Here & Now

Kate Walsh And Katy Heyning Debate Education Report

Frederica Freyberg:

Even as the state assembly passed a budget bill chock full of education policy, a new study shows many of Wisconsin’s schools of education are not adequately preparing teachers for a career in the classroom. The Washington DC-based National Council on Teacher Quality used a four star system to rate more than 1,000 universities and colleges nationally. The results among the 27 education schools in Wisconsin were grim. Only one school rated as high as three stars. That was the program at UW-Stout. The remaining programs averaged one-and-a-half stars, including UW-Madison and UW-Whitewater. And two UW system schools of education received a so-called consumer alert rating meaning, according to the report, that students at UW-Milwaukee and Stevens Point might not be getting their money’s worth. Kate Walsh is the president of the National Council on Teacher Quality. She’s in Washington. As is the dean of the UW-Whitewater school of education, Katy Heyning. Dean Heyning is in Washington attending a national teacher education conference. And welcome to you both.

Katy Heyning:

Hello.

Kate Walsh:

Happy to be here.

Frederica Freyberg:

First to you, Kate Walsh. Why did your organization conduct this study and then produce this report?

Kate Walsh:

There’s been widespread acknowledgment by, critics of teacher education, but by folks within the field of teacher education that it is not functioning as it should, it is not meeting the needs of public schools. So we looked to a model of– a similar model going back as far as 1910, when a guy named Abraham Flexner went around to the nation’s medical schools and rated them. And when he did that, he found there was only one school out of 155 medical schools that were strong. Within ten years of that study, with the light shining on individual quality of those programs, we saw dramatic changes, such that now we can boast arguably the most, the best professional medical training in the world.

Frederica Freyberg:

How does Wisconsin stack up nationally then in this study in preparing its teachers at public universities?

Kate Walsh:

Unfortunately, there isn’t any state that really stands out as exemplary, so I think we all have work to do. There isn’t– there isn’t any state that had a lot of three or four star programs. There are states, such as Tennessee, they had two four star programs. But all in all, there were very poor results across the board.

Frederica Freyberg:

Over to you, Dean Katy Heyning. What is your reaction to this report, specifically as it treats your school with just one-and-a-half stars?

Katy Heyning:

Well, I was quite surprised and somewhat confused by the results. When I took a look at the report, one of the things that they said was our programs do not recruit the best and the brightest, nor do we have high admission policies. Yet the two programs that NCTQ took a look at, our elementary education and social studies programs, have respectively a minimum 3.0 and 3.2 GPA just to be admitted to the program, which is quite high. And the average cohort score for our secondary social studies program, because it’s more competitive, is sometimes as high as a 3.6 to 3.8. So it was confusing.

Frederica Freyberg:

What about that, Kate Walsh? How do you respond specifically to the idea that that wasn’t very competitive upon admission for those students? And also, so two-part question, there have been criticisms of the methods used to derive these results. Sometime the survey came from really limited samples of programs. How do you respond to these criticisms about the, kind of, methodology?

Kate Walsh:

Well, first of all, we didn’t intend to limit our study to just one or two programs on a campus. We initially set out to do quite a bit more. But institutions refused to provide us with data. So it’s a little bit of a problem for us that now they’re screaming that we didn’t look at other programs on their campus, when in fact the only reason we were not able to was because they did not provide us with course materials.

Frederica Freyberg:

So, Dean Heyning, would you, if you could, if you had your druthers, kind of provide an open book so that they could in fact– this kind of survey study, look at all of the things that you offer to your prospective teachers?

Katy Heyning:

Well, I’m a member of the Wisconsin Association for Colleges of Teacher Education that represents all 33 teacher education programs in the state, public and private, and our organization has prepared a statement that is both collaborative and very detailed on our concerns with the NCTQ methodology. And anybody who would like a copy of that report, I welcome them to contact me. I’ll be happy to provide it.

Frederica Freyberg:

Are you suggesting that this report just doesn’t add up? That in fact state schools are doing a really good job in preparing the teachers that will teach our students?

Katy Heyning:

Well, as I said, there is a lot of information that I can provide about the methodology used in the report, but what I’d really like to do is talk about our UW-Whitewater graduates and how I know that they are well-prepared to take the classroom and the data we have to support that.

Frederica Freyberg:

Kate Walsh, what kinds of reactions are you getting across the country to this? Similar to the reaction that you've received from Wisconsin, which is taking some issue with the results?

Kate Walsh:

Well, but I think the result has been overall quite positive, from most folks. The Secretary of Education came out with a statement in support of it. We had 23 state school chiefs which have endorsed this work, 100 district superintendents and about 75 education and civic-minded groups across the country. So I think that there is strong endorsement that this work needs to take place. This all gets down to a very different view on the part of higher education and public schools about what it means to prepare a teacher well.

Frederica Freyberg:

We need to leave it there. Kate Walsh and Katy Heyning, Dean Katy Heyning, out of Washington. And, Dean, I suggest that we may follow up with you here at home and look at this issue further. Thanks to you both.