In this month’s Education Outlook, Cory Koedel examines the standards by which prospective teachers are evaluated during university training. Koedel looks back at an article published in 1960 that showed evidence of low grading standards in university education departments: undergraduate students taking education classes were twice as likely to receive an A compared to students taking classes in a business or liberal arts departments. According to Koedel’s research, these low grading standards still exist today.
Data from several universities consistently show that education departments award exceptionally favorable grades to virtually all their students in all their classes. However, these grades “cannot be attributed to student quality or structural factors like smaller classes.” In fact, education majors score considerably lower than their non-education cohorts in college entrance exams.
This high level and consistency of grade inflation leads to several negative consequences for the future of K-12 education:
1. We are training teachers who know less. It is a well-researched phenomenon that students in classes where it is easier to get an A do not work as hard. However, we cannot simply just ‘raise the bar’ to encourage increased academic effort. “For increased effort to be beneficial, it must be the case that either the content of classes taught in education departments adds direct value in terms of teaching quality, or teachers gain other skills indirectly as a result of a more demanding college experiences (for example, skills in time management or improved worth ethics).” Finally, grades usually play an important role in most academic departments of filtering out students with poor or poorly matched skills for the discipline. They do not appear to play such a role in education departments.
2. Education departments are contributing to the culture of low standards for educators. The overwhelmingly positive evaluations that teachers receive in K-12 schools look very similar to the grading scheme in their college program. Ratings are highly compressed, with in some cases even the thirtieth percentile teachers receiving an ‘8’ on a 1 – 10 scale. “These ratings are in stark contrast to one of the most consistent findings in the research literature on teacher quality—teacher effectiveness differs dramatically as measured by student outcomes.”
So the central question then becomes “Why can K-12 schools get away with not distinguishing high-quality workers from low-quality workers? What makes education different?
Koedel argues the difference is that there is not a competitive market forcing schools and districts to be efficient. There is no mechanism to meaningfully penalize schools or its workers for continual mediocrity. In other sectors, a mediocre organization would be put out of business due to competitive market pressures.
Koedel’s solution? External intervention. Specifically, university administrators could (and should) impose more stringent grading standards on education departments. Though this may seem an extreme measure, some universities (like Princeton) have already undertaken the fight against grade inflation university-wide.
Additionally, states should produce measures of teacher effectiveness linked to teacher-training programs. Some states have already started this process, and the information gleaned from such intervention would provide private-market-like incentives for education departments similar to those of other university departments.
To read the full study, please visit http://www.aei.org/docLib/EduO-2011-08-No-7-g.pdf
