This advice was received as a comment, and it is directed to others in teacher education programs.
This teacher educator from one of the California State universities writes:
In reading each of your own campus reports, you are already well aware of how inaccurate the NCTQ “findings” are. In reading the report in full, I can assure you that it does not improve in the aggregate. It is almost unbelievable how wrong they have managed to be. It is after reading their full conclusions and assertions that it becomes obvious that presenting NCTQ with additional data or evidence regarding programs will not result in true and objective evaluations of program operation or quality.
As for now, we have decided that our programs will NOT respond to NCTQ. We do not wish to engage them in any exchange about what constitutes program quality, or any back and forth about our programs. We feel that to do so would serve to legitimize their standing as an appropriate judge of such things–our position is that, as a biased organization with a political agenda, they have should have no role in weighing in on program quality.
The real problem with NCTQ is their starting bias–if they had been a legitimate organization at the start, universities would have cooperated. They are still not legitimate, and we don’t want to help them formalize a role for themselves.
Please do NOT go to the NCTQ website and provide any correction or additional information about your program. Instead, just provide public statements that reaffirm the quality of your programs and what you do well, ideally without mentioning NCTQ.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
NCTQ is just a pressure group, nothing more …
and I’m surprised to hear anyone even reads USNAWR anymore.
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I dunno, I kind of prefer Mike Klonsky’s response to the NCTQ report: http://michaelklonsky.blogspot.com/2013/06/nctq-study-of-teacher-prep-programs-is.html
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I agree, great reply. Happy to be a recent CSULA grad after reading this response.
Ignore the report. NCQT is biased, and the study methodology terribly invalid.
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Chris Hedges gives a terse, spirited explanation of what is behind the effort to demean teachers.
Excerpt: “I cannot say for certain—not with the certainty of a Bill Gates or a Mike Bloomberg who pontificate with utter certainty over a field in which they know absolutely nothing—but more and more I suspect that a major goal of the reform campaign is to make the work of a teacher so degrading and insulting that the dignified and the truly educated teachers will simply leave while they still retain a modicum of self-respect,” he added. “In less than a decade we been stripped of autonomy and are increasingly micromanaged. Students have been given the power to fire us by failing their tests. Teachers have been likened to pigs at a trough and blamed for the economic collapse of the United States. In New York, principals have been given every incentive, both financial and in terms of control, to replace experienced teachers with 22-year-old untenured rookies. They cost less. They know nothing. They are malleable and they are vulnerable to termination.”
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For the complete story. http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/why_the_united_states_is_destroying_her_education_system_20110410
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More Hedges:
“The truly educated become conscious. They become self-aware. They do not lie to themselves. They do not pretend that fraud is moral or that corporate greed is good. They do not claim that the demands of the marketplace can morally justify the hunger of children or denial of medical care to the sick. They do not throw 6 million families from their homes as the cost of doing business. Thought is a dialogue with one’s inner self. Those who think ask questions, questions those in authority do not want asked. They remember who we are, where we come from and where we should go. They remain eternally skeptical and distrustful of power. And they know that this moral independence is the only protection from the radical evil that results from collective unconsciousness.”
Brilliant.
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The NCTQ is error filled. But consider the source, BROAD funded, BROADIES on the Board, BROADIES on the advisory panel, and all of Jebbie Bush’s little Chieftain changers ENDORSED the report (page 94).
BROADIE minds and bad data, perfect together.
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Concerning the self inflicted NCTQ debacle , one need look past the seductive bait of a report so highly flawed as to be it’s own parody. One of the major discernible components of the report was the degree to which it sought to verify compliance with the implementation of CCSS. Like other so called reports and analyses, it is nothing more than a sales pitch formulated to support a policy or agenda favored by the reports authors and/or the backers of their front groups. While I suspect there was a discussion by the reports backers of killing two birds with one stone, attacking teacher prep programs while promoting the CCSS, all they have succeeded in doing is throwing a handful of sand into their own eyes. Ultimately this is little more than a distraction, the real battlefield is the political arena where legislators and legislation are still for sale. Though they will never acknowledge it, the reformers battle for the hearts and minds of parents and tax payers has largely been lost, though a rear guard action is still being fought to gain temporary support, create straw men to be attacked for the amusement of their opposition, and as I said before, divert attention from what is going on in the last place the corporate reformers still hold sway. Time for a big push for all of us to contact our elected allege-to-represent-us-tives. Votes can still overpower money in America.
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As a current teacher candidate in an initial certification program I was very, very concerned with the NCTQ’s report. My institution was among the 90% of colleges and universities did not participate in the study and after reading the report I can clearly see why. Curious to see what research method was used to conclude that most of the schools are failing in their programs; I sought out their methodology and was very dismayed with what I found. After reading the methodology NCTQ clearly did not complete its research to make the resulting report quantified. I say that because where are the teacher candidate surveys, observations, interviews, faculty interviews, teacher placement data and subsequent student achievement data? No information was given on the thoughts, opinions, and achievement of both pre-service and in-service teachers after year one, year two, etc.
None of this information was retrieved yet NCTQ published a report that says teacher preparation programs are ineffective. As I can see, they made no visits to any schools for qualitative data yet clearly deduced that universities are failing in their teacher preparation. I found the report to be slanted, horribly incomplete, totally inconclusive from the data gathered and very detrimental to the teaching field. I can only hope the public is critical enough to read the report which in itself will reveal its lack of validity.
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