Survey of Principals About Teaching Performance
of Recent Rider Teacher Education Graduates
School of Education
Rider University
2011
Rider’s School of Education regularly assesses student learning in many ways. Every year its Department of Teacher Education surveys professors, cooperating teachers, and student teaching supervisors to gather information about student performance in their field-site-based preservice teaching assignments (which are part of every undergraduate education course). These Conceptual Framework-based Unit Assessments require evaluations of the performance of every student in our program every year. They have been conducted annually since they were recommended by our last NCATE visitation team (and designed with the assistance of that on-site team), and they have been a boon to our assessment and program improvement efforts. This is just one large-scale assessment program encompassing all courses, majors, minors, and certification specialties. We conduct this Unit Assessment independently of the many smaller, specialized assessment activities we also carry out an on-going basis out that are related to specific courses or certification areas.
Assessments of preservice performance are important, but they cannot answer the question, “What happens to Rider graduates when they take actual inservice teaching positions?” To answer this question, the School of Education developed a survey this spring and sent it for the first time to principals throughout the region asking them to rate the performance of any and all recently hired Rider graduates in their schools. The principals (or their designees; some asked other administrators or faculty mentors more familiar with a new teacher’s work to complete the surveys) completed surveys about the teaching performance of 210 recent Rider graduates. Attached is the record of their responses.
Principals were asked to rate the performance of all untenured teachers working in their schools who were Rider School of Education graduates. To make the survey manageable we limited out questions to teacher performance in 12 important areas:
1. Success in promoting student achievement in reading/language arts.
2. Success in promoting student achievement in math.
3. Success in promoting student achievement in science.
4. Success in promoting student achievement in social studies.
5. Classroom management skills.
6. Lesson planning abilities.
7. Ability to differentiate instruction successfully.
8. Depth and breadth of content knowledge needed for teaching.
9. Ability to communicate with parents.
10. Use of assessment procedures to guide instruction.
11. Development of professional, caring relationships with students.
12. Ability to collaborate productively with colleagues.
For each standard they were asked to rate each Rider graduate using the following scale:
1 = Below the level expected of a new teacher
2 = Acceptable level for a new teacher
3 = Above average for a new teacher
4 = Well above the level expected of a new teacher
There was also a N/A option if the principal did not believe that she had sufficient information on the teacher to make a valid rating.
The results have been very encouraging. The mean of all the responses in all the categories was 2.9, which is almost equal to the rating of 3 that represents “Above average for a new teacher.” This confirms information from ratings by student teaching cooperating teachers, supervisors, and professors of Rider students in their student teaching semester, and it suggests that in the real, inservice world of everyday teaching, Rider graduates continue to excel.
This does not mean, of course, that the survey showed no reason for concern. There were a few Rider graduates who received ratings of “Below the level expected of a new teacher,” which represent program failures. There is a discussion below of possible problem areas such ratings suggest may exist in our program and possible actions the School of Education might take in a section below (see Areas of Concern: “Below the Level Expected of a New Teacher” Ratings) following the overall presentation of the data, which is attached.
icons at the top right corner of the subsection.