principal, principal coach, and
Baltimore City Department
of Education official who
now teaches at University of
Maryland, Baltimore County’s
Education Department.
The presence of such skills
and knowledge undergirds
effective teaching; their
absence can compromise
students’ learning and
foment the kind of frustration
that drives young teachers
from high-needs schools or
out of the profession.
Few of the country’s
teacher-preparation
programs give students a
“high-quality”
student-teaching experience
rich with real-world lessons.
It is one of a number of
problems common to the
college and university
programs that graduate
about 200,000 new teachers
each year.
Despite progress in recent
years, too many programs are
characterized by low
academic entrance
standards; a failure to
incorporate research-based
instruction and certify that
graduates have mastered
their content areas; and an
overall inability to prepare
graduates for the
challenges of classrooms.
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Those shortcomings stand
out because first-year and
novice teachers are often
assigned to students with the
highest needs, and because
teachers are key to the
success of the more-rigorous
Common Core State
Standards.
It starts with making sure
that teachers are being
well-prepared for the actual
demands of the classroom,
including managing their
classrooms and serving
a wide range of students,
among them students with
disabilities and English
language learners, said Daria
Hall, Director of K-12
Education Policy at the Education Trust in Washington,
D.C.
“They’re figuring it out on the
job when these students only
have one year in that
classroom,” she said.
In June 2013 the National
Council for Teacher
Quality released the results
of its review of 2,420
elementary and secondary
education
teacher-preparation
programs at 1,130 colleges
and universities. Among its
findings:
The most frequent GPA
for programs was 2.5;
70 percent of elementary
programs were not
adequately preparing
effective reading
instructors;
78 percent of elementary
programs did not
adequately prepare
candidates to reach
struggling readers;
93 percent fail to ensure
a high-quality student
teaching experience;
77 percent give little or
no feedback on classroom
management strategies.
For New York: Just 24
percent of New York
programs fully screened
teacher candidates for
academic caliber, only 5
percent fully trained
candidates to teach reading
in accordance with state
student learning standards,
and 3 percent met the
standard for training
candidates to teach math in
line with state requirements.
“A novice teacher … may
have gotten a lot of
preparation on how to
develop a lesson plan, but
she didn’t get preparation of
how to differentiate that
lesson plan when she has
some students who are
coming in above grade level,
some students who are on
grade level and some
separates scores by subject
area, and more are requiring
an academic proficiency test
“So, all of a sudden, this great for teacher-program
lesson plan is falling apart in applicants.
practice because she was not
well prepared for the realities Efforts to ensure that teacher
candidates are trained in
of the classroom.”
science-based reading
In January NCTQ released its instruction and demonstrate
seventh annual State Teacher mastery of mathematics
content are also on the rise,
Policy Yearbook, a biennial
according to NCTQ.
report assessing states’
progress in meeting policy
“There’s actually a body of
goals.
science and evidence that we
should be relying on, and it
This year’s report found
states improving in terms
does not need to stifle
individual teacher creativity,”
of graduating well-prepared
Hall said. “If we know
teachers. More states are
something, we ought to be
requiring elementary
using that.”
teachers to pass a
multiple-subjects test that
students who are far below
grade level,” Hall said.
Florida earned the top
overall ranking, a B+. The
state requires elementary
teacher candidates to pass a
content test that has
individually scored subtests
in core content areas and to
pass a “science of reading
test,” which measures
knowledge of effective
reading instruction.
Secondary teacher
candidates must pass a
content test to teach a core
subject.
Florida also requires that
teaching programs address
effective reading instruction
and prohibits middle-school
teachers from teaching with
a K-8 generalist license.
Instead they must pass a
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