The relationship between grade point average at admission to teacher education and subsequent pedagogical measures

The teaching profession in the United States is facing a dichotomous crisis. The quantity of teachers is threatening to drop at an alarming rate while policymakers and other stakeholders are questioning the quality of current and future teachers. Traditional teacher preparation programs at colleges and universities around the country are being scrutinized and criticized for the performance of their graduates. This study examined the relationship between admission grade point average (GPA) and subsequent pedagogical measures to determine if teacher education candidates who barely met this admission requirement were performing successfully at exit from the program.;Existing data for admission and exit criteria were collected and analyzed for 145 student teachers at Dakota State University for four semesters from Fall 2001 through Spring 2003. All student teachers had met the minimal 2.50 GPA, received ratings from cooperating teachers during their student teaching experience, and completed a pedagogical exit exam, the Principles of Learning and Teaching (PLT) produced by Educational Testing Services. Correlation coefficients and one-way analyses of variance were produced for the relationships of the GPA to both the PLT and the student teaching evaluation by cooperating teachers.;Teacher education candidates from this population with GPAs of 3.00 and above at admission to teacher education tended to achieve higher overall PLT scores than candidates with admission GPAs between 2.50 and 2.99. The higher overall PLT scores achieved by these candidates with CPAs of 3.00 and above were more often high enough to meet cutoff scores for licensure than the PLT scores achieved by those candidates with CPAs between 2.50 and 2.99. Teacher education candidates with GPAs of 3.00 and higher at admission to the teacher education program at Dakota State University did not necessarily tend to receive higher ratings from their cooperating teachers. Teacher education candidates with admission GPAs between 2.50 and 2.99 were not statistically disadvantaged in the possibility of achieving high ratings from cooperating teachers. The two exit measures of the Dakota State University teacher education program (PLT scores and ratings of student teachers by cooperating teachers) did not produce consistent measures of teacher education candidate performance.