NCTQ-USN Teacher Prep Review

5 Replies to “NCTQ-USN Teacher Prep Review”

1. Even better, skip NCTQ and read Bruce Baker:

   But, given that NCTQ has just come out with their really, really big new ratings of teacher preparation institutions… with their primary objective of declaring teacher prep by traditional colleges and universities in the U.S. a massive failure, I figured I should once again revisit why the NCTQ ratings are, in general, methodologically inept & vacuous and more specifically wholly inconsistent with NCTQ’s own primary emphasis that teacher quality and qualifications matter perhaps more than anything else in schools and classrooms.

   https://schoolfinance101.wordpress.com/2013/06/18/the-central-hypocrisy-of-the-nctq-teacher-prep-institution-ratings/

   Also, there is plenty of predictable responses to the NRA study showing gun control laws actually increase violence.

2. So, who or what replaces the inept and duplicitous NCTQ? Under whose authority?

3. Jeffrey,

   I would urge that it be an organization authorized by the same official entity that blessed the efforts of NCTQ.

4. Richard Allington is a well-known scholar of reading. These are his comments on the NCTQ report in teacher preparation institutions.

   “Imagine a person reviews the restaurants in your city by examining the menus they found on-line. Never tasted the food or ever visited any restaurant. How seriously would you take the reviews that were written? That is the NCTQ report on colleges of education. Had NCTQ not already developed a reputation for sloppy “research” perhaps ed schools would have cooperated. Personally, I’m glad they didn’t.”

   He could add that not only did they not eat, they did not check to see if the menus accurately reflect what is offered.

   So, one can toss Kate Walsh in with Michelle Rhee and Timothy Daly who have a dislike for what is true.

5. Facts are such pesky things:

   Teachers College at Columbia University, didn’t receive a summary rating of zero to four stars in the report, but the NCTQ website does rate some features of our teacher-prep programs. I was very gratified to see that our undergraduate elementary and secondary teacher-education programs received four out of four stars for student selectivity. Those programs are really tough to get into—nobody gets admitted. And that’s not hyperbole; the programs don’t exist.

   MORE COVERAGE
   After years of reform, California education schools fall short on new ranking system

   OPINION: The growing movement to get better teachers into the classroom

   That’s one of the dangers of rating academic programs based solely on documents such as websites and course syllabi. You might miss something important—like “Does this program exist?”

   Today, the editorial board of the Washington Post praised the NCTQ ratings, while blaming ed schools for why “many schools are struggling and why America lost its preeminent spot in the world for education.” Sunspots too, I suppose.

   I look forward to the Post instructing their restaurant reviewer, Tom Sietsema, to rate restaurants based on their online menus rather than several in-person visits to taste the food.

   Aaron Pallas
   http://eyeoned.org/?p=478