General Teacher Preparation Policy
Minimum Standards of Performance: Wisconsin does not set minimum standards of performance for the data collected about individual teacher preparation programs.
Program Accountability: As a result of the lack of minimum standards of performance, Wisconsin does not articulate consequences for programs that fail to meet specific criteria. The state describes the process and consequences for programs receiving conditional approval and non-approval, but approval is not based on clearly stated, objective evidence or measures of performance.
State Report Cards: Wisconsin publishes annual reports showing data collected on individual teacher preparation programs.
Program Approval Process: Wisconsin maintains full authority over teacher preparation program approval and conducts annual on-site visits and reviews of every preparation program.
Establish the minimum standards of performance for each category of data.
Wisconsin should establish precise minimum standards for teacher preparation program performance for each category of data it collects to help clarify expectations regarding program quality.
Ensure that criteria for program approval result in greater accountability.
Wisconsin should ensure that programs are held accountable for meeting minimum standards of performance, and that the state's accountability system is sufficient to differentiate performance among programs, including alternate route programs. The state should clarify processes around remediation and loss of program approval as appropriate. For programs exceeding minimum standards, Wisconsin should consider finding effective ways to disseminate best practices.
Wisconsin was helping in proving NCTQ with the facts necessary for this analysis.
The state reiterated that it retains full authority over its process for approving teacher preparation programs. In addition, Wisconsin stated that programs not making progress are put on a remediation plan, and programs failing to make progress for multiple years lose their approval.
1D: Program Reporting Requirements
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]