Teacher Training Report Card Shows Gains

Tennessee’s new teachers are catching up to classroom veterans, according to a new report from the state. That’s considered a sign that efforts to train better teachers are headed in the right direction.

The report card from the Tennessee Higher Education Commission looks at every program in the state that turns out teachers, from college and universities to alternative methods of preparing people who weren’t education majors. Its point of comparison is how well students of those new teachers perform on achievement tests, and some programs are outperforming the rest. Educators from Lipscomb University and Teach for America in both Nashville and Memphis have particularly good test results.

But no matter where the instructor was trained, THEC’s Katrina Miller says the report shows that student achievement doesn’t suffer at the hands of inexperienced educators.

“Our beginning teachers are performing at about the same level as our veteran teachers. Which, personally, to me is a good thing, and it’s also one of those things that indicates an area where we need to work.”

Good because it shows that tweaks to the training programs have been successful in cutting down on the learning curve beginners have when they first start in the classroom. But the hope is that better designed teacher training programs can go farther, and eventually turn out educators who make dramatic improvements in the state’s test scores.