Teacher quality not just about documents

Did you catch "The Voice" on Tuesday night?

Country singer Danielle Bradbery was selected as this year’s champion. Her performances, which grew stronger every week with the support of professional musicians, caught the attention of viewers and voters all over the country.

But how might she have fared if America had based its decision on a resume rather than a real singer?

Let’s see: 16 years old. Hmmm. Obviously inexperienced. How many performances had she done before the show? None? That’s definitely a negative. And, where is she from again? That’s right, Texas. Well, that could be a positive or a negative, hard to say.

Let’s score her as providing incomplete data, which is a problem. She’s a country singer, too. That’s not what we were looking for, so unfortunately, that’s another negative. Sounds like she ranks a "D."

What? Sing? Have we heard her sing? Why would we do that?

Ironically, college and university teacher education programs that were "ranked" in last week’s U.S. News and World Report Teacher Prep Review by the National Council on Teacher Quality were reviewed precisely this way.

Programs turned over lots of paper syllabi, handbooks, and policy documents — and were labeled as secretive and threatened with open-records laws if they hesitated.

It’s hard to trust an organization that demands rather than asks for cooperation and threatens to publish findings with or without cooperation. Teacher education programs understandably wondered why the council was unwilling to simply ask for what it wanted to know, or check with programs to verify the accuracy of their reports.

No one wants to fan the flames of a report that longs to be fanned. However, when we go through professional accreditation with the Western Association of Schools (WASC) and Colleges and the National Council for the Accreditation of Teacher Education (NCATE), we are required to show what we do.

These accreditors, recognized by the U.S. Department of Education, would never allow us to submit stand-alone documents. Instead, we must provide concrete evidence of what our candidates actually can do. And just to make sure, WASC and NCATE come to campus to be sure that we do what we say we do, and they visit our candidates in real classrooms, too.

Teaching is at the same time the most joyful and challenging profession. It’s very hard work, and, thus, we work hard on improving our teacher education programs every single day.

We actively seek feedback from others — principals, mentor teachers, our candidates, families, P-12 students, and community members — to help us grow stronger. In fact, we post their feedback on our website. We know we have miles to go. But to get nationally downgraded by an organization that couldn’t be bothered to hear us sing? Maybe we should ask Danielle Bradbery what a ranking like that is worth.