UT’s teacher training program consistently produces graduates who outperform other teachers in the state, according to a report released today by the Tennessee Higher Education Commission.
The program also is one of Tennessee’s top four producers of science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) teachers, areas of critical need for the state, according to the 2013 Report Card on Effectiveness of Teacher Training Programs.
“This report card reflects findings consistent with the other measures we use to study the effectiveness of all of our programs, including employee and graduate surveys, and teacher performance measures based on classroom observations of instruction and interaction with students,” said Susan Benner, associate dean and director of the UT Graduate School of Education. “We are proud of our graduates and pleased to be recognized as one of Tennessee’s most effective programs that are putting teachers in our public schools.”
The report is designed to inform the public about the effectiveness of the state’s teacher training programs and to give those programs data that will help them improve.
UT, along with five other educator preparation programs, has consistently produced teachers that are outperforming other teachers in the state or are on a significant upward trend in effectiveness scores, according to an analysis of Report Card results over the past three years.
Program completers from UT are more effective than veteran teachers and other beginning teachers in areas including Tennessee Comprehensive Assessment Program, or TCAP, for math in grades four through eight, high school end-of-course exam composite, English I, English III, and US history, the report shows. UT graduates teaching these high school courses were significantly overrepresented in the top 20 percent of all teachers in the state.
The 263 UT program completers for the 2011-12 academic year had a 100 percent pass rate on the Praxis exam, which is required for Tennessee licensure.
UT graduates also perform at the same level as veteran teachers in fourth to eighth grade science and social science based on student performance on the TCAP exams, and in high school Algebra I, Algebra II, Biology I, and English II end-of-course exams, the report shows.
Read the entire report online.
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CONTACTS:
Lola Alapo (865-974-3993, lalapo@utk.edu)