‘U.S. News’ to Start New Rankings of Teacher Ed Programs

From Inside Higher Ed

U.S. News & World Report has announced that it will start a new system of ranking teacher education programs, largely using the methodology of the National Council on Teacher Quality, and focusing on such measures as the selectivity of the admissions process, how well teachers are trained to teach certain subjects, and the quality of classroom management skills. The council’s full methodology may be found here. The council did a preliminary ranking last year of Texas teacher education programs – and some of those programs questioned the methodology (although others praised the study for raising key issues). Sharon P. Robinson, president of the American Association of Colleges for Teacher Education, released a statement saying that the group would “welcome and support” good research to evaluate the quality of teacher education programs. But she also said that “we have continually been disappointed with NCTQ’s methodologies. NCTQ has produced several reports over the years focused on measuring program inputs through public document reviews rather than measuring the actual outputs of programs through sound research methods…. Should the U.S. News & World Report/NCTQ project continue to employ NCTQ’s standard methodologies, it will undoubtedly only result in creating more questions for policymakers and the public rather than provide necessary accurate and meaningful answers about preparation programs’ effectiveness.”