Collaborate to Improve Teacher Preparation

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Somewhere in the U.S., standing at the door of a classroom, a new lead teacher greets her students on the first day of school. She smiles as she shakes each student’s hand, and guides them to their organized, pre-arranged seats. When the class begins, she introduces herself and explains the classroom goals and the culture, which she hopes they’ll work together to create. After all, she’s done it before. Unfortunately, this teacher’s experience is not the norm. Most teachers will share how unprepared they felt in the classroom on their first day. Nightmare stories about classroom behavior and exhaustion abound, while most new teachers continue to brave their first year without the support and preparation that they need to thrive.
We need our higher education institutions and school districts to collaborate to improve teacher preparation and provide teachers with rigorous, classroom-based preparation.
It is essential that states and teacher preparation programs have universal high standards for all candidates. Teacher preparation programs need to maintain a high bar for entry, use data to improve, and take responsibility for assessing their participants’ effectiveness before program completion.
A variety of education policy organizations, legislators and government officials have called for improvements to teacher preparation. The National Council on Teacher Quality (NCTQ) is seeking to achieve fundamental changes in the policies and practices of teacher preparation programs. Deans for Impact is supporting this cause by sharing data on program success and best practices.
Most notably, the TeachStrong coalition recently published a call to strengthen teacher preparation. The coalition includes both NCTQ and Deans for Impact, along with another 59 diverse education groups all dedicated to modernizing and elevating the teaching profession. TeachStrong’s latest policy proposal provides solutions to make teacher preparation more rooted in classroom practice and a professional knowledge base. The coalition also recommends that states and teacher preparation programs institute rigorous admission requirements and provide sufficiently rich clinical preparation. Teacher candidates need more than theory to prepare them for the classroom.
Unfortunately, too few teacher preparation programs incorporate a high bar for admission and provide time for teacher candidates to practice their skills in classrooms. Meanwhile, the public believes that we should increase the selectivity of teacher preparation programs: 60 percent of Americans say that entrance requirements for preparation programs should be more rigorous.
Maybe it’s time we started setting teachers up for success, instead of expecting them to be miracle workers.

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