A Measured Approach to Improving Teacher Preparation

Chad Aldeman, Kevin Carey, Erin Dillon, Ben Miller, and Elena Silva, via email:

Over the next five years, more than a million new teachers will enter public school classrooms. But the system in place to produce these teachers–supported by an ever-expanding set of federal financial aid programs and multimillion-dollar federal grants–offers no guarantees of quality for anyone involved, from the college students who often borrow thousands of dollars to attend teacher preparation programs to the districts, schools, and children that depend on good teachers.
“Simply put, the nation’s thousands of teacher preparation programs are good at churning out teachers but far less successful at ensuring that those teachers meet the needs of public schools and students,” say the authors of a new Education Sector policy brief. In A Measured Approach to Improving Teacher Preparation, analysts Chad Aldeman, Kevin Carey, Erin Dillon, Ben Miller, and Elena Silva examine the way the United States currently prepares teachers and offers some specific suggestions on how to improve it.