Education Sector is one of my favorite groups in K-12 policy, and not just because I have lots of friends who work there. Since its creation five years ago its analysts have produced a steady stream of thoughtful, thought-provoking papers and posts on the most important issues facing education policymakers today.
Which is why I can’t understand why the organization continues to be so wrong about one of the most consequential developments in education today: The National Council on Teacher Quality’s review of education schools nationwide.
First there was Chad Adelman (since promoted to the U.S. Department of Education), who complained that NCTQ’s study wasn’t focused enough on outcomes:
Absent some objective outcome measures, NCTQ will only be assessing inputs to teacher quality…. There will be no mechanism to determine if all of the box-checking that NCTQ will be assessing has actually produced effective teachers.
You don’t say! As Chad acknowledges, NCTQ has been at the forefront of the push for states to collect value-added data linking ed schools with their graduates’ results in the classroom. A handful of states are starting to do that. But what about the other 45+ states? Should NCTQ sit on its hands until the data become available? Isn’t Chad’s argument just one for giving the ed schools a pass?
