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Three South Dakota Teacher Prep Programs Make National Honor Roll

The National Council on Teacher Quality has issued a report on teacher education programs nationwide. Unlike many of the teacher prep programs they surveyed, NCTQ did not inflate the grades. Out of 1,200 elementary and secondary teacher training programs surveyed, NCTQ gave only four a four-star rating (Furman, Lipscomb, Ohio State, and Vanderbilt universities).

Here's how South Dakota's public teacher education programs rated:

School Elementary Ed Rating Secondary Ed Rating
BHSU 1 1.5
DSU 2 3
NSU 2 3
SDSU 1 2.5
USD 2 3

Dakota State, Northern, and the U made the honor roll with their three-star secondary education programs. That honor roll included 9% of the school surveyed nationwide. None of our public universities made the elementary prep honor roll. SDSU and BHSU almost made the NCTQ "consumer alert" list with their one-star ratings in elementary teacher prep.

NCTQ based its ratings on eighteen standards, which they say are based on eight years of development and ten pilot studies. Under those standards, here are NCTQ's biggest beefs:

  • It is far too easy to get into a teacher preparation program. Just over a quarter of programs restrict admissions to students in the top half of their class, compared with the highest-performing countries, which limit entry to the top third.
  • Fewer than one in nine elementary programs and just over one-third of high school programs are preparing candidates in content at the level necessary to teach the new Common Core State Standards now being implemented in classrooms in 45 states and the District of Columbia.
  • The “reading wars” are far from over. Three out of four elementary teacher preparation programs still are not teaching the methods of reading instruction that could substantially lower the number of children who never become proficient readers, from 30 percent to under 10 percent. Instead, the teacher candidate is all too often told to develop his or her “own unique approach” to teaching reading.
  • Just 7 percent of programs ensure that their student teachers will have uniformly strong experiences, such as only allowing them to be placed in classrooms taught by teachers who are themselves effective, not just willing volunteers [Julie Greenberg, Arthur McKee and Kate Walsh, "Teacher Prep Review," National Council on Teacher Quality, June 2013].

The complaint about lax admission standards may apply to South Dakota. Josh Verges reported earlier this month that students in our public university teaching programs have a slightly lower average ACT score than the general student population. His breakdown of teacher candidate ACT scores by campus finds an interesting though imperfect alignment with the NCTQ ratings. Higher-rated USD has the highest teacher candidate ACT average, 0.1 points higher than its general student ACT average. Lower-rated SDSU has the lowest teacher candidate ACT average, 1.6 points lower than its general student ACT average. But note that DSU's teacher candidates have a slightly lower ACT score than their general campus population without managing to drag DSU's rating down to SDSU or BHSU levels.

So what do we do to improve teacher training? NCTQ makes these recommendations:

  1. Get prospective teachers to apply to the school NCTQ rates highly. To South Dakota's benefit, NCTQ recommends the USD, NSU, and DSU secondary ed programs not just for their quality but as bargains!
  2. Get school districts to include NCTQ ratings in evaluating candidates (heck: there go my chances, thanks to my SDSU degree!).
  3. Place more student teachers with highly qualified teachers, not just willing volunteers.
  4. Increase teacher program admission standards: take only students in the top half of their class, and require teacher programs to have average student GPA of 3.2 and ACT of 24 (that would put all South Dakota programs on alert!).
  5. Impose tougher tests for teacher licensure (like the teacher bar exam we discussed here in January).
  6. Base state funding of teacher prep programs on performance rather than enrollment (and NCTQ notes that South Dakota is moving in this direction).
  7. Cap the number of teaching certificates issued each year (since apparently, we're graduating more teacher candidates than we need).

Making teacher preparation more rigorous should be more politically viable in South Dakota than policies targeting our public schools directly. It doesn't cost as much to tighten admission and licensure requirements as imposing more standardized tests or other "reforms" on 152 school districts. Getting less qualified teachers out of the system at the front end, before they even get into a classroom, would solve a lot of the problems that Governor Daugaard's ill-starred pile of school-wrecking 2012 reforms purported to address.

The only problem tougher teacher training would bring is a smaller, even more talented pool of South Dakota teachers who would be even tougher to keep on the job with our last-in-the-nation wages. How about it, South Dakota: if our universities train better teachers, are we willing to pay them the wages they'll demand and deserve?

7 Comments

  1. MJL 2013.06.18

    How about it, South Dakota: if our universities train better teachers, are we willing to pay them the wages they'll demand and deserve?

    I am pretty confident that the answer to that question is no. Why would you treat a mule with kindness if you can beat it and get the same results (As a friend and former teacher was once told by a former legislator)

  2. David Newquist 2013.06.18

    Perhaps, at some point those who analyze education will reach the point where they can examine all the causes and their effects. During my early years at NSU, it supplied almost half the teachers in the state. Recall that it was Northern State Teachers College in name and later in mission. During those years the most capable and motivated students where in teacher education. But in the 1980s, there was a very noticeable change. Bright and ambitious students seriously questioned whether teaching was a career in which they could develop themselves to their potential, not just acquire a set of job skills. Money and the relentless denigration of teachers by the public were big factors that challenged students. They begin to consider other, more rewarding career possibilities, and the effect on the teaching programs was quite noticeable. In order to keep the enrollments in the teaching programs up, the requirements and standards for teacher education were changed to attract students of tepid academic and intellectual interests.

    Although we did not say it outside of department meetings so as not to discourage the good students we had, we began to consider ways to eliminate some we realized were not fit to teach. I once said that we should borrow from the marriage ceremony and at commencement have an announcement for each candidate in which the president would say, "Anyone who has a reason that this candidate should not receive a degree, rise and speak up now or hold your peace." The faculty said it would make the commencement exercise too tiring and noisy with all the standing up and sitting down for the faculty. One of the most unpleasant jobs anywhere is the task of informing a student that they will have to consider another career option, as they did not seem to possess any qualifications for teaching. Those instances were rare, but not rare enough. One of the instances that I recall as typical was a young man in English education who thought rhetoric and literature were irritating. He was getting his degree to coach high school football. And that is what he went on to do, while doing god knows what in the English classes he was assigned.

    NCTQ's idea of raising the requirement and admission standards for teacher education identifies a problem, but not totally the cause of it. It does not acknowledge the lowering of standards as a means of trying to fill the teaching corps in the face of the economically and socially diminished status of teaching in the mind of the general public.

    We have a public that still glibly utters that old inanity that teachers need dedication, not money or respect. It might help if NCTQ would point out persistently that no one, especially in America, chooses to be a bonded servant for life.

  3. kurtz 2013.06.18

    sad that usd is catching heat over its native ed. program. vermillion seems like a great place to get off the rez for awhile.

  4. Kent Frerichs 2013.06.19

    What do you think of this article on teacher training?

    'Industry of mediocrity': Rookie teachers woefully unprepared, report says
    By Stephanie Simon, Reuters
    Updated 2 days ago NBCNews.com

    Linda Davidson / The Washington Post via Getty Images, file Tuesday's report highlights successful teacher training programs at a handful of universities, including Ohio State, which recently launched an undergraduate degree program that gives students hands-on experience in a classroom each year.
    The teacher training system is badly broken, turning out rookie educators who have little hands-on experience running classrooms and are quickly overwhelmed by the job, according to a report released Tuesday by the National Council on Teacher Quality.
    The review found "an industry of mediocrity," with the vast majority of programs earning fewer than three stars on a four-star rating scale - and many earning no stars at all.
    The council, a bipartisan research and advocacy group, spent eight years developing the methodology, fighting in court to gain access to data and analyzing the information before issuing the report. It contains detailed analysis of 608 colleges and universities with teacher training programs and partial data on 522 others.
    Those 1,130 institutions collectively turn out more than 170,000 novice teachers annually, about 80 percent of the new teachers entering classrooms each year. Most of the rest come from non-traditional training programs that are not necessarily affiliated with colleges, such as Teach for America.
    Freshly minted teachers "don't know how to teach reading, don't know how to master a classroom, don't know how to use data," said Kate Walsh, the council's president. "The results were dismal."
    Attempts to improve teacher training have been under way.
    The two big teachers unions have both called for aspiring educators to get better mentoring and more practical experience before they graduate. They have also urged tougher certification standards that would require candidates to prove their skills in a classroom - not just pass a paper-and-pencil test - before earning a license.
    Yet the study is the first to attempt a comprehensive rating of teacher preparation programs.
    The methodology drew immediate fire from some professors of education.
    The council ratings lean heavily on a few factors: Whether a program is selective in its admissions; whether its students must take extensive courses in the subject areas they will be teaching; and how much hands-on experience students get in classroom management. Researchers also looked at syllabi, textbooks and the type of training offered in key fields, such as teaching reading.
    But the study did not typically evaluate the quality of teaching within the training program or the success graduates may have had in the classroom.
    "These rankings do not have a great deal to do with program quality," said Linda Darling-Hammond, a professor at the Stanford University School of Education, which received only mediocre ratings.
    Several universities tried to block researchers from getting data about their programs; in Wisconsin, Minnesota and Missouri, the disputes escalated into court battles won by the National Council on Teacher Quality.
    "Our members feel like they've been strong-armed," said Stephanie Giesecke, a director at the National Association of Independent Colleges and Universities. "These are not valid ways of rating our programs."
    For all its grim warnings, the new report does point to a few bright spots.
    It highlights successful teacher training programs at a handful of universities, including Ohio State, which recently launched an undergraduate degree program that gives students hands-on experience in a classroom each year.
    Furman University in Greenville, S.C., also won high marks for its academic rigor and intensive mentoring of aspiring teachers.
    "When they leave our program, we're putting a stamp on them that says, 'This person can work with other peoples' children,'" said Scott Henderson, director of program development for the teacher education program. "That's a huge responsibility."
    The National Council on Teacher Quality was founded in 2000 and often advocates for education reform policies opposed by teacher unions. It is funded by private foundations, including the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, the Carnegie Corporation of New York and The Eli and Edythe Broad Foundation.
    Copyright 2013 Thomson Reuters. Click for restrictions.

  5. MJL 2013.06.19

    Joy Smolnisky of the South Dakota Budget and Policy Project, a nonprofit organization that studies budget issues, said South Dakota school districts get about the same amount of funding from property taxes as those in surrounding states. But state funding per student in South Dakota is significantly lower than in surrounding states, she said. The state's share of school funding in South Dakota was about $3,000 per student in 2011, about half the average state spending in surrounding states, Smolnisky said.

    Sen. Jean Hunhoff, R-Yankton, said all organizations have to adjust how they operate as society changes. She asked what schools have done to use new technology.

    Monson said schools now not only have to teach traditional subjects, but also are required to deal with health education, adopt new technology and switch to a new curriculum in some courses. Teachers are asked to take on those additional responsibilities without any increase in pay, he said.

    Does this answer your question of more pay from the state?

    http://www.sfgate.com/news/article/SD-lawmakers-urged-to-boost-school-funding-4610938.php

    By the way, I don't think you can get a basic elementary education degree at SDSU. They offer some of the specialization related degrees. I may be wrong on that one.

  6. caheidelberger Post author | 2013.06.20

    David, NCTQ might be happy to point out the larger cause of the problem of low standards for teachers. The report includes an interesting quote from Canadian who says it's much harder to get into a Canadian teacher prep program, while in America "anyone can become a teacher." They seem to recognize there's a larger problem, but they are focusing on the specific steps teacher prep programs can take to address it. Whether society will follow is an open question (one that MJL is rightfully pessimistic about: we'll beat the horse, but we won't feed it).

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