NCTQ Gets Caught in a Data Collecting Lie
The National Council on Teacher Quality (NCTQ) will be “grading” university-level, traditional teacher training programs again soon.
Last year, 2013, they released this report on June 18. They “grade” in a superficial manner, relying upon program artifacts to form skewed judgments– judgments that they publish in US News and World Report and that are meant to damage the credibility of traditional teacher training in favor of the privatization of American public education. Just consider who ends up on their advisory board. (For example, in a profound irony, NCTQ’s board even includes five-weeks-of-training, temporary-teacher organization Teach for America founder Wendy Kopp.)
Georgia State University Professor Emeritus of Science Education Jack Hassard had this to note about reading NCTQ’s “report” on traditional teacher training programs:
When you read the NCTQ report it seems as if teacher prep institutions are the enemy. …All of the data come from paper or online documents. None involved interviews or discussions with people at the teacher prep institutions. As hard as this is believe, it is the pattern that the NCTQ has followed since it was formed by the Thomas Fordham Institute. [Emphasis added.]
Passing maligned judgment is what NCTQ does. And because their reporting is done with much fanfare and is backed by reformer cash (Gates alone has paid NCTQ $11 million since 2005), the public views NCTQ as a credible source for information on teacher education.
NCTQ is the creation of the Fordham Institute, a pro-privatization organization that is pushing hard for the Common Core State Standards (CCSS), having itself takenNCTQ Gets Caught in a Data Collecting Lie | deutsch29: