A Response to NCTQ National Review of Teacher Education Programs

August 22, 2013

On June 18, 2013, the National Council on Teacher Quality (NCTQ) released its nationwide ratings of teacher education programs. The School of Education at UC Davis was included in the report. The School of Education, along with a great many other teacher education programs, found NCTQ’s approach – both the methods that were used and the set of standards they created – seriously flawed.

In a desire to be open and transparent, we posted an initial response that objected to NCTQ’s process, in general, and to the rating of the School’s teacher education program, in particular. Read our initial response below and download the School’s formal, more detailed, response submitted to NCTQ on August 12, 2013. (Note: Our detailed response did not address all of our objections to the rating assigned us by NCTQ on each of their standards: in a number of instances, NCTQ standards ignore the standards adopted for California teacher education programs by the Commission on Teacher Credentialing, with which we are fully compliant).

June 18, 2013

UC Davis has been preparing teachers for California and elsewhere for nearly one hundred years. Our teacher education programs are built on this long-standing foundation of experience, rigorous coursework, and year-long, mentored student teaching. We provide all of our teacher candidates with extensive training and practice in conducting educational research to improve teaching and learning, particularly in meeting the needs of the rich diversity of California’s classrooms.We pride ourselves on being a leader in teacher education within the University of California, a land-grant institution to serve the needs of all Californians. Quality is our top priority, from the students we admit to the teachers our program provides to California and the nation.

On Tuesday, June 18, the National Council on Teacher Quality (NCTQ) released its nationwide ratings of teacher education programs. The School of Education at UC Davis is included in the report. The report gives a rating of two out of four “stars” to both our elementary and secondary credential programs. Unfortunately, we find their approach to be seriously inadequate.

The NCTQ rating system is designed almost exclusively to evaluate undergraduate, four-year, teacher education programs. As such, the criteria and methodology used by NCTQ is not an accurate measure of post-baccalaureate and master’s degree teacher preparation programs, like those offered by the University of California, that provide rigorous coursework fully integrated with field experience in schools after candidates complete their undergraduate subject matter preparation.

Furthermore, NCTQ ratings are based solely on a course syllabi review for a subset of classes required of teacher credential candidates and student teaching manuals. The organization has not combined its review with site visits or other direct observation, interaction with faculty and teaching candidates, or any concrete evidence or data on the actual performance of the K-12 teachers prepared by teacher education programs. Nor does the report incorporate employer assessment of preparedness and effectiveness of our program graduates or UC Davis student ratings of the effectiveness of their preparation. 

On more than one occasion the University of California raised these concerns with NCTQ and offered suggestions for a more rigorous, valid and useful review of teacher preparation. NCTQ dismissed our reservations about their methodology. We are not alone: the NCTQ study design and methodology have been widely critiqued as flawed by experts nationwide.

We argue—based on our expertise in international and national best practices and on feedback we have received from principals, district administrators and on the observations of our own alumni—our teacher credential programs are of the highest quality.

“Many of our teachers are graduates of the UC Davis Teacher Education program. They have helped shape our practice and enjoy the rewards of teaching in these challenging times. We continue to hire graduates of the program. Indeed, the Robla School Board is currently considering contracts for a number of recent graduates of the program. As we considered the large number of applications for our current teaching openings, the UC Davis candidates were among the strongest. We are confident that they will become the dedicated professionals that past UC Davis graduates have become.” – Ruben Reyes, Superintendent of the Robla Elementary School District in Sacramento

(Read Superintendent Reyes’ full quote here.)

Here we outline some of the greatest strengths of our program:

Selective admissions process yields highly qualified teacher candidates


• Undergraduate GPA of 3.45 for 2012-13 admitted applicants
• 100 percent passage rate on required tests of subject matter knowledge
• Demonstrated commitment to high achievement for all of California’s K-12 students

Rigorous coursework and clinical student teaching practice

• Candidates receive intensive discipline-specific methods coursework preparation as well as preparation to teach reading-language arts; implement data-driven and technology-enhanced instruction; and effectively address the unique needs of English language learners.

• All candidates learn about and implement effective teaching for students of diverse cultures and achievement levels.

• Our candidates develop strong teaching practice through extensive fieldwork placements with expert classroom teachers, beginning and ending with the public school calendar (more than 900 hours during the school year). Nearly all student teachers are placed in schools with high numbers of students who are bilingual or come from families with low socioeconomic status.

Intensive and ongoing assessment of credential candidates and program components using multiple data sources

• Preparing teachers to be experts in the design and implementation of formative assessment: We prepare our credential students with the ability to constantly monitor their students’ learning through assessment. Credential students learn to recognize and use various forms of student data to monitor learning on a regular basis to inform their teaching to meet students’ learning needs. This essential element is reinforced throughout students’ preparation, and it is embedded into the teacher performance assessment system used in UC teacher preparation.

• Assessing student teachers through PACT (Performance Assessment for California Teachers): University of California Teacher Education faculty along with Stanford faculty pioneered the development of the required significant exit performance assessment for teachers. Our work served as a model for the edTPA, which now is adopted by many states.
• Our candidates have a 100 percent pass rate on the required exit performance assessments and the assessment of reading instruction mastery required for elementary candidates.
• We carefully consider and act upon feedback and evaluation data from our current students, former students, and employers of our graduates.

UC Davis credential graduates are highly effective, accomplished teachers. As second-year teachers, they are recipients of school and district-wide teaching awards: honored by receiving the prestigious Knowles Teaching Fellowship; supported in their education by the competitive Robert Noyce Math and Science Teaching Scholarship; and recognized with the Dorothy Wright Teaching Award that acknowledges high school teachers who best prepared former students for college-level writing classes. 

We are proud of UC Davis’ long tradition in teacher education, and we are proud of our teacher educators and the students who learn to teach in our programs. We know from years of experience and research that practice-based teacher education is the best way to really prepare our students for the complexities of schools, classrooms, and the language demands in the new Common Core State Standards.

If you have any questions about the NCTQ rating, or about our teacher education program, please feel free to contact Dean Harold Levine or Dr. Christian Faltis, Director of Teacher Education.