These days, it’s not enough for teachers to know how to manage a classroom, impart knowledge and deliver lesson plans, the Huffington Post reports. In the wake of test-heavy policies like No Child Left Behind and Race to the Top, a teacher’s job description now entails data analysis and a grounding in statistics — crucial skills that a new study [1] claims teachers aren’t learning in the education colleges that prepare them for the classroom. The study, by the nonprofit, nonpartisan National Counsel for Teacher Quality, analyzed 180 education schools to see how effectively and coherently they teach prospective teachers the skills associated with using test data to improve student learning. And the results weren’t pretty.
“Only about six programs of the 180 covered what we decided we could categorize as three different domains of assessment,” said Julie Greenberg, NCTQ’s senior policy analyst. “We want to really make sure that new teachers are supported by that understanding when they go into the classroom.”