BATON ROUGE — An educational program for aspiring teachers instituted by one of south Louisiana's universities has received national recognition. 

Southern University and A&M College announced Thursday that its undergraduate elementary teacher preparation program has been named among the top in the country by the National Council on Teacher Quality, which is a not-for-profit research and policy organization aimed at enhancing the quality of educational programs that prepare aspiring teachers for the realities of the classroom.

“These top programs are to be commended,” observed Kate Walsh, president of NCTQ. “Too many teacher prep programs struggle to make clinical practice a meaningful learning experience for aspiring teachers – especially when it comes to selecting effective mentor teachers, often due to lack of quality control by their partner school districts. The effort that these top programs have made to ensure alignment with their local districts so they can offer strong clinical experiences will have lasting positive impacts on their teacher candidates, and more importantly, their candidates’ future students.” 

This month, NCTQ released its 2020 Teacher Prep Review: Clinical Practice and Classroom Management, which explained that Southern’s program stands out among only 33 traditional elementary programs as earning an A (of more than 1,100 evaluated) for its strong clinical experience requirements and serves as a model of excellence for others.

The full NCTQ summary of findings and list of all top-performing programs, are available at: www.nctq.org/2020TPRPractice.