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How Well do Minnesota’s Education Programs Prepare Students to be Teachers? It’s Almost Impossible to Tell
MinnPost | 10/23/15

Behind the Headline
21st Century Teacher Education
Education Next | Summer 2013

In a long article for MinnPost, reporter Beth Hawkins attempts to gather data that could be used to evaluate how good a job Minnesota’s teacher education programs are doing. She details the six months she spent “attempting to compile a basic portrait of the state’s teacher talent pipeline.”

Hawkins writes

A mountain of evidence shows that teacher quality is the single most important in-school contributor to student achievement. Yet there are no publicly available indicators showing which schools of education are training excellent teachers. Or whether those new teachers actually end up in the classroom — or stay there for any meaningful amount of time.

She notes that the National Council on Teacher Quality has begun to assess the quality of teacher prep programs across the country.  The NCTQ recently launched Path to Teach, a searchable database that includes letter grades for 1,100 teacher training programs.

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In a 2013 article in Education Next, NCTQ president Kate Walsh analyzed why ed schools are not giving prospective teachers the tools they need to succeed in the classroom.

—Education Next