College of Education makes top grades in the state
Tennessee State Board of Education gives Lipscomb’s teacher preparation program top marks for ninth year in a row.
Janel Shoun-Smith and Kalli Groce |
For the ninth consecutive year, Lipscomb’s College of Education was among the top-rated teacher preparation programs on the 2019 Educator Preparation Report Card, compiled by the Tennessee State Board of Education.
For the 2018-19 year, Lipscomb was among the top nine programs who earned the highest possible score of “Exceeds Expectations,” making it one of the most effective teacher preparation programs in the state.
The report also showed that Lipscomb is the largest teacher preparation program among all private universities in the state and the third largest overall. with 673 teachers graduating from Lipscomb between 2016 to 2018.
“Knowing many facets of high quality teaching and leading are hard to quantify. We are extremely pleased the success of our program and our candidates has been again recognized as exceeding the state’s expectations,” said Deborah Boyd, dean of the College of Education.
In addition, Teach For America Nashville-Chattanooga, a longstanding partner of Lipscomb, was also among the top nine programs to receive an “Exceeds Expectations” score. TFA Nashville-Chattanooga, a nontraditional teacher prep program, has partnered with Lipscomb to provide master’s level licensure education for its teachers since the program came to Nashville.
The report showed the 2018-19 year, Lipscomb had 83.7% of its graduates who were employed in public schools within a year of graduation. In addition, 93.1 percent of public school-employed Lipscomb graduates remained teaching in public schools for a second year.
Lipscomb had a 99 percent pass rate for the Praxis Principles of Learning and Teaching, the state licensure exam, besting the state average was 97.4 percent.
More on the Tennessee Educator Report Card
The Educator Preparation Report Card serves as a user-friendly tool to help local school districts make hiring decisions, to help prospective students select a college program in Tennessee and to allow education programs to recognize strengths and weaknesses.
The Report Card evaluates education programs on various aspects including the diversity of enrolled students, the program’s ability to train in high-demand content areas, graduates who begin and remain teaching in Tennessee public schools and the effectiveness of the graduates’ in public schools.
The 2019 edition of the report is designed to allow users to sort and filter programs to find the ones that meet their specific needs.
The Teacher Preparation Report Card is broken down into three main performance areas:
- Candidate Profile: This domain evaluates the provider’s ability to recruit a strong, diverse cohort of candidates and prepare them to teach in the content areas of greatest need.
- Employment: The Employment domain evaluates a provider’s performance in preparing educators to begin and remain teaching in Tennessee public schools.
- Provider Impact: This domain reports on the effectiveness of a provider’s completers in Tennessee public school classrooms.
How the College of Education measured up
In the Candidate Profile domain, Lipscomb ranked No. 1 on Percentage of High-Demand Endorsements, earning 10 out of 10 possible points. Also, 95.3% of Lipscomb’s cohort had qualifying assessment scores; the state average was 94%.
In the Employment domain, Lipscomb had 83.7% of cohort members who were employed in Tennessee public schools within one year of completing their preparation program or within one year of enrolling in a job-embedded program; the state average was 77.2%. Lipscomb’s second-year retention rate score, which reports the percentage of first-year employed cohort members who remain teaching in Tennessee public schools for a second year, was 93.1%.
In the Provider Impact domain, 94.5% of cohort members had classroom observation scores at Level 3. This metric reports the percentage of cohort members who earned an observation score of at least a 3 on a scale of 1 to 5. The score of 94.5 earned Lipscomb 8.7 out of 9 points possible.
The report card offered additional information about the College of Education’s program, specifically a Candidate Assessment that evaluates a provider’s performance in preparing candidates to pass the assessments required to obtain a Tennessee teaching license.
Lipscomb had a 99% pass rate for the Praxis Principles of Learning and Teaching (state average was 97.4%); a 94% pass rate for the edTPA; and a 95.5% pass rate for the Praxis Subject Assessments (the state average was 93.4%).
In addition, 42.1% of TFA Nashville-Chattanooga corps members were issued endorsements in high-demand areas, such as special education, secondary math and English as a second language, compared to the state average of 27.8%.
About the College of Education
Since 2013, the National Council for Teacher Quality has consistently ranked Lipscomb’s College of Education programs among the top 25 in the nation, ranking them as high as No. 1 nationally in 2014. Lipscomb's undergraduate secondary teacher preparation program is among the 120 programs in the NCTQ book Start Here to Become a Teacher, and the organization gave Lipscomb one A+ and three A grades in various teacher preparation categories.
In 2015, the College of Education was ranked the No. 15 best value in the nation and among the 35 "Top Colleges for Content Preparation" in the nation by NCTQ. The College of Education was named the 2016 Model of Excellence in Partnerships by the Association of Independent Liberal Arts Colleges for Teacher Education among numerous other state and national honors in recent years.