THE PREDICTIVE-VALIDITY OF THE NATIONAL TEACHER EXAMINATIONS USED FORADMISSION TO TEACHER-EDUCATION PROGRAMS

This research investigates previous findings which report that perform ance on the National Teacher Examinations (NTE) tests of Communication Skills (CS) and General Knowledge (GK) used for teacher education adm issions was not related to performance in teacher education course wor k. Administrative data were collected for 1,143 graduates of teacher e ducation programs, including various test scores and grade point avera ges. The CS and GK scores were not found to be strongly enough related to performance in teacher education programs, as measured by grade po int average, to merit their use as requirements for admission. The tes ts are useful for predicting performance on the NTE test of Profession al Knowledge, the state certification examination. Cross-validation of prior regression models showed these relationships to be stable. The authors point out policy implications of the study.