Recently, the Department of Education published its final regulations affecting teacher preparation programs nationwide. The rule requires states to report on the quality of both traditional teacher preparation as well as alternative routes to teaching programs, and to link program quality to eligibility for the Teacher Education Assistance for College and Higher Education (TEACH) grants, which help students with the cost of pursing a postsecondary education for a career in teaching.
The rule requires states to report annually on teacher preparation program performance on multiple measures, including the placement and retention rates of program graduates in their first three years of teaching, feedback from graduates and their employers on program quality, and state-determined measures of student learning outcomes. Programs will be rated on a scale with at least three classifications that include “low-performing,” “at-risk,” and “effective.”
States will design their reporting system with feedback from stakeholders in the state, and then implement that system by the 2018-19 academic year. Starting with the 2021-22 academic year, programs will lose access to TEACH grants if they were not deemed effective in at least two of the previous three years. States must also provide technical assistance to any program rated as low-performing. The final regulations can be found here. We will provide more updates when they become available on the CTE Policy Watch Blog.
Comments