MISCONCEPTION #2

Misconception #1 Misconception #2 Misconception #3 Misconception #4 Misconception #5

Teacher preparation programs have access to the data necessary to evaluate the effectiveness of their graduates.

Many policymakers assume that the data necessary to assess the effectiveness of teacher preparation programs are currently available and accessible to teacher preparation program personnel. Additionally, they also assume that teacher preparation program personnel are simply not interested in looking for credible evidence about the effectiveness of their graduates.

In working with numerous teacher preparation programs and researchers from across the country, we now understand that very few states have TQ data systems that would allow teacher preparation programs to even track graduates into schools, much less link their graduates to students in a classroom. Other states—such as North Carolina, New York, and Texas—collect teacher assignment data and student achievement data, but the states do not provide the linkage between the two data sets. In such cases, teacher preparation programs have to work with local school districts to link teachers to students. Unfortunately, only a small fraction of all districts have the technological infrastructure for such linkages. Even when districts do have the data sets available to link teachers to students, actually creating the linkages is often difficult, time consuming, and costly. Thus, even when preparation programs are highly interested in collecting credible evidence about the effectiveness of their graduates, the data systems necessary to collect such evidence may simply not exist.

Even when state data systems do exist, gaining access to the data is more difficult than most policymakers imagine. This is discussed in popular misconception #3.

Last updated: February 6, 2006