Those were among the key recommendations made during a panel discussion hosted at the National Press Club Tuesday by the Howard University School of Education and the American Federation of Teachers.
A fundamental problem with the proposed regulations is that they rely in part on the standardized test scores of K-12 students, which are unreliable indicators of teacher effectiveness, said Arthur Hernandez, dean of the College of Education at Texas A&M University — Corpus Christi.
“Tests are very design specific,” Hernandez said during the discussion, titled “The Disappearing Act: The Impact of Federal Policy on Teacher Diversity and Teacher Preparation Programs.”
“If we use tests in a way that are other than the way they were intended, the results are suspect,” Hernandez said.
Hernandez said the proposed regulations were unfair because they judge teacher preparation programs on things they can’t control, such as whether graduates go on to teach and, if so, how long they stay in their jobs.
Sharon Robinson, president of the American Association of Colleges for Teacher Education, expressed similar concerns about the regulations, which call on states to develop “meaningful systems to identify high- and low-performing teacher preparation programs.”
