Policymakers hoping to improve teacher preparation in the U.S. have been stymied by a dearth of nationally representative data, as was pointed out in a 2010 report from the National Academy of Science, Preparing Teachers: Building Evidence for Sound Policy.

The Educational Policy Center at Michigan State University took an important step toward more informed teacher preparation policy in June 2011. It invited policymakers and scholars from around the nation to Washington, DC to hear and discuss presentations on two new nationally representative studies of teacher preparation. One study concerns the preparation of mathematics teachers, the other teacher preparation in early literacy.

A summary of those proceedings are now available on the Education Policy Center website.

The studies are:

1) Breaking the Cycle: An International Comparison of U.S. Mathematics Teacher Preparation, Initial Findings from the Teacher Education and Development Study in Mathematics (U.S. TEDS-M) in the United States (Principal Investigator is Michigan State University Professor and EPC Co-Director William Schmidt).

2) Study of Teacher Preparation in Early Reading Instruction, prepared for the Institute of Education Sciences (IES) by the National Center of Education Evaluation and Regional Assistance and the Association for Institutional Research (AIR).

Together, the two studies mark the first uses of nationally representative data to begin to answer important questions concerning teacher preparation in the United States.

Some of the key points emphasized during the workshop:

• Future teachers in the U.S. have weak training in mathematics and are not prepared to teach the demanding math curriculum we need as a nation, particularly in light of the widespread adoption of the Common Core State Standards in Mathematics. Elementary and middle school teachers scored in the middle of the pack among their international peers on measures of mathematical content and mathematics pedagogy.
• Early childhood pre-service teacher candidates report little to moderate emphasis on the essential components of reading during their preparation coursework, with somewhat more emphasis during their field experiences. A majority of the candidates feel prepared to teach the essential components of reading, even though on average they answered correctly only 57 percent of the questions on a knowledge test of the reading components.
• The composition and quality of mathematics education programs varies significantly from institution to institution, both within and across states and governance models.
• These reports begin to answer fundamental questions about teacher preparation. They also highlight the need for additional analysis of these data sets and further research with nationally representative samples to guide policy decisions at every level – university faculty and boards, state departments of education and legislatures, professional organizations, philanthropic foundations and federal agencies.

Findings from a third study, the National Council on Teacher Quality’s (NCTQ) report, No Common Denominators: The Preparation of Elementary Teachers in Mathematics by America’s Education Schools, were also presented and discussed.

For more information, contact University Distinguished Professors Robert Floden (floden@msu.edu) and William Schmidt (bschmidt@msu.edu), co-directors of the Education Policy Center, by email or at (517) 355-4494.

Tags: Floden, literacy, Mathematics, research, Schmidt, Teacher education