Education department plan to grade teacher prep programs raises concerns
Some say rule is being rushed; AG questions development process
The New Mexico Public Education Department’s plan to begin rating teacher preparation programs on an A-to-F scale, much like its annual grading system for K-12 public schools, drew sharp criticism this week from college leaders and teachers unions, and it has raised concerns by the attorney general that the department may have failed to collaborate with key stakeholders in developing the evaluation.
The department’s report card for educator programs would, in part, use results of the state’s controversial teacher evaluation system to measure each program’s success.
Charles Bowyer, executive director of the National Education Association of New Mex-
ico, said this would begin “demoralizing college professors,” much as, he said, public school teachers in the state have been disheartened by their assessments.
That’s just one complaint opponents have voiced about the proposal, which many critics say was released too quickly. A hearing on the rule was held Tuesday.
Attorney General Hector Balderas, in a letter to department officials dated Tuesday, questioned the agency’s process of creating the report card and said it could “suscept the rule to legal challenge.”
“It is critical that all stakeholders, including leadership in our educational institutions, parents, teachers, and students participate in creating any rules for evaluating educational program accountability,” Balderas said.
A coalition of college deans and other administrators also sent a letter to the department Tuesday, accusing it of rushing the process and warning that could result in an evaluation tool that “is inaccurate … and will have little impact in terms of program improvement.”
Public Education Secretary-designate Christopher Ruszkowski defended the proposed rating system in a statement Wednesday.
“Ensuring our state’s teachers are DayOne Ready should be a shared priority for everyone in New Mexico,” he said, adding, “our students’ outcomes will continue to rise in the decade ahead if teacher preparation programs embrace new opportunities and if their training programs make the necessary changes to align with 21st century demands.”
Teachers statewide requested the new rule, Ruszkowski said in an email sent by department spokeswoman Lida Alikhani, and the agency met with representatives from college programs “dozens of times over the past several years to collaborate and share updates.”
“The accreditation organizations have failed our students, our teachers and our profession over the past two decades,” the email said. “Anyone being honest about them would acknowledge that.”
The state’s previous education secretary, Hanna Skandera, announced well over a year ago that the agency would begin implementing such a system. And several leaders of New Mexico colleges said they long have been in talks with the department about setting the standards for a program scorecard.
But a recent announcement about the new rule caught many of them off guard.
“To discover that they were going to put this into rule when we were still in conversation about it was a little bit of a surprise,” said Dawn Wink, director of teacher education at Santa Fe Community College, which offers an alternative licensure program for prospective educators with a bachelor’s degree.
One problem with the report card, Wink said, is that it would weigh how well teachers do on state exams required for teacher licenses and how many times they had to take an exam before passing it. Those tests include reading, writing and math components.
“That is content that they have received in earning their bachelor’s degree before they come to us and is thus outside of our coursework,” Wink said. “Our content is pedagogy.”
Under the proposal, the education department also would examine hiring and retention rates for teachers who complete such programs and the distribution of teachers among high-need areas of the state. Surveys of graduates, their employers and students of graduates would be considered in a program’s grade.
Some of those measures fall in line with recommendations released in 2014 by a task force with the American Psychological Association. In its report on educator preparation programs, the panel advised that such scorecards include students’ standardized test scores. Those were omitted from the Public Education Department’s proposal.
Betsy Cahill, interim associate dean of New Mexico State University’s College of Education, said she favors accountability measures “to make sure we are preparing day one-ready teachers.”
Still, Cahill said, “We haven’t had time to review the information. We did not know they were moving so quickly to have this report card ready right now.”
Oversight of educator training programs and rating systems are not new. The nonprofit Council for the Accreditation of Educator Preparation for years has used a set of criteria to accredit programs nationwide.
Advocates and critics tend to agree that such standards not only help ensure colleges are successfully preparing teachers but also give prospective teacher-students an idea of which schools have the best education programs.
“There is a lack of transparency regarding the effectiveness of the training new teachers are receiving,” said Roswell teacher Hope Morales during Tuesday’s hearing on the proposal. Morales is a policy director for the state’s Teach Plus program, which offers professional development and other support for teachers.
“Aspiring teachers deserve to know which state universities offer high-quality education programs to aid in their decision for which campus they will attend,” she said.