Teaching the Teachers: Different Settings, Different Results. Policy Information Report.

Overview & Synopsis

The links between the characteristics of teacher education institutions, their programs, and teacher effectiveness as measured by scores on teacher licensure examinations were studied for the Southeast United States. Four sources of data were used: (1) data on 39,140 prospective teachers who took the Praxis II examinations for teacher licensure; (2) data on the 152 postsecondary institutions these teachers attended; (3) data on 76 of the 152 teacher education programs at these institutions; and (4) SAT scores for 9,078 of the Praxis test takers who had also taken the SAT. Data indicated that higher education institutions that have teacher education programs vary greatly in background characteristics and average licensure scores of their students. Five characteristics of institutions and programs were identified as conducive to higher teacher licensure scores. Private institutions outperformed public ones, and universities outperformed colleges. Teacher education programs with a higher number of traditional students outperformed those with fewer such students. Teacher education programs with ethnically diverse students outperformed those with overwhelmingly white faculties. Institutions with large proportions of education majors and minors and large proportions of their budgets devoted to teacher education performed worse than institutions with small proportions of education majors and minors and small proportions of their budgets devoted to teacher education. Findings show that teacher education programs are neither uniformly successful nor uniformly unsuccessful. (Contains 9 figures and 25 references.) (SLD)