The nation's teacher training programs are not rigorous enough and education majors are being graded too easily, according to a new report released this week by the National Council of Teacher Quality, an education think tank.
The report, called “Easy A’s,” compared teacher training programs to other programs at more than 500 institutions. It concluded that education majors at 58 percent of the schools surveyed are held to lower standards than students in other majors.
According to the report, coursework for education majors at many schools did not require as much knowledge or critical skills-based assignments as other fields. It described a majority of the work in education programs as relying too heavily on student opinion rather than defined standards that instructors could use to better critique their work.
Even so, 44 percent of education majors at the schools graduated with honors versus 30 percent of other graduates. The report warned that the high grades give the graduates a false sense of being prepared for the classroom and lead to a lot of guesswork on the job.
Six Maryland schools were included in the report--The University of Maryland Baltimore County, Mount Saint Mary's University, Hood College, Stevenson University, the University of Maryland College Park and Salisbury University. Only Stevenson University's program came up short in the report.