Teaching the teachers: UTC, Hamilton County hope to improve quality of UTC school of education

photo Students walk to class on the campus of the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga.

TEACHER JOB PLACEMENTMembers of UTC's 2012-13 teacher class got jobs in the following Tennessee counties:* Blount: 2* Bradley: 2* Davidson: 3* Dickson: 1* Franklin: 1* Greene: 1* Hamilton: 65* Knox: 4* McMinn: 1* Montgomery: 1* Rhea: 2* Sequatchie: 3* Shelby: 4* Union: 1* Williamson: 1* Wilson: 1Source: Tennessee's 2014 Report Card on the Effectiveness of Teacher Training Programs

The University of Tennessee at Chattanooga isn't the best teacher's college in Tennessee, and it isn't the worst - it's somewhere in the middle, according to a recent state report.

That's not good enough for Hamilton County Schools Superintendent Rick Smith, who at recent public meetings has called on UTC to improve the quality of the teachers it graduates. UTC provides the bulk of the 300 to 400 teachers the district hires annually, he said.

"UTC's got to get better," Smith said on Nov. 1 at the school board's annual retreat. "UTC must aspire to have the best teacher prep college in the South."

UTC officials aren't taking offense. They've been working with school district officials to make changes at the School of Education, said Valerie Rutledge, who's starting her second year as dean of UTC's College of Health, Education and Professional Studies. She previously oversaw the School of Education.

"It's been a good conversation," said Rutledge, who knows Smith and taught English and Latin from the mid-1970s to the mid-'90s at Ooltewah Middle School and Ooltewah High School.

Literacy and the use of technology are two areas where UTC's teacher training needs more focus -- that's one agreement to come from the conversation, Rutledge said.

Even before talks began, UTC took a step to improve teacher quality by making it harder to get into the School of Education.

"We raised the GPA requirement," Rutledge said, from the state minimum of 2.5 to the current 2.75.

Report card

The good news for the 206 UTC teachers from the class of 2012-13 is that their students did better than the state average on English III, a multiple-choice test given to high school students, according to the 2014 Report Card on the Effectiveness of Teacher Training Programs. The annual report card grades teacher training programs in Tennessee. The General Assembly passed legislation in 2007 requiring it.

And 100 percent of UTC teachers-to-be passed the Praxis II Principles of Learning and Teaching examination, an exam given to teachers, compared to a 98 percent pass rate statewide.

The UTC grads' students performed at the same level as teachers statewide in the fourth- through eighth-grade Tennessee Comprehensive Assessment Program composite scores on math, reading, science, and social studies. The students of UTC-trained teachers also scored the same as those of teachers statewide in Algebra II, English I, English II, and U.S. History tests given to high school students, the report found.

The report card said UTC teachers' students tended to be less effective than those of teachers statewide in high school end-of-course exams, which account for 25 percent of students' final grades.

The report card found that several programs in Tennessee produced teachers who consistently outperform their co-workers statewide: Lipscomb University, the Memphis Teacher Residency, Teach for America Memphis, Teach for America Nashville, and the University of Tennessee, Knoxville.

Fewer than half, or 45 percent, of UTC's class of 2012-13's graduates landed teaching jobs in their first year out of school, the report card said. And the report showed that only 35.5 percent of graduates from UTC's School of Education class 2009-2010 were still teaching after three years.

Comparatively , 66.5 percent of similar graduates at Lipscomb University got teaching jobs right out of college, and nearly half -- 47 percent -- were still teaching after three years.

Residencies catching on

The Memphis Teacher Residency is a Christian, faith-based program in which teachers have a "residency" like that of medical doctors. The resident teachers work for a year under the guidance of an expert teacher or mentor in an urban classroom, according to the Memphis Teacher Residency's website. They receive graduate-level training and get weekly coaching from a program staff person.

UTC's School of Education has a similar program: A full-time, semester-long residency, called the Professional Development School experience, that Rutledge said, "continues to thrive and enjoys great partnership opportunities" with Brown Academy, Battle Academy, Chattanooga School for the Arts and Sciences (CSAS) and Normal Park Museum Magnet.

The Public Education Foundation (PEF), a nonprofit organization in Chattanooga, also has a residency program called Project Inspire. It's for people who have already have a four-year degree in a science, technology, engineering or math (STEM) program. In return for committing to teach for five years in a low-performing school, students receive an annual stipend and full tuition toward a master's degree in education.

Project Inspire now has 43 teacher residents in Hamilton County schools and looks to hire two dozen more, but PEF President Dan Challener said the program isn't large enough to be graded in the state report card.

Challener cited Lipscomb University, a 120-year-old private college in Nashville, Tenn., that's affiliated with the Churches of Christ, as an example of a university with a teacher's college that's doing things right.

"Can UTC improve? Absolutely," Challener said. "One of the models that's interesting to me is what's happened up in Lipscomb."

Deborah Boyd, associate dean and director of graduate studies at Lipscomb, said, "Our teacher program is built on competencies that we believe teachers need."

For instance, Boyd said in an email: "While our elementary and PK-3 majors are required to be skilled in all content areas they will be expected to teach, our secondary and middle grades majors have a strong background in specific content areas; for example, secondary math majors are only two courses short of having a math major."

Field experience is also stressed at Lipscomb.

"Our students get a chance to see the diversity of Nashville [schools] in the urban setting," Boyd said.

Students take three "clinical practice" courses in Nashville-area schools.

She said Lipscomb grads are in high demand.

"I think a lot of schools are moving toward what we're doing," Boyd said.

Federal effort to improve teacher training

The U.S. Department of Education late Tuesday announced proposed regulations that it said would "help ensure teacher training programs are preparing educators who are ready to succeed in the classroom."

"It has long been clear that as a nation, we could do a far better job of preparing teachers for the classroom. It's not just something that studies show -- I hear it in my conversations with teachers, principals and parents," U.S. Education Secretary Arne Duncan said in a statement.

The federal proposal would require states to report annually on the performance of teacher preparation programs -- including alternative certification programs -- based on a combination of such factors as three-year retention rates of teachers in high-need schools and the impact of new teachers as measured by student growth and teacher evaluations -- or both.

U.S. Department of Education officials on Tuesday praised Tennessee as being one of the first states collect and report information about teacher preparation programs to the public, along with North Carolina, Ohio, Louisiana and Florida.

Tennessee Gov. Bill Haslam took part in a Tuesday afternoon telephone press conference about Duncan's proposal.

He cited the Tennessee students' improvement this year on the ACT test, which all students have been required to take in Volunteer State since 2010. The average score climbed to 19.3 from 19.1.

"It showed our largest gain in more than a decade," Haslam said.

Contact staff writer Tim Omarzu at tomarzu@timesfreepress.com or www.facebook.com/tim.omarzu or twitter.com/TimOmarzu or 423-757-6651.

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