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Tuesday, April 20, 2010

Forthcoming NCTQ Report Already Controversial - Teacher Beat - Education Week

Forthcoming NCTQ Report Already Controversial - Teacher Beat - Education Week

Forthcoming NCTQ Report Already Controversial

The National Council on Teacher Quality hasn't released its big study of education schools in Texas just yet—it's due out later this month—but traditional prep programs in the Lone Star State are already on the defensive.
News reports about preliminary ratings have been trickling out since last fall. Now, NCTQ has an FAQ up on its Web site to put out its reasoning behind the report, its standards, and the methodology the council used to collect and analyze the information.
"During the process of conducting this study, quite a few schools started to ask questions about about what we were doing and why," said Rich Shea, the communications director for NCTQ and a former executive editor ofEdWeek's Teacher Magazine. "We wanted to clear the air before the report comes out. We're trying to be as transparent as possible."
In Texas, more than 70 ed school deans have already protested the study, according to this news report. And they object to the fact that the council had students provide some of the materials that were reviewed, such as course descriptions and syllabi. (The council's reviewers also went through the textbooks and readings used in each course.)
But NCTQ's main point, in its FAQ, is that state higher ed accreditation or national accreditation through the