Quality teachers: Schools must look beyond education colleges

Last month, the National Council on Teacher Quality released its first comprehensive review of U.S. colleges of education. The study, as reported by The Wall Street Journal, assigned ratings for more than 1,200 programs at 608 institutions, which account for 72 percent of education graduates across the nation.

The results weren’t pretty. Ratings ranged from one to four stars, and only four programs received four stars. All four programs were for future high school teachers. Fewer than 10 percent earned three or more stars, while 14 percent got zero stars, with graduate programs among the worst performers, according to the Journal.

Nevada’s public colleges bore out that fact: The secondary graduate programs at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas and at the University of Nevada, Reno got zero stars, as did UNLV’s special education graduate program. Nevada State College’s elementary undergraduate program also received zero stars. No state program scored higher than 1.5 stars, a mark achieved by UNLV’s secondary undergraduate program and UNR’s elementary graduate program.

Among the major issues cited by the council: lax admission standards to education colleges (a 2.5 high school grade-point average gets you into a typical undergraduate program) and a lack of classroom management skills and subject knowledge.

What this report underscores, particularly here in Nevada, is the importance of alternate teacher training programs, such as Teach For America — which, despite its record of success, was denied state funding by the Nevada Legislature this year. Gov. Brian Sandoval wanted $2 million to place 100 TFA teachers in Clark County classrooms over the next two years.

Fortunately, Teach For America is not dead. In fact, it’s so important that businesses and local education advocates are working to raise money privately. The reason: TFA takes high-achieving, highly motivated college graduates from areas other than education programs and trains them to become teachers in at-risk schools, particularly in high-need subject areas such as math and science.

TFA is just one potential avenue to improve the quality of teaching. Given the current economy, there are many highly educated, well-qualified professionals who are interested in giving back to the community by becoming teachers. And they would, if not for protectionist licensing barriers and education college course requirements — which the National Council on Teacher Quality study clearly shows aren’t effective anyway.

Certainly, some great teachers come from these programs, nationwide and here in Nevada. But, if nothing else, the council report shows that colleges of education are not producing enough excellent teachers. Weak student achievement data support this conclusion. Research has shown that teacher knowledge of subject matter is the most important factor in student achievement. So why won’t this country’s public schools allow a chemistry major to teach chemistry?

If we’re serious about making our schools better, we’ll embrace the idea that great teachers can come from a variety of scholastic backgrounds, and as a result, they should be sought out everywhere — not just education colleges.