Undergraduate Teacher-Training in Texas Come Up Short

Many Teacher-Training Programs in Texas Come Up Short

By Katherine Mangan

4/30/10

The National Council on Teacher Quality release on Thursday a scathing critique of teacher-education programs across Texas.

The two-year study of 67 undergraduate schools of education in the Lone Star State finds that many fail to provide adequate teacher training in science, mathematics, and reading. The nonpartisan research and advocacy group, which has issued reports critical of training programs in other states, also concluded that teacher-education requirements vary across Texas, "with no apparent rationale."

Among its findings:

• Sixty-three of the 67 schools (94 percent) lack "proper content in mathematics that elementary teachers need."
• Eighty-four percent of the schools inadequately prepare middle-school teacher candidates in the subjects they will be teaching.
• Three-quarters of the schools ignore a state regulation that requires them to train elementary-school teacher candidates in effective methods of reading instruction.
  

read on... http://www.nctq.org/edschoolreports/texas/docs/report.pdf

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Panel Finds No Favorite in Teacher-Prep Pathways

After six years of study, a national panel of prominent scholars has concluded that there’s not enough evidence to suggest that teachers who take alternative pathways into the classroom are any worse­—or any better­—than those who finish traditional college-based preparation programs.

The full article from Education Week can be view here.

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Alternate Path for Teachers Gains Ground

Alternate Path for Teachers Gains Ground

Not long ago education schools had a virtual monopoly on the teaching profession. They dictated how and when people became teachers by offering coursework, arranging apprenticeships and granting master’s degrees.

Dan Cosgrove, in his second year with Teach for America, in his classroom at Leadership Prep in Bedford-Stuyvesant.

But now those schools are feeling under siege. Officials in Washington, D.C., and New York State, where some of the best-known education schools are located, have stepped up criticisms that the schools are still too focused on theory and not enough on the craft of effective teaching.

The entire article can be read here.

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