Assessing and Evaluating Teacher Prep Programs
Effective teaching has long been an issue of national concern,
but in recent years focus on the effectiveness of programs to
produce high-quality teachers has sharpened. Long-standing
achievement gaps persist despite large-scale legislative changes
at the federal and state levels, and American students
continue to show poorer performance on international tests
compared to peers in other developed nations. These and other
factors have resulted in the creation of new accreditation
standards for teacher education programs. These
standards, developed by the Council for the Accreditation of
Education Programs (CAEP), require teacher education programs to
demonstrate their graduates are capable of having strong positive
effects on student learning.
The data and methods required to evaluate the effectiveness of
teacher education programs ought to be informed by
well-established scientific methods that have evolved in the
science of psychology, which at its core addresses
the measurement of behavior.