For a partnership to be strong, partners must openly share and exchange information and ideas. The California State University’s partnership with K-12 education includes an extensive flow of ideas and information about the quality and effectiveness of CSU teacher preparation. Because the CSU prepares teachers for K-12 schools, the CSU believes their performance in K-12 schools is the primary basis for assessing its prospective-teacher programs. But how successful are these programs? To find out, the CSU relies heavily on candid feedback from its teaching graduates. Fortunately, thousands of these teachers provide honest evaluations of CSU teacher education each year. The CSU uses the teachers’ feedback in significant efforts to improve the preparation of future teachers.

In this strong partnership, the CSU also strives to see the world through its graduates’ eyes. Working with K-12 students, teachers want skills and understandings that help them meet the challenges of teaching. How much can CSU graduates rely on university-based knowledge and skills to help them in classrooms? When they tackle difficult teaching tasks, how well does CSU preparation enable teachers to confront and surmount those challenges? To find out, the CSU asks its first-year teaching graduates about the value and helpfulness of CSU preparation for several important responsibilities of teachers. The chart below sums up the elementary school teachers’ feedback.

Learning to Teach in Elementary Schools

In the chart, red stripes represent first-year teachers who found their CSU preparation to be “very valuable or helpful” during standards-based instruction in California’s K-8 classrooms. Black stripes are other CSU graduates who found the same preparation to be “somewhat valuable or helpful.” Four core subjects are listed along the bottom. In each subject, three annual cohorts of CSU graduates (4,600 teachers overall) gave increasingly favorable feedback when asked to be candid and honest. In reading and math, nine-tenths of the most recent cohort found CSU training to be either very or somewhat valuable or useful. In elementary science and history instruction, five-sixths of the cohort gave the same feedback.

Working Effectively with Diverse K-12 Students

CSU teacher preparation programs give increasing attention to the instructional needs of English learners, culturally diverse students, and special learners with disabilities. Many of these K-12 students are future CSU students. To educate a productive workforce and an active citizenry, the CSU strives to admit high-achieving students from all segments of California’s population. For this to occur, the university’s teaching graduates must be effective with all groups of K-12 students. In the chart at the top of the next page, 7,174 CSU graduates report that CSU preparation is “very valuable or helpful” (red) or “somewhat valuable or helpful” (black) when they teach important groups of California students at all K-12 levels. The same cohorts of teaching graduates identified in the previous chart confirm that the CSU is making education courses increasingly valuable and helpful to them as first-year teachers.

School Administrators as CSU Partners

The CSU also relies on K-12 school administrators as important partners in the preparation of teachers. In addition to guiding and assisting CSU student teachers, school administrators supervise and evaluate first-year teachers who earned their credentials at CSU campuses. Many managers have extensive experience supervising and assessing these teachers, so they are valuable sources of feedback about how well the CSU is doing. For the past four years, the CSU has invited administrators to be candid in assessing the university’s preparation of teachers. Unlike other institutions that ask questions such as, “In general, how well have our graduates been doing in your schools,” the CSU asks each administrator to provide specific evidence about a particular CSU graduate’s readiness to teach. The chart below sums up elementary school principals’ feedback.

Evidence from Elementary School Principals

A particular teacher might be well prepared, or adequately prepared, or less-than-adequately prepared to know and understand the school curriculum and, separately, to teach the subjects in the curriculum. These levels of preparedness are shown in the chart to the right, and are based on the judgments of 2,192 veteran principals of California public elementary schools who had observed the CSU graduates in their classrooms and met with them individually to review their work. Red and black segments represent the CSU’s well-prepared and adequately prepared graduates, respectively. Areas of knowledge and ability are identified along the bottom; four bars represent annual cohorts of CSU graduates. Overall, elementary principals in this chart agree with elementary teachers in the chart on page 4 that the CSU increases its effectiveness over time and reached a high level of effectiveness in recent years.

Evidence from Secondary School Administrators

Secondary school administrators assess the readiness of CSU graduates to teach California’s challenging academic curriculum in grades 7-12. In these grades, CSU feedback comes primarily from the chairs of academic departments in high schools and middle schools. After conferring with and observing the first-year teachers for nine months, department chairs indicate how well the teachers know and understand the academic subject(s), and how well they teach these subjects. The chart below summarizes feedback provided by as many as 210 department chairs in each of eight subject areas, with subject-matter knowledge on the left side and teaching skills on the right side of each subject-specific display. Once again, the CSU’s partners report high levels of teacher effectiveness in all subjects—both academically and pedagogically.

The patterns in the chart on page 4 and in this chart exemplify the feedback that the CSU received from large numbers of teaching graduates and school leaders about a broad range of university outcomes. Similar responses occur when questions address other aspects of teacher preparation such as learning to manage classrooms, learning to work closely with parents, and learning to use educational technology.

CSU Compared with Universities Nationwide

Based on a federal study, the CSU’s effectiveness can be compared with that of universities throughout the United States. In an evaluation of teacher education by the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES, 2000), a random sample of first-year teachers answered questions similar to the CSU’s questions. National feedback is contrasted with that of CSU first-year teachers in the following chart. CSU teacher preparation is considerably more effective in the two broad areas where the studies overlapped: preparing to teach new state curriculum standards and preparing to teach diverse populations of students.

Addressing the Achievement Gap

For many years, the CSU has been concerned about the “achievement gaps” that persist in K-12 education. Campuses strive to prepare teachers to be effective with groups that schools have historically underserved. Specific CSU courses and fieldwork assignments focus on teaching important groups of students. Each year, the CSU examines its effectiveness in preparing teachers for different socioeconomic communities, and for students with diverse language backgrounds. Evaluation findings annually show the CSU to be almost as effective among traditionally underserved groups as traditionally well-served groups of students. The preponderance of evidence suggests that CSU teacher preparation ameliorates the achievement gaps that unfortunately continue to mark American education.

Overall Assessments of CSU Teacher Preparation

Some critics of university-based teacher education allege that credential programs are a waste of time. Often they attribute this criticism to first-year teachers in K-12 schools. The CSU asks first-year graduates of CSU programs to provide an honest assessment of the overall value and quality of their credential preparation. As the chart below shows, from 88 percent to 91 percent of the CSU’s first-year teachers indicate that their education courses and field experiences provide ideas and skills that are useful and valuable in their teaching. After considering four levels of program quality in 2004, a total of 1,263 first-year teachers (46 percent) reported that “my CSU credential program provided a rich array of ideas and skills that have been useful in my teaching this year.” Much smaller numbers assessed the overall value of their preparation unfavorably. The CSU strives to reach all teachers with a high-impact curriculum that promotes good teaching.

Basis for CSU Evaluation Findings

Since 2001, the CSU has annually solicited feedback information from its partners in K-12 schools. In four distinct evaluations, a total of 9,070 first-year teachers and 7,533 experienced school leaders responded to the CSU’s call. The CSU is deeply grateful to these partners who represented 52 percent and 48 percent, respectively, of the teachers and administrators who were randomly invited to “talk back to the CSU.” As a partner in the education enterprise, the CSU uses feedback information at two levels: Individual CSU campuses make improvements in teacher preparation programs based on many specific evaluation findings, and the CSU system undertakes systemwide initiatives when evaluations reveal systemwide needs. The CSU credits teachers and administrators for these opportunities to strengthen the teaching profession.

The CSU knows of no other system of four-year universities that has relied on teacher and administrator feedback for so many years. CSU teacher education programs have benefited richly from the advice and guidance of K-12 professionals. Teacher preparation’s effectiveness is closely related to that of K-12 schools because of close collaborations like this one. When the CSU and its partners are fully successful, learners at all levels of education will realize their potential due to teachers and their universities.