National Council on Teacher Quality's Initiative to Fix Teacher Education: Rank, Report, Repeat

• In Event: Fixing Teacher Preparation: Analysis and Critique of Major Reform Initiatives

Abstract

Problem and Significance

For the past 30 years, education reforms in many parts of the world have applied business concepts (e.g., standards, measurable outcomes, choice) to public education systems (Mehta, 2013; Sahlberg, 2014), and new actors such as private foundations have promoted education policies and practices driven by a market-based and consumer-oriented approach (Zeichner & Pena-Sandoval, 2010). One new actor in the teacher education world is the National Council on Teacher Quality (NCTQ), which is an education reform advocacy organization (Ravitch, 2012). This paper focuses on the debate around NCTQ’s Teacher Prep Review, which uses standards-based evaluation to assess the quality of preparation programs and then publicly rank them on a yearly basis (Greenberg, Putman, & Walsh, 2014). The purpose of this paper is to examine the rhetoric of this initiative, the scope and depth of its influence, and the debate surrounding it.
Perspectives, Modes of Inquiry, and Data Sources
This paper uses the notion of policy dimensions to examine NCTQ as a national reform initiative and also conducts frame analysis by reviewing the texts of identified materials to investigate how teacher preparation’s problems and solutions are constructed (see Paper 1). As a result of targeted web searches since June 2014, we identified 147 items, which represent diverse positions; these were produced by NCTQ in the process of its reviews or were generated in response to the reviews. (See Table 3.)
Interpretation and Conclusions
Our analysis resulted in three findings. First, our policy dimensions analysis revealed that although relatively new and without formal jurisdiction, NCTQ is a powerful player in teacher preparation reform. Aligned with the accountability, competition, and choice-based reform movement globally, NCTQ’s initiative has had a noticeable influence on teacher education at national, state, and program levels. Second, using frame analysis, we identified NCTQ’s key diagnostic frame: declining academic achievement in the U.S. is the reason for the country's recent drop in global economic competitiveness, and a serious shortage of effective teachers is the cause of that decline. A key assumption behind NCTQ’s diagnosis of this problem is that the country’s ineffective teacher work force is the result of inadequate teacher preparation (Greenberg, McKee, & Walsh, 2013). Third, NCTQ’s prognosis for the teacher preparation quality problem is based on a theory of change centered on accountability and transparency with the goal of creating a consumer-oriented solution. NCTQ posits that program rankings made public to prospective "consumers" of preparation will force poorly rated programs to align with their criteria. We identified four key controversies about NCTQ’s reviews: arbitrary standards (e.g., Pallas, 2013), narrow definitions of knowledge, learning, and teaching (International Reading Association, 2013), flawed methodology (Eduventures, 2013), and debate over whether the approach actually leads to meaningful change (e.g., Greene, 2013).
Contributions and Significance
NCTQ’s review of teacher preparation is a consumer-driven, standards-based reform effort. This paper explores its influence on the program selection decisions of aspiring teachers, the curricular and pedagogical decisions of preparation programs, and the discourse surrounding teacher quality and teacher education quality in the U.S..

Authors

• Megina Baker, Boston College

• Molly Cummings Carney, Boston College

• Wen-Chia Claire Chang, Boston College