Eric.ed.gov – Exploratory Study of the UTeach STEM Preparation Program and the Effectiveness of UTeach Teachers. Policy Brief

According to the Department of Education, there are more than 2,000 teacher preparation programs (TPPs) in the United States, but despite these numbers, concerns remain about the quality and quantity of STEM teachers in the workforce. The UTeach teacher preparation program (TPP), founded at the University of Texas at Austin in 1997, is specifically designed to address these concerns by recruiting students directly from STEM majors and offering students the opportunity to receive a secondary STEM teaching certification alongside their STEM degree with no additional time in college. While UTeach has undoubtedly increased the number of teachers produced at universities that have adopted the program, questions remain as to the quality of those teachers when compared to other teachers in the workforce. UTeach has never had a formal, third-party evaluation of its teachers in the field; this study intended to fill this gap by investigating the test scores of the students of UTeach-produced teachers. This study pursued the following research questions: (1) How do students taught by UTeach teachers compare to students taught by non-UTeach teachers in terms of their math and science state test scores?; (2) Are there differences in student test scores between UTeach and non-UTeach teachers for different subgroups of students (i.e., does the UTeach effect hold true for all students)?; and (3) Are there certain malleable factors that may explain differences between TPPs?