Rules are costly, complex and burdensome, says ACE’s Terry Hartle
The Department of Education (ED) has released its final regulations on teacher preparation programs,
requiring states to report on and rate these programs using a number of
measures including student learning outcomes, placement and retention
rates and feedback from graduates and their employers on program
effectiveness.
States must begin to implement the regulations on a pilot basis in
the 2017-18 academic year, although the first year a program could lose
eligibility based on the new standards is 2021-22. ED will release
non-regulatory guidance related to the final regulations to help states
and districts with implementation.
Programs rated less than effective for two out of any three years can lose TEACH Grant
eligibility. The TEACH Grant Program provides grants of up to $4,000
per year to students who agree to teach for four years at a K-12 school
or educational service agency that serves students from low-income
families.
The final rules come after years of negotiated rule making and
gathering input from the education community. Proposed rules released in
2014 were criticized for being overly reliant on test scores to judge
the effectiveness of teacher prep programs. The final rules give more
freedom to states to determine what measures of student outcomes they
would use for ratings. States must report whether teacher preparation
programs are “low-performing,” “at-risk” or “effective.”
ACE and 30 other higher education groups submitted comments
(216 KB PDF) in February 2015 on the proposed rules, noting that while the
department’s stated goals are admirable, the rules will worsen existing
challenges and undo much of the progress made by states and institutions
to improve program quality.
Regarding the release of the final rules this week, ACE Senior Vice President Terry Hartle told The Washington Post
that ED had dramatically underestimated the cost of complying with the
rules. In 2014, California estimated that it would cost $230 million to
get the system up and running and another $485 million each year to
maintain; ED estimated the cost over the next decade to be an average of
$27 million per year nationwide.
“Teacher quality is absolutely critical to improving student
performance in the classroom. The central question, however, is whether
or not these regulations will help—and the answer is no,” Hartle said.
“They are costly, complex, burdensome and based on only tenuous evidence
that they will work.”