Building Better Teachers

NCTQ Teacher
Prep Review

 

The public has the right to know

NCTQ Teacher Prep Review is a rating of the nation's teacher training programs that will be published each year by U.S. News and World Report. The first ratings will be released in June 2013.

We are undertaking the Review for three important reasons:

  1. Aspiring teachers have the right to know which institutions are doing the best job training teachers, particularly in light of ever-increasing tuition bills.
  2. School districts looking to hire new teachers have the right to know which institutions are doing the best job.
  3. The public has the right to know how public school teachers are trained. After all, all of these institutions, even the privates, are publicly approved to prepare public school teachers.

We're rating institutions on four basic measures of quality:

  1. Admitting talented candidates,
  2. Ensuring that candidates learn their subject matter,
  3. Providing opportunities for candidates to get plenty of good practice, and
  4. Looking at program outcomes to make sure they are continually improving.

In order to conduct our evaluation, NCTQ needs basic course materials from these institutions — the same materials students are routinely provided. We are primarily looking for certain course syllabi and materials relating to the student teaching program, such as student teaching handbooks.

Unfortunately, some institutions do not want the NCTQ Review to proceed. They've set up roadblocks and are refusing to share materials. In response to our open records requests, some public institutions are forcing NCTQ, a nonprofit organization, to buy basic documents, charging fees that far exceed any reasonable expense (sometimes at an effective rate of thousands of dollars per hour). In a few states, we have had to turn to the legal system to force institutions to comply with sunshine laws. Read more.

The Review has already been endorsed by 17 state school chiefs, dozens of school superintendents and over 50 education, children, business, and civil rights advocacy groups, across 38 states. They're all committed to improving public education and the teaching profession in the United States. We're funded by 58 local and national foundations who span the political spectrum while sharing a common vision for strong public education.

We're keeping no secrets; everything you want to know can be found on our website.

We are appealing to students on public and private campuses to help by sharing these basic materials in order that we can produce a fair and valid rating of program quality. We are paying stipends of $25 to $200 for the materials we need (much less than what many institutions are effectively charging).

If you can't help us directly, send this notice on to three friends. Like us on Facebook. Tweet using the hashtag #teacherprep. See which institutions we're rating and still need documents from.

To help or for more information, contact:
Stephanie Zoz
szoz@nctq.org
202-393-0020 x116