Are teacher-training programs rigorous enough? A new study, completed by a group that has long criticized the quality of teacher preparation, makes the case that they’re not.
Education students face easier coursework than do their peers in other departments, according to the study, and they’re more likely to graduate with honors.
A report on the study—"Easy A’s and What’s Behind Them,” which is to be released on Wednesday by the National Council on Teacher Quality—argues that a more-objective curriculum for teaching candidates would better prepare them for careers in the classroom.
“We’re out to improve training,” said Julie Greenberg, the report’s co-author and a senior policy analyst of teacher-preparation studies for the advocacy group. “We want teacher candidates to be more confident and competent when they get in the classroom so their students can benefit from that.”
The council examined more than 500 institutions and found that 30 percent of all their graduating students earned honors. But when it came to education programs, 44 percent of students did so.
The council also analyzed syllabi across multiple majors to determine whether their assignments were “criterion-referenced” (that is, explicitly knowledge- or skill-based) or “criterion-deficient” (that is, subjective). It found that criterion-deficient assignments were more common in teacher-preparation classes than in other disciplines.
As an example of an assignment that the group finds “criterion-deficient,” Ms. Greenberg described a “literacy-history timeline” task that prompts students to reflect on how their own reading skills developed.
“Even if that had relevance to teaching reading, it wouldn’t be the best way to teach anything,” she said. The advocacy group, she added, was “somewhat dismayed by how little many of the assignments seem to connect with the content and skills teacher candidates are really going to need once they enter the classroom.”
But not everyone believes that “criterion-deficient” tasks are wasteful. Peter Kloosterman, a professor of mathematics education at Indiana University at Bloomington, said exercises in reflection can have value if done correctly. He talks with his students about their personal experiences with math education, although he said he doesn’t grade them on those exercises.
“Some have had good experiences,” he said, “but those that had the poor ones, we don’t want them to put those poor ideas to students they want to teach.”
Sharon Robinson, president of American Association of Colleges for Teacher Education, said the teacher-preparation community is already working to improve education-student assessment. She cited the edTPA portfolio program, to which education students submit their work for grading by a national pool of trained scorers, and research being conducted at the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor on “high-leverage” teaching practices.
She questioned the methodology the National Council on Teacher Quality had used in the study, and pointed out what she saw as a flaw. The report asserts that, at a majority of the institutions studied, “grading standards for teacher candidates are much lower than for students in other majors at the same campus.” But in a footnote, it acknowledges that there is no evidence that lax grading standards are more of a problem in education programs than in other departments.
“Grade integrity is the subject of quite widespread work throughout higher education,” Ms. Robinson said.
In another footnote, the report says the study does not prove that criterion-deficient assignments lead to higher grades.