Final U.S. Teacher-Prep Regs Allow Flexibility on Student-Outcome Measures | Education Week (blog)

"The U.S. Department of Education's long-awaited final rules require states to rate teachers' colleges on the basis of graduates' performance in the classroom but provide greater flexibility in measuring student outcomes." inform Teacher Beat (blog).

The U.S. Department of Education today released its long-awaited final rules on teacher preparation. The rules, first proposed in 2014, aim to hold teacher-training programs accountable for the performance of their graduates, and they make it mandatory for states to provide aspiring teachers a way of pre-evaluating programs.

Under the rules, states will be required each year to rate all of its traditional, alternative and distance prep programs as either effective, at-risk, or low-performing. They will have to provide additional support to programs rated as low-performing.

The annual ratings are to be based on several metrics, such as the number of graduates who get jobs in high-needs schools, how long these graduates stay in the teaching profession, and how effective they are as teachers, judging from classroom observations as well as their students' academic performance.

In a major change from the proposed rules—which were subject to heavy criticism from the field—student learning will not have to be based on test scores or the proxy of teacher evaluations based on student test gains; rather, states will have the flexibility to use other measures deemed "relevant to student outcomes" and determine how various components of their systems are weighted.
Read more... 

Source: Education Week (blog)