This is a sample of NCTQ's responses to frequently asked questions (FAQ). View Full FAQNCTQ's Role
If an education school meets state standards needed for program approval and is accredited, why do NCTQ's ratings matter?
By design, both program approval standards set by states and accreditation standards set by private organizations provide no indication of quality of one institution's preparation relative to another. This leaves consumers—aspiring teachers and schools which hire teachers—in the dark.
Further, fewer than a handful of the 1,400 schools of education in the country have ever lost program approval by their states or had their regional accreditation withdrawn. Unless one believes that all 1,400 schools are performing at a satisfactory level, it is clear that state standards and accrediting bodies set the bar unacceptably low.
NCTQ's Methodology
How can NCTQ just use syllabi to decide if a course meets its standards?
First, NCTQ never looks at just a syllabus when rating a course. We also have experts read and analyze every text that is required for a course, as well as any "reading packets" put together by the instructor. In college reading courses alone, NCTQ has reviewed over 700 texts.
Second, the concept of using syllabi to judge quality is certainly not unique to NCTQ. When professors develop their syllabi, they do so not just for the benefit of their students, but also to provide assurances to their departments about what material they intend to cover. In many cases, syllabi must be turned over to states and/or accrediting bodies for approval purposes.
NCTQ's Standards
Regarding NCTQ's standard on admissions, you hold up as models countries that are pickier about teacher candidates. But those countries don't have the same democratic philosophy as the United States.
Our democratic philosophy seems much more alive at the doors of education schools than at the doors of our K-12 schools, with the result that it doesn't have a democratic effect at all. You won't find high performing school districts willing to take in teachers who were themselves poor students and have demonstrably low academic performance.
Where are those teachers teaching? It is poor and minority children who are assigned the teachers with the weakest academic backgrounds. The notion that academic background shouldn't matter all that much has had disastrous consequences for poor and minority children, the ones who are most in need of a high-quality education. We tend to be okay with letting low performing teachers into the profession as long as they don't teach our own kids.
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