Wheaton College Education Department Wheaton, Illinois Institution Comment Comments submitted by: Jillian Lederhouse, Professor and Chair, Department of Education
Believing that the best K–12 teachers are well educated in the liberal arts, Wheaton College has a rich history of preparing exceptional professional educators, not only for the state of Illinois but also throughout the nation and around the globe. In keeping with our institutional mission of serving all of society, our teacher education program has a strong emphasis on teaching underserved populations. Coursework and clinical experiences offer many opportunities for developing expertise in scientifically based methods for meeting the needs of diverse learners. Although Wheaton agrees with NCTQ on the need for Illinois to provide all of its teacher preparation institutions with data on their graduates’ students’ achievement, differences in other areas are largely philosophical. For example, the Wheaton College elementary teacher education program requires 74 hours of general education studies not counting the major or required liberal arts concentration. Wheaton differs philosophically with NCTQ on how the general education program should be appropriated. Wheaton also disagrees with NCTQ on its research methodology. Teachers for the 21st century must focus on student outcomes rather than inputs. However, NCTQ has chosen to limit its study of program components almost exclusively to inputs, largely assigning their ratings on syllabi rather than performance–based evidence. Despite these differences, Wheaton College strongly agrees with NCTQ that Illinois’ K–12 children and adolescents deserve the best prepared teachers in order for all students to be college ready.
www.nctq.org/edschoolreports
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