essay#2

Shamika Cockfield

Strayer University

Dr. Melanie Gallman

EDU571: Evaluating School Programs

January 19, 2017

Teacher Preparation Program

The evaluation of an education program is an evolving profession. The purpose of testing the efficiency of a program is to give the decision-makers substantial information to use in enhancing or improving the recommended program. For example, an institution, say a school, may use program evaluation to assist in making decisions regarding whether to establish a program (needs assessment), ways of developing a program (formative evaluation) and whether to revise or continue using the existing program (summative evaluation) (Faxon-Mills, Hamilton, Rudnick & Stecher, 2013). As such, the objective of this paper is to evaluate the efficiency of a teacher preparation program in enhancing the value of the teachers and the performance of the students.

Describe three (3) elements of a worthy object for program evaluation - its type, the department administrating it, and target population. The program evaluation under perspective is the Teacher Preparation program. It is a program that the three levels of government, Federal, State and local government establishes to ascertain the efficiency of the teachers engaged in educational institutions at all the levels ranging from the Pre-school to the University Levels. As such, the program falls under or it’s rather administered by the Council for the Accreditation of Education Programs (CAEP). The target focuses mostly on the teacher candidates (Faxon-Mills, Hamilton, Rudnick & Stecher, 2013).

Describe the program's history, primary purpose(s), and / or expected outcomes.

Effective tutoring has always been significant and is recently a nationwide concern. The increased emphasis on effective tutoring can be attributed to a several factors, such as (a) long-lasting accomplishment gaps that endure in spite of the comprehensive transitions at both the national and State levels, (b) the poorer academic performance registered by the students on international examination compared to their counterparts living in other industrialized nations and lastly(c) the need of managing the expenditure by the government at the Federal, State and local positions. All these aspects have raised a major concern concerning the efficiency of the teachers in schools and the significance of preparing teachers adequately while in colleges and campuses. Furthermore, the emphasis on enhancing teacher education is as well triggered by the competition and assessment with the alternate certification programs and the fresh standards recommended by the Board mandated to accredit the education preparation programs.

The board requires these programs to illustrate that the approved candidates can impact strong positive impacts on the students learning. One key outcome of these developments is the level of attentiveness demonstrated to the critical significance of the teachers and the necessity for valid and operative tools to evaluate the teaching staff. The recent literature has underscored three techniques that provide promising outcome in evaluating the efficiency of teachers (Gansle, Noell & Burns, 2012). These methods include but not limited to the following- the value-added evaluations of student success, the standardized observation procedures and lastly the assessments of the performance of teachers. These approaches can be applied by the teacher education programs to certify whether the teacher candidates that complete their teaching courses are well equipped and prepared to tutor while simultaneously introducing them to different experiences that will relentlessly play a significant role in their individual professions based on the assumption that the future studies will yield similar findings with the original results.

Nevertheless, the success of the teacher program depends on whether the government can provide affordable and quality education to all the students indiscriminately. Fortunately, America has successfully achieved this by providing free and suitable education to every American Native child. As such, most researchers have come to an accord that the provision of free education to all has borne significant benefits for individual persons and the community at large. Besides the numerous advantages linked to the individual and society, the provision of effective education brings in more public benefits, for instance, enhancing society’s productivity, tax revenue, public health and subsidized costs in accessing the social services (Gansle, Noell & Burns, 2012).

Discuss three (3) advantages of evaluating the program at this time.

As the society continues experiencing relentless transitions, the government tends to set higher standards for the students. As such, there is need to engage teachers that are competent and equipped with best practices to enhance student learning. It is attestable that effective education is dependent on the productivity of the teachers. In other words, the visibility of tutoring and learning are what determines whether a student can grasp what is being taught in the classroom and apply in day to day life experiences. An effective teacher should possess the power of cognitively engaging students with what is being taught. It entails engaging teachers that can focus their tutoring skills in developing a certain way of thinking and reasoning in students.

In addition, the need for evaluating this program is to assess their performance in terms of accountability. A teacher program is designed to ensure that skills impacted to the teacher can bring a difference to the student learning. The need emanates from the moral and professional accountability of the education programs to guarantee the society that the government has established competent colleges and Universities capable of preparing productive teachers for the U.S. schools (Gansle, Noell & Burns, 2012).

Discuss two (2) major constraints in conducting an evaluation on this program and a method of addressing them

However, several constraints arise in the attempt of evaluating the efficiency of the Teacher preparedness program. First, the cost associated with conducting research to ascertain the existence of the problem is overly high (Jacob & Lefgren 2008). The processes involved, such as, submission of proposals to obtain permission from the relevant bodies to conduct the research may deter one from conducting the research. The other salient constraint is determining the suitable measures and performance protocols across the range of topics, subjects and levels at which teacher candidates may tutor. Despite acknowledging the existence of the mentioned constraints, engaging stakeholders, such as, the government to provide funds to enable conducting research for the purpose of enhancing educational on a national level will address the issue on cost. As well, in addressing the challenge the determining suitable measures and standards of determining the best teacher candidate is by centralizing the education system right from the Pre-school to the Campus level. The establishment of such a method will enable the government, particularly the Council for the Accreditation of Education Programs to monitor the educational institutions without interferences (Jacob & Lefgren 2008).

References

Faxon-Mills, S., Hamilton, L.S., Rudnick, M., & Stecher, B.M. (2013). New assessments, better instruction? Designing assessment systems to promote instructional improvement. Santa Monica, ca: rand

Gansle, K. A., Noell, G. H., & Burns, J. M. (2012). Do student achievement outcomes differ across teacher preparation programs? An analysis of teacher education in Louisiana. Journal of Teacher Education, 63, 304–317. Doi: 10.1177/0022487112439894

Jacob, B. A., & Lefgren, L. (2008). Can principals identify effective teachers? Evidence on subjective ~performance evaluation in education. Journal of Labor Economics, 26, 101– 136. Doi: 10.1086/522974