Over the course of 2014, a series of reports from the National Council on Teacher Quality (NCTQ) spotlighted some serious issues with education schools in Ohio. The Buckeye State boasts performance reports that analyze teacher preparation programs, but these reports merely show how little is expected of candidates prior to their acceptance into a teacher preparation program. Furthermore, Ohio doesn’t have minimum standards or clear consequences for poor programs. NCTQ is right that our teacher preparation programs need to get better in two key ways: improving candidate selection and strengthening teacher training. Here’s how.
Candidate selection
Right now, Ohio sets a low bar for admission into ed schools. Countries with the highest scores on PISA[1]—like Singapore and Finland—restrict admissions into teacher preparation programs to only their best students. In fact, in Finland, becoming a teacher is such a competitive process that only about one in every ten applicants will be accepted to study to become a primary school teacher. This is similar to what Teach For America does: In 2014, more than 50,000 people applied to join TFA, and only 5,300 were admitted—an 11 percent acceptance rate.
The intense screening process is designed to select only the candidates who are most likely to succeed. In Finland, for example, teacher candidates are chosen based on exam results, their high school diploma, and their out-of-school activities. They then complete a written exam on assigned pedagogy books, participate in an observed clinical activity that mirrors school situations, and undergo an interview. And this is simply to enter the teacher preparation program. Having been through the TFA process myself, I can attest that it is much the same.
According to Ohio law, no such screening process is required for the state’s teacher prep programs. Certain ed schools may have GPA requirements for their teacher candidates (Miami of Ohio, whose programs are ranked as some of the best in the country, requires a minimum 2.75 GPA for admission into their cohorts), but GPA isn’t everything. It certainly shouldn’t be the only thing. Rigorous standardized test score requirements, interviews, sample lessons that help trained observers gauge whether candidates already have an aptitude for the less tangible aspects of effective teaching—these are important factors in determining whether an applicant should be accepted into a teacher prep program and trusted with the responsibility of educating children. Unfortunately, they’re also aspects that the state of Ohio—and therefore teacher training programs in Ohio—don’t require.
Candidate training
Simply raising the standards for acceptance into teacher prep programs isn’t enough. Ohio colleges of education also need to strengthen their program design. NCTQ’s 2014 Teacher Prep Review (see here for Ohio-specific findings), a national ranking of teacher preparation programs, reveals that far too many Ohio teacher preparation programs miss the mark. Eleven programs did receive top rankings (see here and here), including Miami University of Ohio’s undergraduate and graduate programs and Ohio State’s graduate programs. That being said, twenty fully evaluated programs earned scores too low to even qualify for a ranking. These include undergraduate and graduate elementary programs at Cleveland State, the undergraduate secondary program at Ohio University, and both graduate programs at Kent State. In addition, thirty-one programs could not be fully evaluated due to insufficient data.
Get beyond these headlines and examine the specific criteria NCTQ used to judge programs and the findings are even more troublesome. When it comes to training teacher candidates on lesson planning, for example, not a single program meets the standard. In classroom management techniques, only 11 percent of programs meet the standard (to a maddening degree, teacher education programs still resist incorporating into their programs anything that feels like “training”). In terms of training candidates on how to assess learning and use data to drive instruction, a whopping 77 percent of programs only partly meet the standard—not a single program meets the standard completely. Only 10 percent of programs meet the standard for ensuring that teaching candidates have a strong student-teaching experience. In other words, low expectations don’t stop after selection—they continue into training.
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Teaching is hard, and too many first-year teachers struggle with the demands of the classroom. Given the NCTQ’s findings about Ohio teacher preparation programs, it isn’t a stretch to think that lackluster selection and preparation is the reason why. If Ohio wants to attract the best and brightest to its schools, teacher prep programs need to become as prestigious as medical and law schools—or at least as prestigious as Teach For America. There are other important incentives to keep in mind (TFA does provide additional benefits), but raising the bar for selection and making the programs as rigorous as possible is the key first step.
