While there is much that the faculty and staff of the Teacher Education Program at Virginia Wesleyan College support (addressed below) in the proposed Regulations, there are notable revisions that give us cause for concern.

Regarding Annual Report Card:

The faculty and staff of the Teacher Education Program do not support the revision indicated in 8VAC20-542-70 that requires the VDOE “to produce an annual report card,” especially as the language in the proposed Regulations does not specify how such a “grade” would be calculated or what guidelines would be used to determine the “grade.”  This data could penalize small, high quality programs that have lesser numbers of program completers if just a very few candidates became non-completers.  Also, using the criterion of “number of candidates admitted in education endorsement programs who are in the top quartile of the college/university population” to rate a teacher education program supplies no legitimate indication of the quality of the graduates (teachers) produced by the program.  This statistic could vary wildly depending on the reporting period and the time at which students seek admission to the education program.  Very little educational research supports this specific criterion, and to date, little to no research has shown a positive correlation between undergraduate student rank and success and effectiveness of teachers.