New York Connects Teacher Prep to Classroom Performance

This month New York City became the first district in the nation to release reports on how teacher preparation programs relate to performance in the classroom. The Teacher Preparation Program Reports, released by the NYC Department of Education, evaluated the twelve programs that supplied the most teachers to the NYC education system from 2008 to 2012. The scorecards aim to foster dialogue about teacher preparation and the system’s needs. New York City’s initiative provides a valuable model for other systems, and Massachusetts should consider conducting similar research into our own teacher prep programs. Given the critical role of teacher effectiveness in student learning, teacher preparation should be a high priority for any school system – and we need outcome data to steer programs in the right direction.

MBAE has been a consistent advocate for increased accountability for Massachusetts’ teacher prep programs, and supported the National Council on Teacher Quality (NCTQ) review of programs across the nation, including 35 institutions in Massachusetts. That report, as discussed previously, dismally concluded that teacher prep programs nationwide had become “an industry of mediocrity,” doing little to prepare teachers for the classroom. NCTQ’s research indicated an astonishing lack of relation nationwide between teachers’ preparation and student learning growth.

The New York data makes further investigation into Massachusetts’ programs all the more important. Obviously the point of teacher prep programs is to train effective teachers and therefore increase student learning – and it looks like not all programs are succeeding in that goal. NCTQ attributes the lack of correlation between teacher preparation and student learning to the huge variability of programs nationwide, many of them low quality. This makes it critical that Massachusetts administrators and education leaders have resources to help inform their hiring decisions of program graduates.

This accountability would aid hiring and ultimately help programs improve, by adding to the dialogue about teacher prep and spurring programs to adjust to the system’s needs. While the NCTQ report is a valuable resource, the researchers struggled to collect complete data from many programs due to lack of cooperation. Having a district or state-conducted study would provide outcome data and a more complete picture – and make it clear that the Commonwealth is serious about improving teacher preparation.

Gathering this data isn’t meant as a “gotcha-type thing,” as NYC schools Chancellor Dennis Walcott explained at a press conference. It’s a tool to steer conversations about teacher prep, and to help prep programs and school systems to work together to coordinate their programming and needs. Gathering additional data, as did NYC, on the number of teachers working in high-need schools and pursuing high-need licenses (e.g. math) would allow teacher prep programs to identify demand for certain curricula and focus their resources on developing these areas.

Teachers are our most valuable resource for our students’ education. Other states have recognized this and evaluated in-state prep programs, starting with Louisiana’s development of an assessment model in 2004. It’s time for Massachusetts to focus on providing teachers with the programming they need to be best prepared for their time in the classroom – and the way to motivate changes in programming is to have public data on the program results, so potential teachers know which programs to pick, administrators can consider programs when making hiring decisions, and the programs themselves can adjust to our state’s needs.