A study by the National Council on Teacher Quality states that college students majoring in education “face easier coursework than do their peers in other departments,” and are “more likely to graduate with honors.”
The NCTQ, which historically has been critical of teacher preparation programs, says “a more-objective curriculum” for potential teachers would “better prepare them for careers in the classroom.”
The Chronicle of Higher Education reports:
“We’re out to improve training,” said Julie Greenberg, the report’s co-author and a senior policy analyst of teacher-preparation studies for the advocacy group. “We want teacher candidates to be more confident and competent when they get in the classroom so their students can benefit from that.”
The council examined more than 500 institutions and found that 30 percent of all their graduating students earned honors. But when it came to education programs, 44 percent of students did so.
The council also analyzed syllabi across multiple majors to determine whether their assignments were “criterion-referenced” (that is, explicitly knowledge- or skill-based) or “criterion-deficient” (that is, subjective). It found that criterion-deficient assignments were more common in teacher-preparation classes than in other disciplines.
As an example of an assignment that the group finds “criterion-deficient,” Ms. Greenberg described a “literacy-history timeline” task that prompts students to reflect on how their own reading skills developed.
Sharon Robinson, president of American Association of Colleges for Teacher Education, questions the study’s methodology.
She points out the study states grading standards for teacher candidates are “much lower than for students in other majors,” but with a seeming contradiction: a footnote which says “there is no evidence that lax grading standards are more of a problem in education programs than in other departments.”
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