Mercedes Schneider wants to give you a heads-up about the NCTQ scorecard, and she does it here.
Learn about the organization and its board in this post.
As she concludes:
“NCTQ remains a well-funded, well-advertised, corporate-reform-promoting facade. Its bogus teacher training program ratings will appear in Mortimer Zuckerman’s US News and World Report, complete with search engine headed with this statement:
“Becoming a successful teacher requires good training.
“The height of hypocrisy for an organization replete with TFA influence.”
Diane Ravitch's blog 
It’s as if the NRA appointed itself an accreditor of schools of education. Why would anyone pay any attention to that?
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You could readily see the Gates influence last year, because NCTQ made a huge deal about infusion of the Common Core in teacher ed programs.
Match has its own teacher training “school,” just like KIPP, Uncommon Schools and Achievement First, which partnered to establish Relay, in order to train drill sergeant teachers in their military style charters for mostly poor children of color. Their “faculty” and administrators are staff from their charter schools including TFAers, not PhD level Education experts, since they hold no regard for those with genuine expertise in Education.
If those “schools” were rated too, virtually any college which scored lower than they did is probably a decent teacher ed program which likely prepares teachers to treat children with dignity and respect, not as if they are wild animals that need to be on a silent chain gang.
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Unfortunately many faculty in higher education think teacher education is just a matter of purveying knowledge of a discipline to the next generation. The idea that teachers many need specialized knowledge to teach children strikes them as absurd. This general view is reflected in the NCTQ rating scheme for teacher education. Programs earn points if they rely on a basic liberal arts degree program for elementary education. The program is likely to be ranked high if it does not “waste time” offering specialized courses in teaching subjects such as the arts. NCTQ ratings are based on grades given to program descriptions and course syllabi by persons who work for a fee and do not have to know zip about teaching, learning, work in schools, etc.
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Agenda data dumb. When will they give it up already?
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NCTQ is a corporate front, and a “policy” parrot for the Arnold, Bradley, Broad, Dell, Gates, and Walton Foundations (among others).
Its advisory board includes such “luminaries” as Person pimp MIchael Barber, the American Enterprise Institute’s Rick Hess, E.D. Hirsch (sigh), Joel Klein (who now works for Rupert Murdoch), the “transformational” Wendy Kopp of Teach for America, conservative economist and public school basher Eric Hanushek, Celine Coggins of the Gates-funded Teach Plus, and Stefanie Sanford of the College Board (and formerly with Gates).
NCTQ is NOT interested in genuine education change.
But here’s charlatan Amanda Ripley citing NCTQ as “proof” that the key to education “reform” is teacher quality:
http://www.slate.com/articles/life/education/2014/06/american_schools_need_better_teachers_so_let_s_make_it_harder_to_become.html
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I don’t have a problem with the Ripley article except that she should have one caveat, by her logic, TFA is a complete sham.
I quote, “Once enrolled, Stenfors’ American peers had to do just two semesters of student teaching—compared to her four semesters in Finland”
So if two semesters of training is substandard, what the heck is five weeks, a complete hack job. Ripley’s silence is deafening. She knows the landscape, and her error of omission is a damned lie!
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They definitely need to make it harder to become a journalist.
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