At a Washington press conference last week, C. Emily Feistritzer, author of a new study of state teacher-certification processes, also charged that up to half of the teacher-preparation programs in the country “aren’t up to standards and should be shut down.”
“Far too many teacher-education programs today accept anybody and everybody who harbors the slightest aspiration to teach,” said the researcher, who is a Washington-based publisher of education newsletters.
In a report based on a survey of about 800 teacher-education programs, Ms. Feistritzer states that students who apply for admission into teacher-education programs are “rarely” rejected.
Seventy-eight percent of the teachers’ colleges accept between 75 and 100 percent of the students who apply, the survey found, and another 17 percent accept between 50 and 75 percent of their applicants.
In her report, Ms. Feistritzer3also faults some teacher-education programs for failing to administer entrance and exit exams that would help ensure the quality of teacher candidates.
Sixty percent of the institutions surveyed require some kind of test for admission into their teacher-preparation programs. Less than half of the programs require passage of exit tests. About 5 percent require prospective teachers to pass a content-area test, 11 percent require teaching candidates to pass a basic-skills test, 18 percent require passing scores on the National Teachers Examination, and 13 percent require passage of “some other” test.
And while 97 percent of the survey respondents--deans and directors of teacher-training programs--reported that their programs are “state-approved,” only 527 of the approximately 1,200 teacher-training programs in the United States have been accredited by the National Council for Accreditation of Teacher Education, the report states.
