Mon, Nov 23 2009
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MSSU’s teaching program is fully accredited by the state and by the National Council of Accreditation for Teacher Education. Gaining that accreditation requires keeping up with changing education standards, Coltharp said.
“Our students must pass a national exam in order to earn their certification,” he said. “If a student has to pass that national test, we’re meeting the standard.” Missouri and Kansas also are criticized in the study for not requiring annual performance reviews for teachers. Though the study says annual reviews are a fact of life for most businesses, Missouri requires them once every five years. Kansas requires them every three years. School superintendents say districts are free to review employees more often, and that they often do. Rhonda Moore, a physical-education teacher at Webb City High School, expects such a review every year, even though she is a tenured teacher. “We are held highly accountable,” she said. “We are evaluated every year, and receiving professional development services every other week.” Moore said the curriculum she took at Evangel University to become a teacher was rigorous. It involved an intense block of courses about basic curriculum, instruction methods and student teaching, she said. Burke, at Baxter Springs, said incoming teachers in his district have two evaluations a year before becoming eligible for tenure in their fourth contract year. The study gives Missouri credit for requiring teachers to be in the classroom for five years before gaining eligibility for tenure. Kate Walsh, president of the nonpartisan national council, said all 50 states have impeded efforts to ensure that every classroom is led by a quality teacher, despite good intentions. She said she hopes the study will spur change and force state legislators to act. “State governments — not the federal government — have the greatest impact on the work of America’s 3.1 million teachers,” Walsh said in a news release. “With leadership and will, these policies are eminently fixable.” The study notes that many states’ regulations were written in a different era, when the supply of teachers was plentiful. But, the organization does not call for a nationally standardized set of criteria for teachers. “State context matters when setting state laws,” said Jacobs, the group’s vice president. “We think that these goals suggest what states should be doing, and lay out a blueprint to do it, but there is not one way to put that into effect.” Lankford, at Webb City, said the study is a model developed in an attempt to parallel a business operation. But that model doesn’t quite work for public schools, he said. “We do not set the parameters of the raw material used to make our product,” Lankford said. “We don’t get to decide what kind of students we take in.” 
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