BOULDER, CO (March 16, 2021) – Professors Jamy Stillman and Katherine Schultz of the University of Colorado Boulder reviewed 2020 Teacher Prep Review: Clinical Practice and Classroom Management. They found it unlikely to improve teacher preparation due to its use of invalid measurements, limited research base, and reliance on questionable methods.

The authors of the NCTQ report reviewed over 2,400 programs, including what NCTQ terms “traditional” and “alternative” programs in two areas: clinical practice and classroom management. Only 3% of traditional programs received the highest grade for their approaches to clinical practice, signaling their compliance with the internal standards set by NCTQ. Asserting that a “positive” environment is the product of classroom management, the report offers as a major conclusion that there was a 26% increase in the number of programs that taught five specific classroom management strategies.

Professors Stillman and Schultz explain how the report assumes that a methodology relying exclusively on review of publicly available program artifacts is a valid approach for determining program quality. They state further that the report largely ignores the body of empirical literature that investigates clinical practice and classroom management. Of particular note is the exclusion of scholarship that centers equity and justice.

The review concludes that the report, rather than analyzing the characteristics of successful programs preparing teachers for a wide range of contexts, is based exclusively on adherence to or compliance with NCTQ internal standards that are neither widely accepted nor evidence-based.

Find the review, by Jamy Stillman and Katherine Schultz,at:
https://nepc.colorado.edu/thinktank/teacher-prep

Find 2020 Teacher Prep Review: Clinical Practice and Classroom Management, written by Laura Pomerance and Kate Walsh and published by NCTQ, at:
https://www.nctq.org/review/docs/NCTQ 2020 Teacher Prep Review_Clinical Practice and Classroom Management_Final_10.19.pdf