A national report released last week slams the vast majority of teacher preparation programs across the country, including in Georgia and specifically at Georgia Southern University.Leaders of teacher prep programs fired back quickly — in some cases, even before the report was released — criticizing the National Council on Teacher Quality’s heavy reliance on syllabi and course documentation and lack of on-site program evaluation.The report, which was published on the council’s website, www.nctq.org, and in U.S. News & World Report, concludes that no programs preparing elementary teachers – and only a very few preparing secondary-level teachers – are doing a good job. The only highly rated programs in Georgia, according to the council’s “Teacher Prep Review,” are: Clayton State University, graduate-level secondary, 3.5 stars out of 4 Mercer University, undergraduate secondary, 3 stars University of Georgia, undergraduate and graduate secondary, both 3 stars“New teachers deserve training that will enable them to walk into their own classroom on their first day ready to teach, but our ‘Review’ shows that we have a long way to go,” said Kate Walsh, the president of the council. “While we know a lot about how to train teachers, those practices are seldom evident in the vast majority of programs.”That might be because the council’s researchers did not collect enough evidence, said Dr. Thomas R. Koballa Jr., the dean of the College of Education at Georgia Southern.The report gave GSU’s graduate secondary program 1.5 stars and its undergraduate elementary program 1 star.