Welcome
Yesterday, the University of North Carolina System unveiled their Educator Quality Dashboard, an online tool that allows users to examine teacher preparation, recruitment, retention, and performance.
In this week’s newsletter, I highlight some of the information available from the dashboard and what it tells us about teacher education and teacher quality in North Carolina.
CommenTerry
There are concerns that students who pursue careers in education represent the least capable of those students who pursue college degrees. As Thomas Sowell observed in Inside American Education, "Consistently, for decades, those college students who have majored in education have been among the least qualified of all college students, and the professors who taught them have been among the least respected by their colleagues elsewhere in the college or university." (p. 23). Sowell notes that, beginning in the early 20th century, those who have enrolled in teacher colleges have had lower average scores than their non-education counterparts on a variety of standardized measures, including ACT, SAT, and GRE examinations.
According to the UNC Educator Quality Dashboard admissions data for the 2011-2012 academic year (latest available), education graduates in most UNC System institutions had SAT scores that were below those of non-education graduates. UNC education students had an average SAT score of 1052 and non-education students scored 1096, a difference of 44 points. The gap between education and non-education graduates was widest at NC State (47 points), Fayetteville State (37 points), UNC Chapel Hill (35 points), UNC Charlotte (35 points), and UNC Wilmington (30 points).
On the other hand, education graduates from a handful of other UNC institutions had average SAT scores that exceed their non-education counterparts. At Elizabeth City State, the average SAT score was 865 for education graduates and 856 for all others. Average SAT scores for educators who graduated from North Carolina Central, UNC Greensboro, UNC Pembroke, and Western Carolina also exceeded non-education scores.
While focusing on score gaps is important, the average SAT scores themselves are also worth scrutinizing. In 2012, North Carolina’s mean total SAT score, which includes the math and reading sections, was 997. Elizabeth City State, Fayetteville State, NC A&T, NC Central, UNC Pembroke, and Winston Salem State fell short of the state average for education and non-education graduates alike.
By far, education graduates at Fayetteville State had the lowest average SAT score of any UNC institution. Their 836 average score was a staggering 161 points below the state average. Naturally, FSU does not require education majors to attain a minimum SAT score for entry into their undergraduate education program.
The above statistics suggest that our worst students are graduating from schools of education, and these teachers may be a drag on the performance of public school students. But there are a few important facts to consider.
First, programs with weak admission standards produce comparatively few teachers. According to federal Title II reports, Fayetteville State graduated 138 teachers in 2012, while Elizabeth City State had 55 graduates. In comparison, Appalachian State had nearly 550 graduates from its education school that year.
Of course, average test scores are just that — averages. Employed teachers are not necessarily representative of graduates from those institutions. One would hope that weaker teacher education graduates would be encouraged to pursue other occupations, with the exceptions of politics and air traffic controlling. Unfortunately, tenure protections and "pass the trash" practices may allow them to remain in the classroom indefinitely.
Furthermore, SAT scores are one of many indicators of ability. The N.C. Department of Public Instruction uses the North Carolina Educator Evaluation System to track the performance of teachers who graduate from public and private teacher education programs in the state. Additionally, UNC researchers include a Program Effectiveness Report on their dashboard. Both show that all education programs have strengths and weaknesses across school levels and subject areas.
Finally, only a fraction of North Carolina teachers are UNC System graduates. Of the 95,543 teachers employed in 2012, approximately 37 percent of them were trained in UNC System institutions. The remainder came from an alternative program, private college, or out-of-state university.
SAT scores for education school students have been on the rise in recent years. According to a 2014 article published by education researchers Dan Goldhaber and Joe Walch, "There was an upward shift in achievement for 2008 college graduates entering the teacher workforce the following school year." They speculate that the Great Recession may have drawn higher performing students to the teaching profession. Even though the quality of education school students may be on the upswing, there have been no apparent gains in student performance, suggesting that SAT scores may not be a reliable predictor of teacher quality.
Indeed, some North Carolina lawmakers recommend that the state pursue strategies, such as intensive recruitment efforts and college scholarship programs, that encourage outstanding high school graduates to enter the teaching profession. A better approach may be to award sizable retention bonuses to teachers with records of superior performance. After all, we may not be able to predict who will be a great teacher, but we have tools that appear to indicate who is a great teacher.
Acronym of the Week
SAT — [From Scholastic Aptitude Test to Scholastic Assessment Test to non-acronym.]
Quote of the Week
"Paradoxically, U.S. research on whether teachers’ academic backgrounds significantly predict classroom effectiveness is very mixed, and it suggests that merely sprinkling teachers with top-third academic credentials into our existing system will not by itself produce dramatic gains in student achievement."
– Byron Auguste, Paul Kihn, and Matt Miller, "Closing the talent gap: Attracting and retaining top-third graduates to careers in teaching," McKinsey & Company, September 2010, p. 5.
Click here for the Education Update archive.
You can unsubscribe to this and all future e-mails from the John Locke Foundation by clicking the "Manage Subscriptions" button at the top of this newsletter.
