Dive Brief:
- Following a national push to create high standards for future educators, Missouri teacher training programs are undergoing increased scrutiny.
- Critics of the sweeping overhauls argue that as the nation races to up the ante in the K-12 arena, data can sometimes get misinterpreted, with extra blame placed on educators, according to the St. Louis Post Dispatch.
- Those in favor of the changes argue that teacher training programs lack rigor, pointing to a recent report by the National Council on Teacher Quality for evidence. The study found that those in teacher training programs were more likely to graduate with better grades than their peers with other majors — the implication being that these programs are easy to cruise through.
Dive Insight:
So what changes are currently being rolled out by Missouri to ensure teacher training programs are up to code? For one, the Missouri Department of Elementary and Secondary Education is creating yearly report cards that will score every program in the state. It is also creating new, more rigorous assessments that educators must pass before receiving their certification. In the past, future educators only had to pass two exams to get their certification. Now, they'll have to pass four (and in some cases, six). The idea here, according to the Associated Press, is to give more opportunities to weed out ineffective teachers by providing more opportunities to fail. Of course, a big question reflecting current K-12 issues at large is whether or not a multiple choice exam is the best platform for measuring future educators' potential.
National discussions on teacher training programs have been lively since the U.S. Department of Education announced a new plan in December that would require all states to submit report cards for teacher preparation programs — ranging from traditional education schools to alternative certification routes like Teach for America — within their state lines. The proposal aims to curb the number of unprepared K-12 teachers.