Abstract
For at least two decades, the policy context surrounding teacher education has emphasized the importance of teacher quality and a need for reliable systems to evaluate teacher preparation programs (Cochran-Smith et al., 2018; Feuer, Floden, Chudowsky, & Ahn, 2013). The No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB, 2002) mandated “highly qualified” teachers in every classroom, and the subsequent Race to the Top (RTTT, 2011; GovTrack.us, 2018) legislation of the Obama administration continued this trend with a focus on “highly-effective teachers” (Hess & McShane, 2014). During this time, teachers’ impact on student learning, especially, as represented by value-added scores based on state testing programs, was strongly emphasized in policies about the quality of teachers and teacher preparation programs (Noell & Burns, 2006; U.S. Department of Education, 2011), and causes of school failure were attributed in large part to teacher education programs and schools lacking evidence-based data to inform program reform.
More recently, national level accountability systems that could help evaluate teacher preparation programs and teachers’ performance have gained prominence (Floden, Richmond, Drake, & Petchauer, 2017). Evaluations of teacher preparation programs have been done by the Council for the Accreditation of Educator Preparation (CAEP) and the National Council on Teacher Quality (NCTQ). A nationally available teacher performance assessment, the Educative Teacher Performance Assessment (edTPA), has been adopted in 12 states (edtpa.aacte.org/faq). Various measures were proffered, examined, and cautioned, such as value-added models (e.g., Floden, 2012; Goldhaber, Cowan, & Theobald, 2017; Henry, Kershaw, Zulli, & Smith, 2012), student assessment scores (e.g., Lavery, Nutta, & Youngblood, 2018), and frameworks for teaching (e.g., Nava et al., 2018).
The types of measures selected and what they measure are not neutral, however, but rather reflect specific priorities and goals for schooling. For example, some view what they call the “dominant accountability paradigm” (Cochran-Smith et al., 2018) as reflecting market ideology and neoliberalism in education, privileging subject matter and often disconnected from the experiences and needs of students and teachers from nondominant communities (Lipman, 2011; Richmond, Bartell, & Dunn, 2016). Others call for building on what they see as a rich body of research that identifies knowledge and skills aimed at promoting democratic and socially just education and commitments in practice (e.g., Cochran-Smith et al., 2009; Crowley & Apple, 2009; Kumashiro, 2015; McDonald, 2005; Zeichner, Payne, & Brayko, 2014). Still others call for a focus on student performance on measures aligned with national content standards such as the Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS, Achieve Inc., 2013) and the Common Core State Standards (CCSS; National Governors Association Center for Best Practices, Council of Chief State School Officers, 2010).
This poses a dilemma for teacher education, which we have described in earlier editorials (Richmond et al., 2016): As we necessarily work within a system that warrants accountability, how might we “reclaim” accountability (Cochran-Smith et al., 2018) to support teacher candidates’ preparation for the realities of today’s schools and for their effective participation in “critical democracy” (Carter Andrews, Richmond, & Floden, 2018)? In this editorial, we call for casting a broader net that is both (a) more comprehensive with respect to the knowledge, skills, and practices evaluated and (b) more inclusive of the types of measures we use to obtain data. We also note that much still needs to be learned about how to overcome the challenges involved in using data to improve teacher preparation programs.
With regard to the first issue, namely, the knowledge, skills, and practices that should be added to those typically evaluated; we see the work by such researchers as Melanie Acosta and her colleagues which appeared in the previous issue of JTE (Acosta, Foster, & Houchen, 2018) and Maria del Carmen Salazar in this issue (Salazar, 2018) to be particularly on-point. Through their work, both sets of scholars deepen and make more comprehensive the set of knowledge, skills, and practices that are important for quality teaching. Below, we provide some detail about how they make this case.
In their paper, Acosta et al. (2018) proposed that community-focused and citizenship-focused pedagogical approaches of successful Black teachers—“African American Pedagogical Excellence” (AAPE)—be considered as standard practice for teacher education. The core principles and practices of outstanding African American educators have become marginalized, particularly since school desegregation, and the authors not only outline these explicitly with a careful examination of existing scholarship but also show the impact these principles and practices have on student outcomes. Using historical events and data, they make a detailed and compelling argument for coordinated inclusion of the elements of AAPE in teacher preparation programs to support the development and retention of outstanding African American classroom educators.
Similarly, Maria del Carmen Salazar’s article in this issue explicitly frames teacher evaluation from a critical race theory perspective and proposes a culturally relevant alternative to teacher evaluation that positions the resources of historically marginalized communities of color at its center. Salazar details the development, field testing, and reliability and validity checks of the Framework for Equitable and Excellent Teaching (FEET) that assesses prospective teachers’ performances and skills based on aspects of equitable and excellent teaching for K-12 learners. The FEET includes dimensions, competencies, and indicators to help students “navigate the dominant culture” (e.g., integrate skills for college and career readiness, facilitate acquisition of content knowledge, design units and lessons based on national and state standards, set high academic expectations) and explicitly includes a focus on helping students “sustain their cultural, linguistic, and familial resources” (e.g., learn about culturally responsive pedagogy, build affirming relationships with students and parents, develop lessons that reflect cultures of students, use instructional strategies to support English language learners) and “develop critical consciousness” (e.g., opportunities for students to express voice, have choice, counteract stereotypes, identify oppression, engage in social justice pursuits). In this way, the set of knowledge, skills, and practices important for quality teaching are broadened and more comprehensive and also work toward confronting whiteness existing in current frameworks and in teacher education more broadly.
We also acknowledge that what is measured by existing frameworks such as the Danielson’s (2007) Framework for Teaching; Marzano, Frontier, and Livingston’s (2011) Framework to Support Teaching; and the Classroom Assessment Scoring System (CLASS; Pianta, La Paro, & Hamre, 2008) has value. They are research-based frameworks that recognize the complexities of teaching and aim to foster effective teaching by focusing on aspects such as understanding content, connecting content to students’ prior knowledge and experiences, facilitating standards-based instruction, assessing student learning, and managing student behavior and classroom routines. At the same time, these frameworks are based on relatively generic indicators which, when adopted unquestioningly, will “manifest whitestream ways of knowing and being in the world” (Salazar, 2018, p. xx) and narrow the focus of what is important and relevant. Yet as we stated, they have value and often suggest what Cochran-Smith and colleagues (2018) label a “false choice”—but it is not the case that one has to decide between emphasizing the “usual” knowledge and skills for teacher candidates or those for culturally responsive, democratic, and socially just practices. Quality teaching requires both.
The article by Bastien, Patterson, and Pan in this issue reflects the importance of the second issue we raise here, that having an appropriate range of data on teacher preparation programs is only a first step. Program leaders, faculty, and collaborating K-12 partners must also find ways to use the data to guide program improvements. Bryk (2015) argues that program improvement can be driven by following the model of improvement science, which starts by examining variation in outcomes, looks for plausible explanations of that variation, then has programs work together through cycles of experimentation tied to those plausible explanations, repeatedly looking at changes in variation. What Bastien and his colleagues have shown is that measures of new teacher performance do vary among the programs those teachers completed and that the variation is related both to the initial characteristics of those who enter the programs and to qualities of the programs themselves. Moreover, the authors’ study indicates the importance of attention to school context and of looking at outcomes beyond pupil test scores, such as observational measures. The study thus offers evidence for the possibility of applying the improvement science model to using data to improve teacher preparation. Bastien’s second article in this issue (with Lys and Pan) demonstrates an approach to using teacher performance scores to inform targeted intervention.
As an increasing number of scholars remind us, use of data could be valuable in informing important decisions, including those at the policy level, concerning the preparation of teachers. Rather, the data that comes from pupil performance on state assessments should not be the only, or even the primary, driver of the system. Also critically important is careful consideration of the nuances of contextual features that shape stances and supports for high quality teaching, within the complex systems of families, schools, and communities. Such careful consideration should lead us to broadening our “funnel” on both ends—by enlarging what it is we consider the critical knowledge, skills, and practices for effective classroom teaching and by being more inclusive with respect to the measures employed.
We support holding teacher preparation programs accountable for the quality of their programs and the quality of their graduates. However, we want to reclaim this accountability so that we set our sights, our curriculum, our opportunities to learn, and our evaluation instruments on preparing teachers who can understand and respond effectively to the ideas, interests, and priorities of students and communities, whether they are like or unlike those they have experienced in their own schooling; who can design and carry out instruction that will close gaps in learning and future opportunity; and who can help all students learn to the levels expected in contemporary content standards in all subjects. We need research that can provide us with guidance concerning what these points of accountability are as well as how we can take advantage of such data and relevant research in designing our teacher education programs.