• College/Career Readiness
• Higher Performing Schools
  • Identification Methodology
  • Identification Research
• Best Practices
  • Search for Evidence
  • Case Studies
  • Methodology
  • Executive Summaries
  • About the Framework
    • The Themes
    • The Organizational Levels
    • The Practices
• Longitudinal Data
• Teacher Preparation
  • Data Collection
  • Completed Tasks
  • Contacts
• Broad Prize 2003-2005
• Data Quality Campaign

Teacher Preparation

The Houston Endowment has sponsored a four-year study of teacher preparation programs in nine components of the University of Texas System. The study is part of the University of Texas initiative, Every Child Every Advantage, which aims to enhance the quality of education in the public schools by strengthening university-based teacher preparation programs, creating high-quality training and instructional tools for public school teachers, and initiating an aggressive research agenda.

The body of research on teacher preparation remains limited, and the need for studies directly linking teacher preparation to student achievement has been recommended. This study addresses this need directly, and in so doing sets it apart from most. In the current study, staff from the National Center for Educational Achievement will work with school districts that employ large numbers of teachers who are new graduates of UT System teacher preparation programs, to analyze the effectiveness of the new teachers in their classrooms. A teacher's effectiveness will be measured by using the state's mandated assessment in grades 3-11 to calculate how much students are growing and learning. Students' prior academic achievement and the characteristics of the K12 schools will also be taken into account. In addition, the nature and presence of first-year induction programs at the school will be considered.

The training and experience of the teachers who produce the most learning gains will be contrasted with others so that we may begin to identify characteristics of the higher-quality teacher preparation program. We will examine what characteristics of the teacher preparation programs might lead to greater gains in student learning. Characteristics of effective teacher preparation programs1 will be shared among institutions to improve the preparation of future new teachers.

Data collection and analysis of the first cohort of UTS graduates are complete. Analysis of student learning gains is in progress, and additional years of data are currently being collected and analyzed. In addition, transcript data for all additional cohorts has been approved by the Institutional Review Board at UT Austin.

• Data Collection
• Completed Tasks
• Contacts

¹ The analysis will include number and types of courses required and taken by the students at each of the institutions as indicators of content preparation, as well as any previous degree(s) held by the teachers. Also the analysis will control for entry requirements at each of the institutions, as well as the scores earned by the teachers in their college entrance exams.