General Teacher Preparation Policy
Student Growth Data: Washington is in the process of developing a new accountability system that requires educator preparation programs to collect and report data on the performance and effectiveness of program graduates, as measured by student growth data. The state will collect the provider median student growth percentiles for teachers in their first three years of teaching. This indicator is currently in development.
Additional Program Data: Washington currently collects other objective, meaningful data to measure the performance of teacher preparation programs, and the state plans to collect additional information. Currently, programs are required to annually report metrics, including licensure test scores and first-year teacher/principal surveys. In the future, the state will collect percentile ranks on licensure tests, completer data, candidate and completer diversity information, employment data, retention data, and the number of program completers in shortage areas.
Continue to develop robust data collection and accountability systems
Washington is commended for initiating the process of requiring educator preparation programs to collect and report a variety of objective, meaningful metrics that measure the performance of their completers, and NCTQ encourages the state to continue on this path.
Washington 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]