Tennessee, one of the nation’s leaders in developing bold education reforms, is refining its methods for evaluating teacher preparation programs. Today, the Comptroller’s Offices of Research and Education Accountability released a legislative brief,A Review of Tennessee’s Report Card on the Effectiveness of Teacher Training Programs, which addresses those efforts.
The legislative brief reviews the Report Card on the Effectiveness of Teacher Training Programs (the report card), which is annually prepared by the Tennessee Higher Education Commission (THEC) to evaluate teacher preparation programs in Tennessee. The report card is required by state law to include information on each teacher training program’s graduates in three areas – teacher effectiveness as measured by Tennessee Value-Added Assessment System (TVAAS) scores, Praxis (teacher candidate test) results and data about teacher placement and retention.
The legislative brief includes a review of information in the current report card, as well as limitations of the report card, including:
- · The report card does not include teacher effectiveness data on all teachers in Tennessee classrooms.
- · Data for placement and retention rates do not include all teachers from Tennessee teacher preparation programs or any Tennessee teachers who graduated from out-of-state programs.
- · Teacher candidate Praxis test results provide little information for policymaking decisions since nearly every teacher candidate who takes the exams passes them.
The report card also does not evaluate the overall quality of or provide a ranking system for Tennessee’s teacher preparation programs. According to THEC, the “report card should not be used to rank programs. It does provide useful information for evaluating programmatic quality in specific areas.”
The legislative brief also outlines ongoing Race to the Top initiatives aimed at redesigning the report card. The purpose of the redesign is to ensure that teacher preparation programs have the data and information needed to evaluate their programs and work towards improvement. According to THEC, the redesigned report card is scheduled for release on Nov. 1.