Message from Interim Dean
June 16, 2014
Welcome to the College of Education website page, a wonderful way of communicating with you about the work of faculty, staff and students happening across all academic programs, centers, and institutes in the College of Education.
I want to communicate with you on an important topic affecting public Colleges/Schools of Education across the country. This pertains to the U.S. News and World Report in partnership with the National Council of Teacher Quality (NCTQ), to evaluate teacher education programs nationally. NCTQ will be issuing its second annual report on June 17, 2014 regarding the rankings of Colleges/Schools of Education teacher preparation programs. The NCTQ report will rank all Colleges of Education that prepare teachers for K-12 education in New Mexico and throughout the United States. This year, it ranks UNM College of Education as not meeting all the NCTQ standards. While we believe this ranking fails to reflect the quality of our work, we also have already taken steps to address internal and external concerns by means of the reimagining efforts this year as well as adhering to new state licensure changes addressing content assessments and rigor.
At the University of New Mexico, we are extremely proud of our teacher education program. We have worked hard this year to conduct an internal self-study of our teacher preparation and school leadership academic programs. Our programs have been recognized for their excellence and the quality of our graduates’ performance in the classroom. As a College, we pursue a process of continuous improvement based on evidence, and have always welcomed responsible and rigorous outside evaluation of our programs and outcomes.
Although we share the NCTQ goal of “working to ensure that every child has an effective teacher,” we simply do not endorse NCTQ’s method for studying the preparation of effective teachers because those methods do not meet accepted standards of research and thus cannot yield reliable findings. According to NCTQ’s website, course syllabi, course descriptions, and program websites are the key sources for their program evaluations. All of these data sources represent program inputs rather than outcomes, which we believe demonstrates a major and fundamental flaw in the reporting. Furthermore, the set of inputs to be assessed is extremely limited and does not include potentially valuable information such as faculty qualifications, the process and criteria for admission into teacher education, the depth and extent of field experiences in addition to student teaching, or the use of performance assessment data for program improvement. Our programs are nationally and state accredited; hence we carefully adhere to and implement NCATE (National Accreditation Association of Teacher Colleges) standards in our curriculum, which are rigorous accreditation standards, plus we adhere to state standards as partners of NCATE in accrediting teacher licensure programs. Our licensure programs are all aligned to NCATE and State standards for the purpose of accrediting and state approval.
We cooperated fully with the NCTQ Study by providing a tremendous amount of information about our teacher preparation program, hoping we could improve our rankings from the past year, since many of our constituents read this report. However, the 2014 rankings are not what we know to be true regarding our programs; therefore, keep in mind that the determination for the rankings was based solely on course syllabi, course descriptions, website material, and internal written information submitted for their consideration. Based on their review, we failed to meet their standards, which we as a college question, due to NCTQ’s method of research and approach. However, we believe that the quality of the training we provide is not fully captured in the NCTQ study based on solid evidence we have regarding our student’s performance. It is important to acknowledge that we have and will continue to implement evidence based research practices that will inform our teaching, service and research as they pertain to the offering of high quality teacher education preparation academic programs.
As the College of Education we have taken steps to identify any shortcomings that do exist in our programs, and to address identified shortcomings, faculty have begun recognizing curricular changes, enhancing clinical experiences, strengthening school/university partnerships, and considering early admission of freshman and sophomore students into the college.
As we prepare for the transition to a new Dean - Dr. Hector Ochoa, it is clear that his background and experiences will provide transformational leadership critical for the preparation of high quality educators at multiple levels of preparation and advanced professional opportunities. The accountability of what we do is not a problem for faculty or students; it only becomes a problem when the fairness of a given accountability approach or process is flawed.
The College and the University of New Mexico have a fundamental mission to support high quality research and gladly will collaborate with any entity interested in pursuing a reputable research study regarding the quality of teacher education programs.
In summary, the College of Education cares deeply for children and families in New Mexico and we have a passionate mission to educate outstanding teachers, school leaders, and other educators for the state of New Mexico and the nation’s public schools. We will continue to strive to prepare high quality educators to improve the quality of life for all New Mexicans.
Dr. Vi Florez
Interim Dean, College of Education
Professor & PNM Education Endowed Chair
