If you go by the researchers, teacher prep programs that got higher overall ratings from NCTQ’s Teacher Prep Review produce graduates that are “no more or less effective at raising student test scores.”
“In some cases graduates of programs with higher scores did better but in some they did worse,” said Gary T. Henry, Professor of Public Policy and Education at Vanderbilt University and one of three authors of the study.
Henry was referring to the scores that programs got on the NCTQ Teacher Prep Review, which seeks to assess the quality of the nation’s programs that prepare educators at the K-12 level using standards in areas that range from selection criteria to early reading to classroom management, lesson planning and assessment.
Overall, the review found most teacher prep programs were in the lowest program score category, or Level 1, with less than 7 percent earning a program rating in the highest level category, or Level 3. The implication was that graduates from low-performing programs would be less effective at raising student performance, but the latest study uncovered little evidence that such is the case.
“In most, there was no difference,” Henry said. “The last finding suggests that higher NCTQ ratings do not lead to better teachers or more student learning.”
That assertion is based on the finding that classroom teachers working in North Carolina who graduated from programs that meet NCTQ’s standards were more effective at raising students’ test scores in 15 out of 124 comparisons — or statistical tests — and less effective in five comparisons, and no different in 104 comparisons.
