For years, the National Council on Teacher Quality (NCTQ) has released reports that rate and compare hundreds of teacher preparation programs across the country. These reviews have examined both graduate and undergraduate programs for elementary, secondary, and special education teachers.
NCTQ’s newest report looks at traditional undergraduate programs that develop secondary school teachers. Though quality preparation is vital for all educators, the high-level academic content that middle and high school teachers must deliver to their students makes strong preparation essential. As the report authors note, the vast majority of Americans depend on their high school education to give them a knowledge base across many subject areas that they won’t go on to major or work in. Without a firm grasp of subject content and how to convey it effectively to their pupils, high school teachers are unable to impart this essential knowledge, the result being a less knowledgeable society.
The new report examined 717 programs across all 50 states and D.C. on a variety of standards in three main areas: knowledge (content preparation in the sciences and the social sciences[1]), practice (subject-specific instructional methods courses, student teaching, and classroom management), and admissions selectivity. NCTQ then assigned percentile scores for each program for which the analysts had access to sufficient evidence to review all key standards.
How did Ohio’s programs fare? Some were simply outstanding. You can examine the rankings for all of Ohio’s programs here, but here’s a look at the programs that fell into the top quartile nationally:
|
National percentile |
Program |
|
99 |
|
|
94 |
|
|
94 |
|
|
89 |
|
|
89 |
|
|
86 |
|
|
86 |
|
|
83 |
|
|
81 |
|
|
76 |
Of the approximately 600 programs that NCTQ ultimately ranked, Ohio Wesleyan was one of just six to earn a 99th percentile ranking. Only two of Ohio’s top ten programs are public (Miami University and Kent State) and most of the others are relatively small: seven enroll no more than 3000 undergraduates across all majors. Also noteworthy is that each of the ten has at least one additional teacher-prep program (typically its undergraduate elementary program) that NCTQ ranked highly, suggesting that their success in preparing prospective educators isn’t isolated to the secondary level.
Here’s a look at Ohio’s overall distribution of percentile rankings:
NCTQ also broke down how each program performed on each of the standards and assigned them letter grades. Here’s how Ohio programs fared on several of those.
Content Mastery
To earn an A, candidates graduate from the program only after demonstrating reasonable knowledge of the subjects they will teach—either through state licensure tests[2] or by successfully passing a sufficient number of courses in the subject area. In Ohio, 39 programs earned an A in science. In the social sciences, however, only 20 Ohio programs earned an A. (All but one of the Ohio programs that earned As in social sciences also did so in science.)
Many states permit teacher candidates to earn an “umbrella” license for science and social studies based on a single test that broadly assesses a variety of subjects instead of deeply assessing one. For example, a prospective science teacher could be licensed to teach biology, physics, and chemistry—subjects with very different knowledge requirements—after passing a general science licensure test that’s far less in-depth than an individual biology or chemistry test would be. The report observes that when programs prepare teachers for all subjects and a general certification, there is “a big drop in the quality of preparation.” Additionally, the fact that more states use multiple-subject certifications for social studies than for science may explain the national gap between the number of A grades for the science content standard versus the social studies content standard.
Ohio is one of the states that permits multiple-subject certification. Tests for specific disciplines are offered, but so are integrated science and integrated social studies tests that cover a wide range of content from multiple disciplines. To be fair, the reasons for integrated licensure tests have some merit: Many districts have tight budgets, and hiring a teacher who can teach multiple subjects is far most cost effective than hiring multiple teachers for multiple subjects. It’s also impractical (and expensive) to ask teachers to take multiple licensure tests or to have multiple majors in college. To circumvent these issues, NCTQ offers a solid solution that’s already in place in Missouri and could easily be adopted by Ohio—maintain multi-subject tests, but require that each subject’s subtest is graded separately. In order to obtain licensure, prospective teachers must earn a passing score on each subtest, rather than a passing score on the test as a whole. Additional options include requiring prospective teachers to earn at least fifty credit hours across the sciences or social studies and requiring candidates to minor in at least two of the subjects they will be licensed to teach.
Student teaching and classroom management
Another standard evaluated by the report was the quality of student-teaching experiences. NCTQ considered two elements: 1) The prep program’s policy regarding how often student teachers must be observed and the quality of those observations, and 2) the program’s role in deciding which teachers are qualified to serve as “cooperating teachers,” i.e. the instructors with whom the future teachers will apprentice. Nationally, just 6 percent of programs did well on both elements. In Ohio, only three institutions met both standards and earned an A for student teaching: Central State, Ohio Wesleyan, and Wright State. Closely related to student teaching is classroom management—a challenge for many new teachers. NCTQ found that fewer than half of teacher preparation programs even evaluated student teachers on their ability to apply effective management strategies. In Ohio, only two programs earned As here: Miami of Ohio and the University of Dayton.
Admissions standards
The final area tackled within this report is admissions selectivity—a teacher prep program’s screening of admissions candidates for academic ability. A total of thirteen Ohio programs earned an A on this standard, with an additional thirteen earning a B. NCTQ pointed out that while many programs argue against selectivity because of diversity concerns—claiming that raising standards will make it harder to admit minority candidates—nearly half of the most selective programs in the country are both selective and diverse.[3] Five Ohio programs fit this bill: John Carroll University, Miami of Ohio, University of Cincinnati, University of Dayton, and Xavier University.
* * *
Good news as far as it goes, yes, but quite a few Ohio programs have serious work to do. State policy makers can help by addressing flaws in the licensure system, and districts can commit to working closely with programs to ensure quality student teaching experiences. But Ohio should be proud of its traditional undergraduate programs that are doing an excellent job of preparing secondary candidates for the challenges of teaching. Kudos especially to Ohio Wesleyan, Miami of Ohio, and the University of Dayton—universities that earned scores in the 90th percentile for both secondary and elementary undergraduate rankings.
[1] NCTQ opted to focus only on science and social studies because their previous reports indicated that around 99 percent of institutions successfully prepared ELA and math teacher candidates in their respective subject areas.
[2] These tests are only counted if NCTQ determines that they are “of sufficient quality.”
[3] NCTQ explains that programs are diverse if they “maintain or exceed the level of racial diversity of the entire institution or the state’s teacher workforce.”
