Dallas Baptist University earns high marks for teacher prep program, Texas Tech criticized

Today the National Council on Teacher Quality released its examination on teacher preparation programs in which it reviewed 1,130 institutions based on various aspects including selectivity, the rigor of its course work based on a review of syllabus, student teaching evaluation forms and employer surveys. And the results weren’t so good.

Fewer than 10 percent of rated programs earned three or more stars on NCTQ’s four-star rating system with many programs earning zero to two stars.

“It is far too easy in the United States to get into a teacher preparation program,” said Kate Walsh, NCTQ president. “And three out of four programs are failing. This is news to no one.”

Only 13 institutions nationwide earned high ratings on two or more programs, including Dallas Baptist University, which received high marks for its undergraduate programs for elementary and secondary education.

Listed on its “consumer alert” list of the lowest-performing programs were Texas Tech University’s graduate program for elementary education and Angelo State University and Sul Ross State University’s undergraduate elementary education programs. That list also included the University of Houston-Downtown’s undergraduate program for secondary education and Wayland Baptist University’s undergraduate programs for both elementary and secondary education.

Walsh noted that many quality candidates were coming from those lowest rated schools. But she said overall, the institutions weren’t provided much “value-added”

The report has had mixed reviews and had significant push-back from universities who questioned the methodology and say the report is flawed. Many universities refused to cooperate with the study, and NCTQ had to sue some public universities to get access to data.

However, various state education leaders — including Texas education commissioner Michael Williams — are listed as endorsers of the report as are some area superintendents, Fort Worth’s Walter Dansby, Coppell’s Jeff Turner and Frisco’s Jeremy Lyon.

NCTQ spent eight years developing its standards and methodology for the report with 10 pilot studies, officials there said.

4 thoughts on “Dallas Baptist University earns high marks for teacher prep program, Texas Tech criticized

  1. Colleges of Education are just weak in general, and I say that as someone whose taken graduate level courses in education at both a Big 10 and Big East school.

  2. I for one think Colleges of Education are major assets to society. We need high quality teachers being educated at quality universities in order to better instruct our youth in a society that desperately needs great teachers. I respect the profession and I respect all Colleges of Education, thank you for what you do! Way to go DBU!

  3. Poor DISD …… From Dallas Blog “Another possibility for new teacher recruits is found in Agenda item C.1.c., a Memorandum of Understanding with Texas Tech University to participate in a grant funded online collaborative teacher preparation effort, which expands an experimental competency based school intervention model to Dallas using teacher interns mentored by current Dallas ISD teachers. The interns and their classrooms apparently will be video monitored and feedback will be provided by program facilitators”. Can Miles and the Human Capital (sounds like ownership to me) guy get anything right? Texas Tech program criticized and DISD just did a contract. God save our children’s education.