Real Teacher Ed Reform

From Inside Higher Ed
by Linda Darling-Hammond

Teacher education has been under siege in the last few years, the first line of attack in the growing criticism and more aggressive regulation of higher education.

Most recently, the U.S. Department of Education proposed — in a highly contentious negotiated rule-making exercise — to use test scores of graduates’ students to evaluate schools of education, despite the warnings of leading researchers that such scores are unstable and invalid for this purpose. Furthermore, in an unprecedented move, the department would  limit eligibility for federal TEACH grants to prospective teachers from highly rated programs, denying aid to many deserving candidates while penalizing programs that prepare teachers for the most challenging teaching assignments.