Education Dept.’s Reform Plan for Teacher Training Gets Mixed Reviews

From The Chronicle
By Collin Eaton

Arne Duncan, the U.S. secretary of education, laid out measures on Friday that would change how teachers’ colleges are evaluated and supported, but the plan has some sticking points for teachers’ colleges and teachers’ unions.

At a forum here hosted by Education Sector, a nonpartisan research group, Mr. Duncan said that the American teacher-preparation system was a mixed bag of high- and low-quality colleges, and that 62 percent of new teachers said they were unprepared to begin teaching after graduating from those programs. One problem, he said, is that colleges are not held accountable for their students’ teaching quality after graduation – measured by the performance of their graduates’ elementary- and secondary-school students on standardized tests.