Most of Oregon’s state teacher prep programs have failed to educate future elementary teachers on how to successfully teach reading, according to a new report from the National Council on Teacher Quality. The report, Decoding Progress in Reading Preparation, graded teacher preparation programs across the nation and gave F’s to most of Oregon’s public teacher prep programs for failing to prepare aspiring teachers in scientifically based elementary reading instruction known as ‘the science of reading.’

Local Programs Struggle

Only two Oregon programs—those at Eastern Oregon and Southern Oregon universities—earned A grades. Portland State University was the only state university in Oregon that wouldn’t share its literacy syllabuses, so it was not given a grade. Oregon’s private colleges that prepare aspiring teachers also declined to share syllabuses with national evaluators, despite repeated outreach to individual programs.

The failing grades or lack of transparency around their programs matter because Oregon’s fourth-grade reading scores, adjusted for demographics, rank 50th in the nation, according to an Urban Institute analysis. Despite spending years of political capital and more than $100 million to boost early literacy, more than 48% of Oregon fourth-graders are below basic proficiency in reading—a deficit experts associate with future poverty.

Call for Improvement

‘If I’m a parent of a child who’s struggling to learn to read, I want to know that my child’s teacher has graduated from a teacher prep program that actually taught that teacher how to teach my child to learn to read, aligned with the best methods that we have,’ says Heather Peske, president of the National Council on Teacher Quality. ‘Reading outcomes for kids won’t improve unless teacher preparation improves.’

The state agency that ensures the quality of those programs and licenses new teachers is the Teacher Standards and Practices Commission. However, the commission does not typically review the syllabuses for reading courses to see if teacher prep programs adhere to the five standards of teaching literacy or teach contrary practices.

Original reporting: Salem Reporter — read the source article.