Recently, the University of Valley Forge (UVF) was recognized as one of nine “standout institutions” by the National Council on Teacher Quality (NCTQ) for its high first-attempt pass rate of the Pennsylvania Educator Certification Tests (PECT). It was up there with University of Pennsylvania, Thiel College, University of Pittsburgh, and Swarthmore College, among others. UVF’s average first-attempt pass rate on the Math, Science, and Health module is 83%, compared with the 62% average across the state. UVF is so proud of its Education students for achieving a high pass rate, and so thankful for its brilliant Education professors for preparing their students to be excellent teachers! For more information on the NCTQ’s analysis, continue reading.
“Currently, policymakers, state education agencies, and teacher prep programs have little insight into when aspiring teachers leave the path into the classroom, largely due to missing or inaccurate data. This makes it hard to identify when and why aspiring teachers exit the pipeline and where to focus efforts and resources to support them.
Here NCTQ shares new data, never before published, on a pivotal point in the pipeline for elementary teachers: when aspiring teachers take licensure tests, one of the final steps before earning a teaching license. Pass rates, or the rate at which teacher candidates pass their licensing tests, serve as a compass, pointing toward strengths and opportunities in preparing teacher candidates.
With this information, states and programs now have the opportunity to look at the data from multiple perspectives. Each lens conveys important insights on the quality of institutions’ preparation, their level of encouragement and support for retaking a failed test, persistence on the part of test takers, as well as commitment and innovation to overcome educational inequities and inadequate K-12 preparation.
NCTQ is making each state’s data available for download to encourage additional analysis, urging states and institutions to consider stronger data systems that capture this data on an ongoing basis.
Why do licensure tests matter?
There’s little disagreement among teachers, parents, teacher educators, and state officials that teachers need to know the content they will teach. Teachers cannot teach what they do not know. Elementary teachers should demonstrate that they know core content before they start teaching, according to 95% of state education agency leaders, 84% of prep program leaders, and 98% of teachers. Licensure tests are the most common way to measure an elementary teacher’s content knowledge. When well designed, they are:
- Comparable
- Reliable
- Scaleable
- Comprehensive
- Cost-effective
While more could always be done to remove bias from the test instrument itself and the test experience, licensure tests also undergo a rigorous bias review process. And where states have done the research, almost all studies find evidence that they predict future teacher effectiveness.”
Information originally found here: https://passrates.nctq.org/state/Pennsylvania/
