Research Differential Admission Requirements and Student Achievement in Teacher Education

A group of 74 students admitted to a teacher education program without meeting one or more of the admission requirements was compared on entrance and exit characteristics and achievement with 74 students who had met all of the requirements for admission. The exceptional admission group had lower GPAs, higher failure rates on the NTE, and lower evaluations of their subject matter competency than the regular admission group; however, there were no significant differ-ences between the two groups in completing program requirements and in securing teaching cre-dentials. The use of admission standards as predictors of teaching success is discussed. Promises to the American public for the reform of teacher education, if not explicitly stated, are implied by the authors of the plethora of state and national reports. In these reports, one assumption related to program admission standards is always clear. Only if we raise standards for admission of students to teacher education will we have competent teachers who are capable of educating our K-12 students to th