Today, NCTQ is honored to announce that two more state
superintendents — Arizona’s John Huppenthal and Iowa’s Jason Glass — and 19 education advocacy organizations from around the country
have endorsed our national review of teacher prep.
Like the Chiefs for Change, who endorsed the review earlier
this month, these superintendents and organizations are primarily focused on
state-level, PK-12 issues. But the question of how best to prepare teachers for
success in the classroom resonates widely throughout the entire sector. As Dr. Glass wrote, “Through
identifying the fundamental aspects of quality that every new educator should
have in a preparation experience, we can raise the bar on educator quality and
focus our institutions of higher education on meaningful improvement.”
Moreover, there’s an increasing awareness that
improving teacher quality is a responsibility that has to be shared by all
institutions involved in education. As MinnCAN’s Vallay Varro wrote, “[In] a time when we’re asking for more
accountability and transparency from our students, our teachers, and our
schools, it’s time to take the blinders off and see what kind of teachers are
coming out of our teacher preparation programs.”
While a number of teacher educators have been
critical of our effort, we hope that they appreciate as much as we do that the review
has begun to move the issue of teacher preparation to center stage in
discussions of how best to strengthen our schools. Unaccustomed scrutiny may at
first be discomfiting, but it’s the first step for the sector to gain the
relevance it fully deserves. Teacher prep programs now have the opportunity
to seize this moment, share basic information about how they’re preparing
tomorrow’s teachers and use the review as a springboard for their ongoing
efforts at improvement.