Findings and Recommendations for Prospective Teachers

Findings and Recommendations for Prospective Teachers So here’s the deal: You’ve been thinking about teaching for a while, and you’ve heard that the college or university closest to you has a pretty good program that’ll get you into a classroom right after graduation. But maybe you’ve also heard that the teaching profession is in the midst of monumental change that makes a job that's never been easy even more challenging.

If you are going to prepare yourself for the classroom, you want to do it right.

That’s where the National Council on Teacher Quality (NCTQ) comes in.

Ed School Essentials: A Review of Illinois Teacher Preparation is the latest in a series of reports we’ve released to inform folks like you which teacher-prep programs have good fundamental design. After all, if a teacher doesn’t know the subject she’s teaching, or isn’t able to keep a classroom under control, it's not good for the teacher or the students. So if you’re seriously considering teaching as a career, you’ll want to choose an education-school program in Illinois that’s right for you. While doing so, please keep two things in mind: 1. Ed schools, which have been around for decades, are only gradually coming around to doing what’s necessary to produce highly effective teachers. NCTQ reviews schools with this overarching standard in mind. And, accordingly, we make clear that no one school in Illinois does everything right. So you’ll want to verify, for instance, that the school you choose makes efforts to attract talented teacher candidates and provides those candidates with truly rigorous coursework and student-teaching opportunities with master teachers who are also good at mentoring adults.

2. You’ll also want to make sure that your intended area of certification— elementary, secondary or special education—is a strong suit at the school you choose. Just because an ed school has a good elementary program doesn't mean its secondary program is good.

NCTQ’s report measures 111 programs at 53 schools against 39 standards (explained here: http://www.nctq.org/edschoolreports/illinois/illinoisReport.jsp), including those relevant to the type of teacher you’d like to be. As examples, here’s how we rate certain schools—on a scale of fully meeting our standard to entirely failing to meet it—on specific standards: Effective reading instruction for elementary teacher candidates Loyola University Chicago – Fully meets standard because it fully prepares candidates in effective reading instruction Illinois State University – Fails to meet standard because preparation in effective reading instruction is very inadequate

Classroom management training for secondary teacher candidates Eastern Illinois University--Fully meets standard because it prepares candidates before they enter the classroom for practice teaching in a course focused on the secondary grade levels Judson University--Fails to meet standard because it waits to prepare candidates until they are already practice teaching.

Careful screening and selection of cooperating teachers for student teachers Aurora University – Fully meets standard because school principals confirm that this ed school plays a pivotal role in screening and selection Augustana University- Fails to meet standard because school principals indicate that they simply ask for volunteers to serve as cooperating teachers For a detailed look at programs and their standards ratings, visit the website's Consumer Guide (http://www.nctq.org/edschoolreports/illinois/search/), where you can search for programs by zip code or generate your own reports on several programs.

Once you focus on a few programs you can check out our Ed School Reports, which provide more details such as tuition costs and rating sheets that explain why a program received the rating it did, standard by standard. A careful perusal of these pages will help you determine whether a particular program or school meets your needs.

The bottom line is, you don’t want to choose a school simply because it’s not far from where you currently reside—unless, of course, the school's program meets your needs.

NCTQ believes that teacher preparation is a key component to providing every classroom with a highly effective teacher. So we encourage you to choose your education-school program wisely. In that way, you can take the first crucial step in what we hope will be a rewarding, long-lasting career.

We also encourage you to read the executive summary (http://www.nctq.org/edschoolreports/illinois/executiveSummary.jsp) of NCTQ’s report, so as to get a “big picture” view of teacher preparation in Illinois.

Good luck!