Currently, there are more first year teachers in the United States than teachers of any other experience level. At many schools, most of the teachers have only been teaching for a few years. Meanwhile, the skills and responsibilities expected of educators are expanding, as higher standards and new technologies are implemented to improve student learning.
While expectations for PreK-12 educators have changed substantially, many of the programs that prepare educators have remained stagnant. Much of the responsibility for this rests with the preparation programs themselves, but states and the federal government have each played a role as well. With reauthorization of the federal Higher Education Act (HEA) overdue, and both houses of Congress holding hearings focused on teacher preparation, the time is ripe for a renewed focus on improving educator preparation programs and the teachers and school leaders they produce.
In “Time to Improve: How Federal Policy Can Promote Better Prepared Teachers and School Leaders,” New America’s Melissa Tooley and Laura Bornfreund offer recommendations for a new federal approach to addressing current issues with educator preparation and advancement policies that recognize the need to move quickly, yet thoughtfully, to promote better prepared teachers and school leaders.
Currently, federal law requires all colleges preparing teachers to submit “report cards” on teacher preparation and states to designate programs as “at risk” or “low performing.” While these demands may have been created for the right reasons, Tooley and Bornfreund have found that the data being collected to corroborate the reports from colleges is woefully complicated and inadequate. Education Week summarizes their call to colleges as follows:
- Report on graduates’ performance using surveys and other outcome data, for both teacher- and principal-preparation programs;
- Be required to break down performance data by program, not just by the institution;
- By 2019-20, develop a system for rating teacher- and principal-program quality in at least three categories;
- Disallow low-rated programs from offering TEACH grants;
- By 2022-23, require states to withdraw approval from continuously low-rated programs; and
- Be prohibited from subgranting federal teacher-training dollars to low-performing programs.
- In addition, states should also be allowed to tap the 2.5 percent of their state teacher quality grants, which are authorized under the Elementary and Secondary Education Act, to set up the rating systems.
- Finally, the authors envision a revamped competitive-grant program for teacher prep that would be based largely on program performance.
These are ideas which will not only face criticism from many quarters but will also be difficult to implement. But with Congress debating an update to current federal law on higher education programs, now is certainly the right time to have the discussion.
See the following links to learn more:http://newamerica.net/publications/policy/time_to_improve
http://blogs.edweek.org/edweek/teacherbeat/2014/03/group_urges_focus_on_outputs.html?qs=how+congress+should+improve+teacher+preparation
