Statement of Cornelia M. Ashby
October 2002
In testimony before a House subcommittee, Cornelia Ashby, director of the General Accounting Office's (GAO) education division, said that teacher education programs are taking advantage of the Department of Education's broad definitions of "graduate" and "pass rate" to escape the accountability provisions of the 1998 Higher Education Act (HEA). According to Ashby, education schools in some states are reporting inflated pass rates of up to 100 percent on teacher licensure exams by not counting as "graduates" those students who had completed all required coursework but failed the subsequent exam. The GAO also looked at the ways in which institutions and states have creatively interpreted the terms "waiver" and "alternative route to certification." Overall, the GAO deemed the information collected and reported under HEA's accountability provisions of inaccurate and inadequate to assess the quality of teacher training programs and the qualifications of current teachers. The GAO was also asked to evaluate whether the Teacher Quality Enhancement grants awarded under Title II of the HEA have improved the quality of teaching. GAO found that most of these grants are being used to reform certification requirements, to provide professional development to current teachers, and to recruit new teachers to the profession, but that it's too soon to know whether these programs are having any positive effect on teacher quality. For more, see http://www.gao.gov/new.items/d03197t.pdf.
