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When it comes to training teachers, many Wisconsin programs have a long way to go to be considered top-notch, according to a national report released Tuesday that was immediately rebuffed by local college and university leaders.

Of 36 programs evaluated in the state, just nine that train elementary school teachers and five that train high school teachers were considered robust enough to be ranked nationally, according to the controversial review.

Not one Wisconsin teacher training program — in the University of Wisconsin System or private college — cracked the top list of education schools with the best reviews.

The rub for local education leaders and others who work in traditional teacher prep programs nationally is that the review is by a nonpartisan but market-oriented think tank in Washington, D.C., an organization some say has no business pointing fingers at the work they're doing.

In Wisconsin, that's in part because efforts to strengthen teacher preparation are already underway.

"It's not relevant," Melanie Agnew, president of the Wisconsin Colleges of Teacher Education and assistant dean at the University of Wisconsin-Whitewater College of Education, said of the review. "We haven't had anybody come out and visit us on our campus and watch instruction and talk to our students."

The review was spearheaded by the National Council on Teacher Quality, a think tank guided by Democrats and Republicans that advocates for a range of reforms of teacher policies. The report it released Tuesday is an update to the inaugural review it launched last year of teacher training programs around the country.

Last year's report suggested that many UW education schools were of middling quality.

For its latest review, the Council evaluated more than 1,600 elementary, secondary and special education teacher training programs on standards it considered key, such as candidate selectivity and the scope of coursework required.

Kate Walsh, president of the council, said it found just 26 elementary teacher training programs around the country that it feels are delivering the kind of comprehensive training all teachers need.

The organization examined course catalogs and other details posted by the schools, then requested that public universities turn over their instructors' syllabuses and other information, such as employer survey results, or student-teacher placement letters.

The inquiry led to lawsuits in various states — including in Wisconsin — to block the council from obtaining syllabuses. The council obtained the syllabuses under a settlement agreement with UW.

It appears that no schools in Wisconsin resubmitted any materials for the council to review again for this year's version of the report.

Other programs that submitted new material reflecting changes they'd made since last year, such as raising admission standards, generally saw their reviews improve.

'Uniquely American'

Some of the findings from the 2014 review include:

■ Wisconsin is one of 17 states without a single teacher training program making the council's list of top-ranked programs.

■ The three highest-ranked teacher training programs in the state on a scale reaching to 406 include: UW-Eau Claire for elementary school (92), UW-River Falls for high school (113), and UW-Madison for elementary school (117).

■ A total of 22 programs in Wisconsin were not ranked because the council considered their performance to be in the bottom half of the national sample. That list included many of the UW System education schools, as well as the programs at private schools such as Silver Lake College of the Holy Family and Carthage College.

■ At least 11 private institutions in Wisconsin declined to participate in the review and were not ranked because no information was available. Those included: Alverno, Edgewood, Lakeland, St. Norbert, Wisconsin Lutheran, Ripon, Beloit and Maranatha Baptist Bible colleges, and also Lawrence, Marquette and Viterbo universities.

■ Of the programs fully examined in Wisconsin, 32% — or 17 programs — met the council's criteria for having high admission standards. That means that candidates for the teacher training programs were required to have scored above the 50th percentile of high school seniors headed to college.

■ Just one in four Wisconsin programs examined came close to meeting the standard for preparing teacher candidates in scientifically based reading instruction. Nationally, about one in three programs met that standard.

■ Only two Wisconsin programs examined fully met the standard for providing feedback to teacher candidates on specific strategies to manage classroom behavior.

■ No program examined in Wisconsin met the standard for preparing teachers in elementary-school content. Nationally, 11% of elementary teacher training programs met this standard.

In a conference call with reporters Tuesday, Walsh said the findings paint a grim picture of the state of teacher education.

She also noted the "ongoing failure" of teacher preparation programs to become more selective about who gets in.

"This is a uniquely American problem," Walsh said. "We have a very democratic attitude about who should be eligible to become a teacher, and the results is that students suffer for it."

She also said very few elementary programs are doing a good job of teaching people how to teach reading.

"Many (teacher candidates) don't know what the effective approaches are," she said. "One of the biggest takeaways from this study is the ongoing neglect of research."

Methodology questioned

The latest review cost about $3 million, all of which was funded by philanthropic dollars from 58 organizations in 22 states, Walsh added.

Critics of the review have suggested that the council's education agenda is overly harsh on traditional avenues of teacher preparation and that the organization is partisan.

They've also criticized the methodology, which did not include in-person visits to all the schools.

But the council included alternative certification routes to teaching in its review this year — including Teach for America programs in some states, though not in Milwaukee — and didn't find much to cheer about in those programs, either.

Agnew and the state association that represents colleges of teacher education, said the review isn't helpful because it's simply "judging a book by its cover."

All teacher preparation programs that certify teachers in the state already have to be reviewed and approved by the Wisconsin Department of Public Instruction.

Jeanne Williams is a professor and assistant dean of faculty for accreditation at Ripon College, a private school that did not participate in the review.

She said there's a general sense that colleges of teacher education are already trying to improve and figuring out how to best serve their local schools.

Legislation passed in recent years is already taking steps to strengthen Wisconsin's teacher training programs.

Starting this fall, student teachers finishing their education degrees will have to pass a new Foundations of Reading exam to be certified. They will get as many attempts as they need to pass the exam. But new report cards for the state's education schools, scheduled to be released for the first time this summer, will show how many times teacher candidates from each program had to take the exam to pass it.

Another teaching performance exam known as the edTPA is also being rolled out as a requirement for new teachers to pass to get their state certification.

Katy Heyning, dean of the College of Education at the University of Wisconsin-Whitewater, said the report isn't an accurate reflection of what's going on in the state.