Charts: Previous Chart Overstated Online Teacher Prep

As you can see there's not a ton of overlap in terms of either the institutions or the numbers when you look at my list of teacher prep programs and the one that the folks at NCTQ have come up with:

The explanation, in a post called New teacher production numbers... it's a long tail, is that my list (from USDE, in 2010, riffing off a Hechinger Report article about the growth of online teacher prep programs) is a look at the raw number of students who completed a degree -- including folks getting masters' or preparing to become counselors -- while their list reflects "numbers of graduates who took a certification test upon graduation" (ie, anticipated classroom teachers).  It's not just an issue of accuracy.  Their list also contains less online programs, which suggests that maybe it's the folks getting master's and sneaky counselors who are going online, not so much the new classroom teachers.  (That's my guess, not theirs.) Their post notes that that for all the attention on the biggest schools in the top ten list, the vast majority of teacher candidates come through smaller programs.  

Comments

[Sarah]

I wonder who’s inaccurate in this case, then. I can’t imagine the numbers are honestly as low as their chart suggests.

[Michael]

USDE's number is more accurate, another example of sloppy work done by NCTQ to fit their agenda. Not every state requires a certification exam. North Carolina only requires it for a handful of programs, leaving out a large number of completers.