Testing Teacher Candidates

Testing Teacher Candidates PDF Author: National Research Council
Publisher: National Academies Press
ISBN: 0309171067
Category : Education
Languages : en
Pages : 472

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Book Description
Americans have adopted a reform agenda for their schools that calls for excellence in teaching and learning. School officials across the nation are hard at work targeting instruction at high levels for all students. Gaps remain, however, between the nation's educational aspirations and student achievement. To address these gaps, policy makers have recently focused on the qualifications of teachers and the preparation of teacher candidates. This book examines the appropriateness and technical quality of teacher licensure tests currently in use, evaluates the merits of using licensure test results to hold states and institutions of higher education accountable for the quality of teacher preparation and licensure, and suggests alternatives for developing and assessing beginning teacher competence. Teaching is a complex activity. Definitions of quality teaching have changed and will continue to change over time as society's values change. This book provides policy makers, teacher testers, and teacher educators with advice on how to use current tests to assess teacher candidates and evaluate teacher preparation, ensuring that America's youth are being taught by the most qualified candidates.

Testing Teacher Candidates

Testing Teacher Candidates PDF Author: National Research Council
Publisher: National Academies Press
ISBN: 0309171067
Category : Education
Languages : en
Pages : 472

Get Book Here

Book Description
Americans have adopted a reform agenda for their schools that calls for excellence in teaching and learning. School officials across the nation are hard at work targeting instruction at high levels for all students. Gaps remain, however, between the nation's educational aspirations and student achievement. To address these gaps, policy makers have recently focused on the qualifications of teachers and the preparation of teacher candidates. This book examines the appropriateness and technical quality of teacher licensure tests currently in use, evaluates the merits of using licensure test results to hold states and institutions of higher education accountable for the quality of teacher preparation and licensure, and suggests alternatives for developing and assessing beginning teacher competence. Teaching is a complex activity. Definitions of quality teaching have changed and will continue to change over time as society's values change. This book provides policy makers, teacher testers, and teacher educators with advice on how to use current tests to assess teacher candidates and evaluate teacher preparation, ensuring that America's youth are being taught by the most qualified candidates.

Navigating Teacher Licensure Exams

Navigating Teacher Licensure Exams PDF Author: Emery Petchauer
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1351168150
Category : Education
Languages : en
Pages : 180

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Book Description
Navigating Teacher Licensure Exams offers practical, empirically sourced insights into the high-stakes licensure exams required in most states for teacher certification. This unique resource foregrounds the experiences of diverse preservice teachers, including teachers of color, to understand how they organize their preparation efforts, overcome self-doubt and anxiety, and navigate the high-pressure space of this important testing event. By situating these exams within their social and psychological contexts, presenting real-life cases of success and failure, and confronting innate perceptions of standardized tests, this book provides essential and highly practical support for preservice teachers, teacher educators, and departmental resource libraries.

Handbook of Research in Education Finance and Policy

Handbook of Research in Education Finance and Policy PDF Author: Helen F. Ladd
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1135863881
Category : Education
Languages : en
Pages : 786

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Book Description
Sponsored by the Association for Education Finance and Policy (AEFP), this groundbreaking new handbook assembles in one place the existing research-based knowledge in education finance and policy, thereby helping to define this evolving field of research and practice. It provides a readily available resource for anyone seriously involved in education finance and policy in the United States and around the world. The Handbook traces the evolution of the field from its initial focus on school inputs and the revenue sources used to finance these inputs to a focus on educational outcomes and the larger policies used to achieve them. It shows how the current decision-making context in school finance inevitably interacts with those of governance, accountability, equity, privatization, and other areas of education policy. Because a full understanding of the important contemporary issues requires input from a variety of perspectives, the Handbook draws on contributors from a variety of disciplines. While many of the chapters cover complex state-of-the-art empirical research, the authors explain key concepts in language that non-specialists can understand.

A Companion to Research in Teacher Education

A Companion to Research in Teacher Education PDF Author: Michael A. Peters
Publisher: Springer
ISBN: 9811040753
Category : Education
Languages : en
Pages : 834

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Book Description
This state-of-the-art Companion assembles and assesses the extant research available on teacher education and provides clear guidelines on future directions. It addresses an important need in a collection that will be of value for teachers, teacher educators, policymakers and politicians. There has been little sustained, long-term or systematic research to provide empirical support for the broad aspects of teacher education policy, largely because such research has been chronically underfunded and based on traditional practitioner knowledge. Many of the changes to teacher education are contentious and yet are occurring in rapid succession. These policies and movements have important consequences for education, teacher quality and the future of the teaching profession. At the same time, the policies and initiatives that support these changes seem to be based more on ideology, business interests and tradition than on research and empirical findings. The nature, quality and effectiveness of teacher preparation have increasingly become a central focus for education policy worldwide in a fiercely argued debate among governments, think-tanks, world policy agencies, education researchers and teacher organisations.

What Is the Influence of the National Science Education Standards?

What Is the Influence of the National Science Education Standards? PDF Author: National Research Council
Publisher: National Academies Press
ISBN: 0309087430
Category : Education
Languages : en
Pages : 223

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Book Description
In 2001, with support from National Science Foundation, the National Research Council began a review of the evidence concerning whether or not the National Science Education Standards have had an impact on the science education enterprise to date, and if so, what that impact has been. This publication represents the second phase of a three-phase effort by the National Research Council to answer that broad and very important question. Phase I began in 1999 and was completed in 2001, with publication of Investigating the Influence of Standards: A Framework for Research in Mathematics, Science, and Technology Education (National Research Council, 2002). That report provided organizing principles for the design, conduct, and interpretation of research regarding the influence of national standards. The Framework developed in Phase I was used to structure the current review of research that is reported here. Phase II began in mid-2001, involved a thorough search and review of the research literature on the influence of the NSES, and concludes with this publication, which summarizes the proceedings of a workshop conducted on May 10, 2002, in Washington, DC. Phase III will provide input, collected in 2002, from science educators, administrators at all levels, and other practitioners and policy makers regarding their views of the NSES, the ways and extent to which the NSES are influencing their work and the systems that support science education, and what next steps are needed.

Teacher Assessment and the Quest for Teacher Quality

Teacher Assessment and the Quest for Teacher Quality PDF Author: Mary Kennedy
Publisher: John Wiley & Sons
ISBN: 0470388331
Category : Education
Languages : en
Pages : 448

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Book Description
TEACHER ASSESSMENT AND THE QUEST FOR TEACHER QUALITY Teacher Assessment and the Quest for Teacher Quality is an essential resource that provides school leaders, administrators, and teacher educators with a wide range of perspectives on the complex issue of teacher quality. The book examines assessment in the context of preparation, licensure, hiring, tenure, and even dismissal and explores a wealth of relevant topics. Comprehensive in scope, the handbook includes contributions from leading experts in the field of teacher quality and teacher assessment. This important book contains basic information on a variety of approaches to teacher assessment and teacher quality topics including the science and psychology of teacher selection, performance-based assessments, and hiring decisions. In addition, the contributors explore the role of formative assessments in new teacher induction, assessing for teacher tenure, various approaches to annual performance assessments, assessing teacher contributions to student achievement, and the law regarding teacher dismissals. The expert authors also tackle broader assessment issues including the interpretation of assessments, standards for teacher evaluation, and the inherent dilemma posed by measuring the quality of teaching. For the goal of ensuring quality teaching for all our students, Teacher Assessment and the Quest for Teacher Quality is an important resource and a lasting contribution to the literature on the topic.

Testing, Teaching, and Learning

Testing, Teaching, and Learning PDF Author: National Research Council
Publisher: National Academies Press
ISBN: 0309172861
Category : Education
Languages : en
Pages : 136

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Book Description
State education departments and school districts face an important challenge in implementing a new law that requires disadvantaged students to be held to the same standards as other students. The new requirements come from provisions of the 1994 reauthorization of Title I, the largest federal effort in precollegiate education, which provides aid to "level the field" for disadvantaged students. Testing, Teaching, and Learning is written to help states and school districts comply with the new law, offering guidance for designing and implementing assessment and accountability systems. This book examines standards-based education reform and reviews the research on student assessment, focusing on the needs of disadvantaged students covered by Title I. With examples of states and districts that have track records in new systems, the committee develops a practical "decision framework" for education officials. The book explores how best to design assessment and accountability systems that support high levels of student learning and to work toward continuous improvement. Testing, Teaching, and Learning will be an important tool for all involved in educating disadvantaged studentsâ€"state and local administrators and classroom teachers.

Evaluating and Rewarding the Quality of Teachers: International Practices

Evaluating and Rewarding the Quality of Teachers: International Practices PDF Author: OECD
Publisher: OECD Publishing
ISBN: 9264034358
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 246

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Book Description
This book identifies good practices in the design and implementation of evaluation and teacher incentive systems from various perspectives through formulation, stakeholder negotiation, implementation, monitoring and follow-up.

A License To Teach

A License To Teach PDF Author: Linda Darling-hammond
Publisher: Westview Press
ISBN:
Category : Education
Languages : en
Pages : 244

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Book Description
"A License to Teach" speaks directly to the quality-of-education debate now focused on public schools. The authors show that reform of teacher education and licensing are needed to ensure that teachers are prepared for the classroom. A well-conceived licensing system that supports high-quality teacher preparation would ultimately support the more demanding learning goals now expected of students and would give parents and policymakers greater confidence that teachers are being prepared to practice their profession responsibly.

The Cost-Effectiveness of 22 Approaches for Raising Student Achievement

The Cost-Effectiveness of 22 Approaches for Raising Student Achievement PDF Author: Stuart S. Yeh
Publisher: IAP
ISBN: 161735404X
Category : Education
Languages : en
Pages : 246

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Book Description
As a consequence of the federal "No Child Left Behind" (NCLB) law, there is tremendous pressure on school principals, teachers, school superintendents, district staff, state departments of education and governors to maximize the increase in student achievement that is obtained with every dollar of expenditure. Currently, teachers are forced to rely on extremely inefficient approaches that take enormous amounts of time, both during the school day and throughout the K-12 learning years. This is experienced in terms of the reduced time that is available to teach subjects other than math and reading, as schools resort to double periods of math, double periods of reading, and enormous amounts of remedial instruction that directly reduce the time available for other subjects including science, art, and music. In contrast, this book suggests that student achievement may be increased in a way that is not only cost-effective in dollar terms, but efficient in the sense that it does not rely on unusual investments in the time required to obtain results. The book draws upon a wealth of cost-effectiveness data to dispel common notions about "what works" in addressing the achievement gap: increased expenditure per pupil, charter schools, voucher programs, increased educational accountability, class size reduction, comprehensive school reform, increased teacher salaries, more selective teacher recruitment, the use of "value-added" methods to measure and reward teacher performance, the use of National Board teacher certification to identify high-performing teachers, and a host of other approaches.