Teacher Preparation Programs and Teacher Quality: Are There Real Differences Across Programs
Working Paper 79
Author(s): Cory Koedel, Eric Parsons, Michael Podgursky, and Mark Ehlert

We compare teacher preparation programs in Missouri based on the effectiveness of their graduates in the classroom. The differences in effectiveness between teachers from different preparation programs are very small. In fact, virtually all of the variation in teacher effectiveness comes from within-program differences between teachers. Prior research has overstated differences in teacher performance across preparation programs for several reasons, most notably because some sampling variability in the data has been incorrectly attributed to the preparation programs.

Published: July 2012| Download Full Text