Teacher Preparation Program Accountability:
Florida
Delivering Well Prepared Teachers Policy
Analysis of Florida's policies
Florida is on the right track to hold teacher preparation programs accountable for its graduates.
Educator preparation programs will be required to collect and report data on the performance of students who are assigned to in-field program completers on statewide assessments using results of student learning growth formula and of program completers' annual evaluations.
Florida also requires that, for approval, programs must collect data regarding placement and retention rates of program completers. Additional data may include program completers' and employers' satisfaction. Prior to program completion, teacher candidates must also demonstrate the ability to positively affect student learning growth in the area of program concentration during the field experience.
Also, preparation programs must guarantee the high quality of its program completers during the two years following completion or initial certification, whichever comes first. Any program completer who is employed during this two-year period in a Florida public school, and earns an evaluation result of developing or unsatisfactory on a district's evaluation system, must be provided additional training by the program at no additional cost to the teacher.
It appears that Florida now applies a specific cut-off score for continued program approval, based on placement rates, retention rates, student performance, evaluations of completers and, in some cases, production of completers in critical shortage areas.
The state posts an annual report on its website that includes completer, employer and mentor surveys, as well as demographic comparisons. These reports are broken down by preparation program type: Initial Teacher Preparation programs (ITPs) at state universities, ITPs at state colleges, and ITPs at private colleges and universities, as well as two alternative preparation program routes; Professional Development Certification Programs and Educator Preparation Institutes.
In Florida, the state maintains full authority over teacher preparation program approval. The state also conducts its own program reviews.
Recommendations for Florida
As a result of Florida's strong teacher preparation program accountability policies, no recommendations are provided.
State response to our analysis
Florida was helpful in providing NCTQ with the facts necessary for this analysis.
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Florida
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Delivering Well Prepared Teachers
- Admission into Teacher Preparation
- Elementary Teacher Preparation
- Elementary Teacher Preparation in Reading Instruction
- Elementary Teacher Preparation in Mathematics
- Early Childhood
- Middle School Teacher Preparation
- Secondary Teacher Preparation
- Secondary Teacher Preparation in Science and Social Studies
- Special Education Teacher Preparation
- Special Education Preparation in Reading
- Assessing Professional Knowledge
- Student Teaching
- Teacher Preparation Program Accountability
Expanding the Pool of Teachers
Identifying Effective Teachers
- State Data Systems
- Evaluation of Effectiveness
- Frequency of Evaluations
- Tenure
- Licensure Advancement
- Equitable Distribution
Retaining Effective Teachers
Exiting Ineffective Teachers
Pensions
Research rationale
States need to hold
programs accountable for the quality of their graduates.
The state should examine a number of factors when measuring
the performance of and approving teacher preparation programs. Although the
quality of both the subject-matter preparation and professional sequence is
crucial, there are also additional measures that can provide the state and the
public with meaningful, readily understandable indicators of how well programs
are doing when it comes to preparing teachers to be successful in the
classroom.
States have made great strides in building data systems with
the capacity to provide evidence of teacher performance. These same data can be used to provide
objective evidence of the performance of teacher preparation programs. States should make such data, as well as
other objective measures that go beyond licensure pass rates, a central
component of their teacher preparation program approval processes, and they
should establish precise standards for performance that are more useful for
accountability purposes.
Teacher Preparation Program Accountability: Supporting Research
For
discussion of teacher preparation program approval see Andrew Rotherham and S. Mead's
chapter "Back to the Future: The History and Politics of State Teacher Licensure and Certification." in A Qualified Teacher in Every
Classroom. (Harvard Education Press, 2004).
For
evidence of how weak state efforts to hold teacher preparation programs
accountable are, see data on programs identified as low-performing in the U.S.
Department of Education,The Secretary's
Seventh Annual Report on Teacher Quality 2010 at: http://www2.ed.gov/about/reports/annual/teachprep/t2r7.pdf.
For
additional discussion and research of how teacher education programs can add
value to their teachers, see NCTQ's, Teacher Prep Review, available at
http://www.nctq.org/p/edschools.
For
a discussion of the lack of evidence that national accreditation status
enhances teacher preparation programs' effectiveness, see D. Ballou and M.
Podgursky, "Teacher Training and Licensure: A Layman's Guide,"
in Better Teachers, Better Schools, eds. Marci Kanstoroom and Chester
E. Finn., Jr., (Washington, D.C.: Thomas B. Fordham Foundation, 1999), pp. 45-47. See
also No Common Denominator: The Preparation of Elementary Teachers in Mathematics by America's Education Schools(NCTQ, 2008) and What Education Schools Aren't Teaching About Reading and What Elementary Teachers Aren't Learning (NCTQ, 2006).
See NCTQ,
Alternative Certification Isn't Alternative (2007) regarding the dearth of accountability data states
require of alternate route programs.