacher
candidates deserve access to relevant information to determine which
programs are most likely to enable them to earn a standard teaching
license.
South Carolina did not respond to NCTQ's request to review this analysis for accuracy.
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]