Georgia earns a C for how well it selects and prepares its teaching force. Colleges are not selective enough.
The National Council on Teacher Quality gave Georgia an overall grade of C in its teacher preparation policies, docking the state points for the lack of selectivity in admissions to teacher prep programs and for ridding classrooms of under performing teachers.
Still, Georgia outperforms the rest of the nation. The average grade nationwide was a D plus.
Here is a link to the full 2012 Georgia report.
The report recommends:
Georgia should require programs to use an assessment that demonstrates that candidates are academically competitive with all peers, regardless of their intended profession. Requiring a common test normed to the general college population would allow for the selection of applicants in the top half of their class while also facilitating program comparison.
Requiring only a 2.5 GPA sets a very low bar for the academic performance of the state’s prospective teachers. Georgia should consider using a higher GPA requirement for program admission in combination with a test of academic proficiency. A sliding scale of GPA and test scores would allow flexibility for candidates in demonstrating academic ability.
In addition to ensuring that programs require a measure of academic performance for admission, Georgia might also want to consider requiring content testing prior to program admission as opposed to at the point of program completion. Program candidates are likely to have completed coursework that covers related test content in the prerequisite classes required for program admission. Thus, it would be sensible to have candidates take content tests while this knowledge is fresh rather than wait two years to fulfill the requirement, and candidates lacking sufficient expertise would be able to remedy deficits prior to entering formal preparation
In addressing the readiness of states to teach the new Common Core Standards, the report warns: Unfortunately, Georgia’s policies fail to ensure that elementary teacher candidates will have the subject-area knowledge necessary to teach to these standards.
The council also noted that 86 percent of undergraduate teacher preparation programs in Georgia are not selective enough because they don’t require that candidates come from the top half of the college-going population.
Here is the official statement from the council:
The National Council on Teacher Quality today released its sixth annual State Teacher Policy Yearbook, with a special focus on the state laws, rules and regulations that shape teacher preparation. This 2012 edition of the Yearbook provides Georgia with a tailored analysis, Improving Teacher Preparation in Georgia, which identifies the teacher preparation policy areas most in need of critical attention, as well as “low-hanging fruit,” policies that can be addressed by Georgia in relatively short order.
The state received a grade of “C” for its teacher preparation policies in 2012, with no improvement since 2011. The average grade across all 50 states and the District of Columbia is a “D+”.
NCTQ President Kate Walsh said, “With so much attention on the issue of teacher effectiveness, the relative lack of attention to how candidates for teaching are prepared for the job in the first place is puzzling. The Yearbook provides a road map for policymakers on how to get teacher effectiveness right from the start – by setting higher expectations for what teachers need to know and are able to do before they are licensed to become teachers. Our teachers deserve the very best preparation so that they can step into the classroom and help our students prepare to be the most successful in the world.”
Some of Georgia’s teacher preparation policies most in need of critical attention include:
•Raising admission requirements to ensure that teacher preparation programs admit candidates with strong academic records.
•Ensuring that elementary teachers know their subject matter and have the knowledge and skills to be effective reading teachers so that new teachers are ready to teach to the Common Core State Standards.
•Closing loopholes that allow some secondary science teachers to teach subjects in which they may lack sufficient content knowledge.
•Eliminating generic K-12 special education licenses that lower the bar for special education teachers and make it virtually impossible for the state to ensure that these teachers know their subject matter and are prepared to teach grade-level content.
•Requiring that teacher candidates receive a high-quality summative student teaching experience and are assigned to cooperating teachers who have demonstrated evidence of effectiveness as measured by student learning.
•Establishing minimum performance standards for teacher preparation programs. Although Georgia is one of only eight states that requires the use of student achievement data, minimum standards are necessary to hold programs accountable for the performance of their graduates.
The report also identifies ways that the Georgia Teacher Academy for Preparation and Pedagogy, the state’s alternate route into the teaching profession, could be improved.
This year’s Yearbook comes in advance of NCTQ’s forthcoming (Spring 2013) Teacher Prep Review of the higher education-based teacher preparation programs in the nation. A key area of focus in both reports is admission standards, and the 2012 Yearbook includes a sneak peek of data from the Review, which finds that 86 percent of undergraduate teacher preparation programs in Georgia are insufficiently selective, failing to ensure that candidates come from the top half of the college-going population.
Walsh continued: “The 2012 Yearbook will serve as an important companion to NCTQ’s forthcoming Teacher Prep Review, which will identify programs that are doing the best job of preparing tomorrow’s educators, those that need to improve and those that need restructuring. The Yearbook’s recommendations can help state policymakers build a strong policy framework for effective teacher preparation so that our teachers get what they deserve: training that provides them with the tools they need to lead a classroom the day they graduate.”
–from Maureen Downey, for the AJC Get Schooled blog
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114 comments Add your comment
FlaTony
January 24th, 2013
9:16 am
I am posting my remarks on this subject without having read all the details. I apologize in advance for redunancies that may occur.
I have served on teacher education committees in our universities and was appalled at some of the procedures, practices and policies surrounding teacher education programs in our state. The most egregious of these was the mention of university students needing a “fallback” major should they not be successful in other majors. That said it all in a nutshell.
Selective processes such as higher scores on SAT or ACT were pushed aside because these scores might “unfairly exclude” students from a program.
The numbers and hours of courses for education students frequently outnumbered the courses required for a major in the field. This was especially true for teacher candidates that would teach secondary level courses.
Beefing up entrance requirements for teacher education programs should be required of the university system. It is imperative that we get rid of the thinking processes that allow teaching to be considered as a “fallback” career. And we should actively recruit those college students with high academic ability to go into teaching. Of course, this would also mean that politicians will have to stop villifying teachers, offer higher pay and benefits, eliminate excessive standardized testing, and provide sustainable pathways for school improvement.
reality check
January 24th, 2013
9:38 am
Admission requirements are not the answer. There are a lot of extremely successful people in all professions in this country who had modest admission credentials and plenty who had all the credentials in the world who are not that successful. There is almost no correlation between where someone goes to school, GPA, and lifetime earnings.
The glaring thing about the teaching profession is that each state has its own certification test. When I took the CPA exam I took the same test every other aspiring CPA in this country took and passing scores were not determined by the state.
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AlreadySheared
January 24th, 2013
10:12 am
@reality check,
I believe (with no supporting evidence) that Georgia gives the GACE exams instead of using Praxis so that they can set their own passing scores while eliminating the possibility of their testing criteria being compared with other states’.
Prof
January 24th, 2013
11:31 am
@ FlaTony, Jan. 24, 9:16 am: “I have served on teacher education committees in our universities and was appalled at some of the procedures, practices and policies surrounding teacher education programs in our state.”
By “our state” do you mean Florida or Georgia?.
Once Again
January 24th, 2013
12:34 pm
Many folks including the great African American economist Walter Williams have looked at the data and it clearly shows that education majors are at or near the bottom in nearly every measure of academic achievement. That includes GPS, SAT scores, GRE scores, etc. Colleges of education are a monopoly, regulated and controlled by state teaching cartels, and highly insular. There is no innovation, no deviation from the current (failed) direction, and ultimately self-perpetuating. Basically that is a description of the current government school system as well, so this should come as no surprise.
GA may get a C, and the national average may be a D, but one has to wonder, given how top-down controlled this entire establishment is, just how good could an A actually be? Again, its not as though any of these institutions operate within the framework of a truly free market, where consumer satisfaction, voluntary payments, and consumer financial support has the power to alter directions and put failures out of business. On the contrary, these numerous, repeated, and well-documented failures always result in the same calls for MORE MONEY.
As if that is the problem….
Get your kids out of the system and save their futures.
Progressive Humanist
January 24th, 2013
1:03 pm
The above analysis is an over-generalization. When I looked at GRE test scores by content area a few years ago, it showed that elementary teachers and administrators did score very low, alongside business majors, but that secondary-level teachers actually scored relatively high, similar to engineers (although engineers tended to score high on the quant and average on verbal, while secondary teachers did the opposite).
Apparently secondary teachers, who do need a higher level of content knowledge, tend to have it. As long as elementary teachers have mastered the elementary levels in all subjects, it doesn’t matter if their GRE scores are off the charts or not. It is, however, concerning that administrators score so low, and that does say something about the bureaucracy.
But those who have a “sky is falling” mentality about our education system are simply fear mongers. The data is more nuanced than that. We have a higher percentage of literate citizens now than the nation has ever had. That’s a sign of success. You may also want to look at the report out of Stanford that Maureen posted last week that suggests our mid and upper income students do well compared to those of other countries, while our students from low socioeconomic backgrounds have been making gains at the same time those from other countries have been falling further behind.
Progressive Humanist
January 24th, 2013
1:17 pm
And in all the talk about GPAs and standards, there is something that gets overlooked- the fact that a great deal teaching success or lack of is determined by personal interactions, which are not measured by GPA or test scores.
In my time observing and supervising student-teachers, I have noticed an interesting disconnect. Often, I’ll encounter a student who is really on the ball. Their content knowledge, grades, quality of assignments, organization, attention to detail, etc. are all very strong. They write detailed lesson plans covering everything they should. These students inevitably have high GPAs. I would think “This student will be very strong in the classroom,” and then I observe a lesson that is ineffective from beginning to end. Their students are bored, disengaged, and cause disruptions that the student-teacher can’t manage.
In contrast, I have had students who are very weak on paper. They’re disorganized, detail is lacking, their assignments are of low quality, their lesson plans do not look well thought out. These students tend to have lower GPAs. But then I observe them in action and they consistently churn out fabulous lessons. Their students are engaged and take an active role in academic work.
These types of situations may be the exception rather than the rule, but they are not uncommon. I am often surprised that a student-teacher’s performance in the classroom many times does not coincide with their performance on paper. It’s a mistake to think we can narrow down teacher quality to one variable such as GPA, or even more shallowly, whether they went to a tier one school or not.
beteachin
January 24th, 2013
1:26 pm
1. I am amazed at the low intellect of some of my fellow teachers and administrators. It’s downright embarrassing.
2. I’m sure this is true in other fields besides education, but it just doesn’t seem right when we’re guiding the next generation to mediocrity and government dependence.
3. Some of the teachers need to go, but administrators can’t get rid of them.
4. Administrators often want to get rid of the wrong people. (If we don’t “get on board,” maybe it’s because we don’t want to go where their ships are sailing!)
5. I have devoted my adult life to a very broken system, but the children in this sinking ship are worth it.
6. Our children deserve adults who can fix the problem.
7. The home life of our children is far more broken than the school system.
8. Teachers are taking the blame for the ills of our entire nation.
9. The goal is to meet every child where he is and move him forward–NOT to artificially place each child in the same end spot at the end of the day.
10. God help us.
FlaTony
January 24th, 2013
6:26 pm
@Prof – Sorry for the lack of clarity. Originally from Florida, most of my career has been in Georgia. The panels of which I spoke have been for University System of Georgia schools.
lyncoln
January 25th, 2013
12:40 pm
@NTLB
I can’t argue with your statements. But your examples are directed to the hiring process or licensing process within a state, not the preparation programs within the state.
Neither of those things are considered as part of this report. This report just states that GA is above average at the policies used to produce teachers. The top 4 (with B- scores) are Alabama, Florida, Tennessee, and Indiana.
I don’t disagree with you that the hiring and licensing practices vary from state to state. Other states may have weaker teacher preparation systems (in terms of allowing candidates into the schools), but they use stricter hiring and license requirements to weed out weaker teachers from ever entering the classroom.
In general if the problem is that we are hiring ‘weak’ teachers, you can either make it more difficult to receive training as a teacher (higher rquired GPA to declare as an education major) OR you can make it more difficult to be licensed and hired to be a teacher (difficult licensing exams, teaching a sample lesson to a panel of teachers, etc.)
I think that past problems of having too few available teachers have caused states to relax the requirements for both preparation programs and hiring programs to increase the pool of potential teachers to fill empty positions. Also, the many ‘alternate paths’ that have been implemented are there to provide a larger pool of teacher applicants.
If stricter requirements are added to entry into preparation systems or hiring processes the number of available teachers will decrease and states will have to find other methods of filling empty teaching positions (like increasing salaries or hiring teachers from overseas). Since budgets for schools are decreasing at the moment, it isn’t viable to increase salaries. And political backlash might make it difficult for hiring teachers from other countries.
It’s why I give the results of the report a shrug. I like what they want to do, but I don’t see how implementing the recommendations will help our current situation where schools struggle to find enough qualified applicants to fill open positions.
Dr. Monica Henson
January 25th, 2013
10:35 pm
Progressive Humanist posted, “t’s a mistake to think we can narrow down teacher quality to one variable such as GPA, or even more shallowly, whether they went to a tier one school or not.”
Absolutely true. When I hire a high school teacher, I want to see that they had high marks in the content area (as opposed to an overall high GPA), but there are a lot of intangibles that can’t be measured by college grades.
As an administrator, I’ve encountered teachers who could plan a lesson to the nines, organize paperwork, and talk a fantastic game, yet their students hated the class, were bored & disengaged, and did not demonstrate strong outcomes.
I’ve supervised other teachers whose written lessons were somewhat slapdash (although well thought-out when you compared the chicken scratch to what happened in the execution in the classroom), forgot to take attendance because they were so absorbed in the instructional activities, and were late submitting grades, but students adored them and there was always a waiting list to get into their classes, which produced great achievement outcomes.
seen it all
January 28th, 2013
1:37 pm
Being a student who attend a “selective teacher education program” back in the early 2000’s, I can tell you this– the program selected applicants who looked “good”. No seriously. They picked young white girls who looked like they would fit into the average public school teaching corps. The selection process was not about academics or ability, but rather if they thought you could look and act like the average public school teacher. And the biggest factor was your potential employability after graduation. If you didn’t get a job right away after graduation (in many cases, securing a job before you officially graduated), the teacher ed department looked bad in the eyes of the college. That was the biggie.
On a side note, it’s a similar phenomenon with graduate programs. The percentage of students who are admitted into grad programs must receive diplomas “on time.” Colleges and universities are actually rated on this. The “for profit” universities are particularly bad at this because they charge so much money, you must get a diploma or it’s bad for business. And since you NEVER, EVER see or meet any of your peers in your courses, you don’t really know what kind of work they are doing or the quality of these students. It’s all about the money– both public, private, and “for profit.”
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