ASSESSMENT OF STUDENTS


OPE: Office of Postsecondary Education
Current Section
Lessons Learned from FIPSE Projects I - Southern Regional Education Board

Improving the Pass Rate of Minority Students on Teacher Certification Examinations

Purpose of Project:

The project was designed to address the problem that many minority students preparing to teach-especially those attending historically black colleges and universities-fail teacher certification examinations. Project sites were Coppin State College in Baltimore, Maryland; South Carolina State College in Orangeburg, South Carolina; and South University in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. Faculty and curriculum development and assessment were used to correct deficiencies in general education and improve students' reading and analytic skills. The ultimate goal of the project was to develop a model which could be replicated nationally and that would help to increase the number of minority public school teachers. The main features of this approach were:

  • providing training in test construction and item analysis to a cadre of faculty and administrators who will train other faculty;
  • establishing teacher education centers that maintain files of tests and practice materials helpful in improving students' test performance;
  • revising course content to parallel teacher certification tests;
  • teaching faculty how to review curricula and construct syllabi better;
  • giving faculty practice in administering standardized tests and giving students practice in taking such tests; and
  • developing cross-disciplinary programs to increase reading comprehensive, speed, and vocabulary.

Innovative Features:

This was an institutionwide undertaking that brought liberal arts and education faculties together to improve students performance. It gave equal attention to students, faculty, and the curriculum. Its teacher centers not only maintained certification test files but provided computers for selfinstruction on the tests. Because many minority students do poorly on the reasoning and analytical skills portion of the National Teachers Examination (NTE), the participating institutions prepared students by having them practice test items in these skills on computers.

Consultants instructed education and liberal arts faculty and administrators about testing, about the concepts of reliability and validity of tests, about the notions of item difficulty and item discrimination, about flaws in question construction, about developing test items for different disciplines, and about statistical analysis of tests.

Evaluation:

In addition to periodic formative evaluation to monitor progress, an external evaluator made annual site visits to all participating institutions each year and to the offices of SREB, reviewing project records and conducting interviews. Available student pass rates on standardized tests were collected and compared from the three campus sites.

Impact or Changes From Grant Activities:

The cadre of trained faculty, 13 from the arts and sciences and 7 from education, doubled the number of institutions they worked with to improve student test performance. Each institution added new courses, revised others, launched reading and writing programs, assessed student test preparedness, and developed items for test banks.

All participating sites have institutionalized curricular changes, syllabi revisions, and the new testing programs, and are continuing to provide support for the teacher centers. A model to improve students' test performance using the centers has evolved, and trained faculty are prepared to help others implement it.

As a result of the SREB project, each institution is trying to build a strong liberal arts base as well as improve students' writing and reading skills. Poor showing on the NTE point to these weaknesses that cannot be overcome with education courses. This finding plus faculty activities in the teacher centers led administrators to conclude that preparing students to meet the new, more stringent standards in teacher education can only be achieved through joint action between education and liberal arts faculties and visible senior leadership from administrators.

Data on national teacher examination pass rates for students in the participating institutions have been very difficult to obtain for several reasons. Students can apply to take the NTE without notifying their educational institution. In addition, test scores are only sent to the students themselves and to the State Department of Education. So there is no automatic feedback to the institutions about which students took the tests and how they performed. Currently, the project director is conferring with participating site coordinators and the Educational Testing Service to remedy this by channeling group and/or individual test scores to the institutions.

Indirect indications of student improvements can be noted from other standardized tests. From 1981 to 1982 and from 1986 to 1987, one institution reported increases in program students' GRE verbal, quantitative, and analytical scores from 298 to 319, 280 to 313, and 317 to 327, respectively.

Between 1986 and 1988 at another institution, the percentage of teacher education majors receiving passing scores on the Education Entrance Examination increased from 54% to 71% in reading, from 62% to 66% in mathematics, and from 81% to 94% in writing. A third institution, with admittedly incomplete data, noted an increase from 1984-85 to 1987-88 in their overall NTE pass rate from 42% to 82%.

What Activities Didn't Work?

At one institution, faculty strongly resented the project. Had they not seen it as a device for preparing to meet state mandates in teacher education, it is unlikely they would have cooperated. Project staff recommend that liberal arts faculty be provided adequate orientation to teacher education preparation and state certification requirements before participating in such a program.

An additional need identified is a detailed strategic plan that includes specifically focused objectives, activities, staffing responsibilities, roles and duties of consultants, target dates, expected outcomes, and evaluation mechanisms for both formative and summative components. The need for such a plan was underscored by the considerable monitoring and coordination by SREB of faculty and consultants required to implement this project at three sites.

What Do You Have To Send Others And How Do They Get It?

Below are examples of materials available from the project director:

  • Course syllabi;
  • Listing of software, studies, and teacher certification testing materials on reading and writing across disciplines;
  • Guidelines for writers of examination questions and samples of teacher-made tests; item writing background information;
  • Handouts and transparencies on the institutional model; and
  • Guide to National Teacher Examination Core Battery of Tests

In addition to these materials, the project director will provide copies of reports about all the projects and ways to contact the campus coordinators and principal consultant. Write to:

W.C. Brown, Senior Consultant
Southern Regional Education Board
529 Tenth Street, NW
Atlanta, GA 30318-5790
404-875-9211

What Has Happened To The Program Since The Grant Ended?

All institutions reported that curricular changes, revised syllabi, test banks, and reading and writing programs are now integral parts of their academic programs. Work continues on curricular upgrading and test bank development.

Project staff persist in their efforts to acquire student NTE test scores so that score differences can be noted over the project years and subsequently. The project director and coordinators from participating sites recently devised a reporting form to be used in systematizing test data collection. It provides for a profile of each site's program enrollment and graduation, as well as student test performance by race and specialty NTE test areas of art education, biology, business education, and early childhood education.

The education and liberal arts faculties continue joint efforts to improve teacher education programs, and SREB continues to press for higher student pass rates on teacher certification tests. One institution credits the project with its massive undergraduate program reorganization taking place, another as a catalyst in winning a grant to sustain writing programs. And, as a direct outgrowth of the program, another site acquired state funds to extend substantially their teacher education center's faculty development and instructional activities statewide.

[Salisbury State College] [Table of Contents] [University of Virginia ]


 
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Last Modified: 10/05/2005