NC struggles to develop model for grading programs that train new teachers

State education leaders want to ease up on the “aggressive” rules that would punish programs that fall short on meeting standards for training new North Carolina public school teachers.

The state has spent the last nine years developing an accountability model to evaluate the effectiveness of educator preparation programs (EPPs). On Thursday, the State Board of Education approved a report asking lawmakers to allow multiple changes to the model, including giving programs more time to fix problems before they receive sanctions that could cause them to shut down.

“North Carolina’s EPPs are critical partners in educating our state’s 1.5 million K-12 public school students,” the report says. “The 89 approved EPPs in North Carolina — 84% of which are affiliated with our state’s public and private colleges and universities — prepare thousands of K-12 educators.”

The remaining programs are run by a range of groups, including private organizations, school districts and charter schools.

Legislators press for accountability model

Legislation dating back to 2017 requires the State Board of Education to develop a model for evaluating how well the programs are training K-12 educators.

In 2019, state lawmakers added requirements that the programs be graded on the test results of the K-12 students taught by new teachers, the performance of new educators on the state’s annual teacher evaluation, and data from the new teachers on an educator satisfaction survey.

In 2020, the Professional Educator Preparation and Standards Commission (PEPSC) developed an accountability model that’s based on how each program’s graduates did in their first year of teaching. Partially due to the pandemic, the state board hasn’t yet adopted the rules to put the model into effect.

The State Board is supposed to evaluate each training program annually and potentially take steps such as revoking their authority to produce new teachers in North Carolina. A program that’s revoked can continue training current students but can’t accept new ones until they’re reauthorized by the state.

Earlier this year, lawmakers passed additional legislation requiring the State Board to make new recommendations on the accountability model, including what laws would need to be changed.

Punishment timeline called too ‘aggressive’

One of the areas the new state report focused on is giving the preparation programs more time to correct problems.

Under the current model, a training program could be revoked potentially within three years of first being sanctioned. The report says it doesn’t give the program enough time to implement improvements.

“The timeline for sanctions in particular is aggressive, and it doesn’t allow EPPs to focus on continuous improvement, which is what we want for everyone in all the programs that we have,” Ann Bullock, chair of PEPSC, told the State Board at a Sept. 30 planning meeting.

The State Board wants to use a revised accountability model developed by PEPSC. The new model doubles to six the number of measures that would be used for evaluating each program. It would have a corrective action track and a continuous improvement track for programs that aren’t meeting all the performance measures.

The corrective action track is for programs that are falling short in at least three of the six performance measures. They would have four years to make improvements before their program status is revoked.

The continuous improvement track is for programs who are falling short in one or two of the performance measures. They’d get eight years to make improvements before they’re revoked.

Count only growth and not proficiency

Other recommended changes to the accountability model include:

• Only look at the exam growth of the students taught by the teachers and not at how many passed. The report says “student growth is a stronger indicator of educator preparation quality than student proficiency because it measures the learning gains that students make under a teacher’s instruction.”
• Stop holding programs accountable for the performance of different subgroups of its students. Concerns were raised that using the subgroup data could hurt teacher diversity by discouraging programs from recruiting students from groups that don’t historically test as well.
• Add more results from teacher licensure exams — such as the Foundations of Reading exam — to the model.
• Give separate accountability ratings for “traditional” and “residency” graduates instead of having a combined rating.

Traditional graduates are the students who get their degree while studying to become a teacher. Residency programs are often for people who already have a degree and are making a career change to become a teacher.

Residency teachers are usually teaching in a school while taking classes at an educator prep program. An increasing number of teachers are coming through the residency route.

The various changes to the model are “continuing our work to ensure that the programs preparing North Carolina’s future teachers are held to high standards,” said state board chair Eric Davis.