About half of the teacher training programs need to change their ways if America is going to improve public school literacy rates, an organization of industry experts has reported.
The National Council on Teacher Quality in its June 9 research report said 47 percent of education programs at U.S. colleges and universities fail to provide thorough instruction on the science of reading, the body of research that indicates the best method of learning to read, which includes sounding out letters.
The council’s findings, based on an examination of more than 700 teacher training programs across the nation, come at a time when 40 percent of public school fourth-graders, or 1.4 million children, cannot read at basic levels.
The good news, the report notes, is that the number of teacher training programs earning an “A” grade from the council for reading preparation has nearly doubled in the past three years, from 26 percent to 53 percent.
Still, 21 percent of them earned an “F,” largely because they are teaching practices debunked years ago, such as “three-cuing,” where children look at pictures to guess words that they don’t know, the report said.
“Failing to prepare future teachers to teach reading well is a form of educational malpractice against future teachers and the students they’ll serve,” Heather Peske, council president, said in a statement. “Half of teacher prep programs are doing the work. The other half need to catch up fast.”
The report also said most programs don’t provide enough instruction to equip future teachers with the skills needed to teach children who are still learning English, the fastest growing student population in the country.
It highlights Mississippi, Colorado, Ohio, and Indiana as positive examples where state policy and leadership aligned with the science of reading bolstered teacher training programs.
Using a five-point scale that counted the number of core competencies included in science of reading preparation instruction, the council rated states on the quality of their teacher training programs across both public and private colleges and universities. Alaska, Delaware, Idaho, Rhode Island, and Utah led with scores of 5.0. Florida scored 4.6, Texas 3.1, California 2.7, New York 2.0, District of Columbia 1.8, and Maine 1.0.
Ivy League schools Brown, Columbia, Cornell, Dartmouth, Harvard, Princeton, University of Pennsylvania, and Yale did not participate in this study. Grades for public flagship universities varied, as did those for many undergraduate schools within a state system.
The report said the 464 colleges and universities that did not respond to the council’s request for a list of instructional materials are, based on a review of the item listings at their campus bookstores, using “misaligned textbooks at the same rates as programs that earned Ds and Fs.”
The council urges state policymakers to require and enforce the science of reading guidelines and adopt a high-quality reading licensure test for future teachers.
Colleges and universities, meanwhile, must do a better job retraining “misaligned” teachers or reassigning them to something other than reading instruction, the report said.
Literacy advocates said American higher education institutions need to take the report’s recommendations seriously.
“You can’t teach what you don’t know,” Kymyona Burk, senior policy fellow at ExcelinEd, said in a statement.
“NCTQ’s data make clear that too many teacher prep programs are still sending teachers into classrooms without the foundational knowledge they need to teach reading well—and our students pay the price. This has to change.”
