What do teachers really think about how well they were prepared? The College Board offers the opportunity for teachers to speak up about the knowledge and skills they wish they would have received before taking sole leadership of their classrooms. Better preparation in classroom management, literacy training, and assessments topped their list. While the College Board acknowledges their results may not be representative of all teachers, they track with recommendations NCTQ has heard from other teachers, as well as from the technical panel advising our national review of teacher preparation programs.

In fact, our national review has standards addressing each of the aforementioned issues. Two separate standards address literacy- Standard 2 Early Reading and Standard 4 Struggling Readers. We've also shown initial results on K-12 assessment coursework (and we'll be releasing more on this next week) further reflecting these teachers' experience: teacher prep programs provide limited preparation on the use of assessments and data. 

We are not alone in calling on schools of education to get serious about grounding teacher prep in the realities of today; teachers themselves also lend their voice to this chorus. By approaching feedback as an opportunity to improve and then acting on it, schools of education can show they are adaptable to the changing dynamics in education. 

Katie Moyer