PREPARING TEACHERS FOR TOMORROW'S CLASSROOMS.

State legislatures are examining whether or not new teachers are well prepared to help all students meet high standards.

New teachers leaving the confines of the university for the day-to-and day rigors of teaching face a reality check. Challenging students and difficult classrooms make teaching a tougher job than many expect.

"There needs to be more hands-on classroom management in the teacher prep courses in college," new teachers told the U.S. Department of Education as part of creating a survival guide for new teachers. "My professors hadn't been in a K-12 classroom for more than 10 years." It is no wonder that two-thirds of new teachers do not feel well prepared to interpret student assessment information and to use state or district performance standards.

These criticisms along with impending teacher shortages are propelling legislative discussions on how prospective teachers are trained.

Despite a historical reluctance to legislate in the area of teacher preparation, lawmakers are enacting state policies to hold schools of education accountable and changing what is taught by altering licensing requirements for new teachers and revamping program accreditation.

TEACHING TEACHERS TO TEACH

The nation's 1,300 schools of education have been roundly criticized over the years for both the quality and quantity of their graduates. Many critics point to the low SAT scores of prospective teachers who enter schools of education as an indication of their inability to attract the best and brightest. They point to training that is too focused on how to teach rather than what to teach, and a poor record of preparing educators in the most difficult-to-staff subjects.

"I feel the colleges of education are not doing a very good job," says Florida House Education Committee Chair Jerry Melvin. "They are turning out teachers with general knowledge, but not with in-depth knowledge in core subjects. Many recent graduates tell me they spend too much time on the 'touchy-feely' courses."

Iowa House Education Chair Betty Grund-berg is more upbeat. "Iowa's institutions are doing an excellent job of preparing teachers. Because of the quality of Iowa graduates, our students are being recruited nationwide." Representative Grundberg, though, says that "not all institutions have the same quality graduates," a point which Representative Melvin also makes. "To me there is no consistency. We must speak to this subject and make sure that when someone graduates from one university or the other, we can be assured that the individual is properly educated to teach in our schools. Some colleges and universities are known as diploma mills, yet no one seems to want to get involved in changing them."

Missouri Senator Steve Stoll views his state's preparation programs as having a "mixed record of success," but he acknowledges that "since the early 1990s, schools of education have made great strides by ensuring that prospective teachers get into real classrooms very early in their teacher training program."

"Schools of education have changed in major ways over the past decade," says Robert Yinger, dean of the School of Education at Baylor University and president of the Holmes Partnership, a network of reform-oriented universities, schools and community organizations.

Schools of education have increased the content of the majors prospective teachers choose, extended the field experiences student teachers receive and focused programs more on the knowledge and skills that are most linked to student learning. These changes, many initiated by the schools themselves, are due to an evolving body of research and standards for the profession. All states, having created standards for K-12 students, have now established standards for what teachers should know and be able to do. This has reshaped the design of many preparation programs.

However, these changes improve only the quality of prospective teachers, the numbers of graduating teachers are still inadequate. A recent New York Times editorial by the president of the Carnegie Corporation of New York, Vartan Gregorian, makes the point abundantly clear. "Out of every 600 students entering four-year teaching programs, only 180 complete them, only 72 become teachers, and only about 40 are still teaching several years later." And of the small number left, many are not in the subject areas states are most struggling to staff. "Our colleges and universities are preparing more than enough elementary teachers, but insufficient teachers of technology, special education, math and science," argues Grundberg.

Ensuring both high quality and sufficient numbers of prospective teachers

remains a challenge to state legislatures.

WHAT STATES ARE DOING

Until recently, state legislatures have relied on two tools to influence the work of colleges in preparing teachers. The first is the licensing of new teachers. By requiring specific courses, states have forced teacher preparation programs to offer courses in areas legislators deem most important, such as the use of technology, reading instruction, teaching at-risk students and classroom management. A recent policy in Maryland requires 12 semester hours in reading instruction before a teacher can be licensed.

Second, all states accredit teacher preparation programs. There is often tremendous variation, however, in what is required to attain accreditation even within the same state. "Just as the accreditation standards that schools seek to meet vary," Stoll says, "so does the quality of education of the teachers they prepare. There are also different entry and exit standards for graduates depending on the institution."

Few states have used accreditation to identify programs that are not producing good, well-prepared teachers and actually shut them down. However, new performance-based standards for accreditation and licensure currently being developed in at least 24 states are expected to be valuable in making sure new teachers are successful in the classroom. These accreditation systems focus less on the number of courses teacher candidates are required to complete and more on demonstrating teaching competence. One driving force in the move toward performance-based accreditation is the National Council for the Accreditation of Teacher Education.

Forty-five states have some form of partnership with the council, ranging from requiring accreditation from the national body for all programs to relying on their standards or reviewers. The council has unveiled its six performance-based standards, and schools of education are now being reviewed under these standards.

Other new policies being considered and used in several states could have a profound effect on the way colleges prepare teachers.

Accountability Programs

Texas, Georgia and New York require a minimum passage rate of teacher candidates on state license exams to retain accreditation. In Texas, 80 percent of teachers in each ethnic and gender group from a preparation program must pass the state examinations or the school will be placed on probation and eventually closed. Those rates are similar in New York and Georgia. The University of Georgia system, like approximately 100 other colleges and universities across the country, also guarantees its graduates. The university will offer free courses to improve their teaching skills if it's needed.

New federal requirements may make these accountability programs more common. Title II of the 1998 Higher Education Act requires that states and higher education institutions report on teacher preparation program characteristics, standards and requirements for certification and licensure, including assessments, and alternative routes to certification. Title II calls for states to collect, rank and report colleges over the next year based on how well prospective teachers do on license exams. Identifying the least successful preparation programs is likely to cause some pressure to sanction those schools.

Critics contend that license exams may not truly gauge how well prospective teachers will fare in the classroom. A recent report from the National Research Council says these standardized tests are technically sound and provide important information, but argues that they do not tap the full complexity of what it means to be a good teacher. Because scores necessary to pass are set by each state, the passage rates of prospective teachers may vary greatly even on the same test.

The most common license exam for teachers is the Praxis series published by Educational Testing Services and used in 35 states. In states like Virginia, Hawaii and Vermont with high cut scores, approximately a third of prospective teachers fail. States like Tennessee and Montana with lower thresholds have significantly higher passage rates using the same test.

Partnerships and Professional Development Schools

Tom Bellamy, dean of the School of Education at the University of Colorado at Denver, believes that "the most important change in preparing teachers has been the strong partnerships developed between colleges and schools." More and more preparation programs are using K-12 schools as the setting for teacher training. University faculty teach classes, mentor new teachers and provide professional development for in-service teachers. Teachers in the partnership schools work with the student teachers and help prepare them for the realities of today's classrooms. These K-12 schools, often called professional development schools, help make sure that teaching practice is based on the best research and that preparation is focused on actual classroom situations.

At CU-Denver, more than a quarter of the faculty spend at least one full day per week in K-12 schools, and "it has changed the dialogue at faculty meetings about how we prepare teachers. We are more attentive to the realities of schooling and student learning," Bellamy says. This sits well with Representative Melvin who believes that "professors must be required to teach a certain number of days per year at schools throughout the state serving all types of students."

Senator Stoll sees similar collaboration in Missouri. "There is much more emphasis being placed on the connection between K-12 and higher education." Current estimates suggest that the number of partnerships nationwide exceeds 125, and the number of K-12 schools involved is at least 600. These partnerships exist despite many problems that make coordination difficult given different governing and funding structures for K-12 and higher education.

Florida is "reorganizing education to become a seamless system," Melvin says, by abolishing the board of regents and creating one board to oversee all education. He hopes that this will lead to greater accountability for education schools and better coordination with public school districts and principals.

Alternative Certification Programs

Forty-five states plus the District of Columbia have alternative certification programs, according to the National Center for Education Information, compared with only eight states in 1983. More than 150,000 teachers have been licensed through these routes. Created to attract mid-career professionals and other nontraditional candidates into teaching, these programs are growing rapidly in some states, while being used sparingly in others. In Texas, 16 percent of new hires are trained in the state's 34 alternative preparation programs. Twenty-two percent of new teachers matriculate through alternative routes in New Jersey. In California, more than $43 million has been allocated to its programs, serving more than 7,000 students teaching in 470 districts across the state.

Florida is also developing more alternative routes, Melvin says. He believes the education community "must accept the fact that many business people would make better teachers because they have had experience in business life and can relate to what is required to fit into the everyday life of a community."

The key, says Barnett Berry of the National Commission on Teaching and America's Future, is to "ensure that all teachers, no matter who they are, or how or when they are recruited into the profession, meet the same high standards."

Alternative programs appear to be successful in recruiting a more diverse pool of older, more experienced teacher candidates. But alternative routes vary greatly in the ability to train teachers for the realities they face in today's classrooms.

This session, a bill that would have created alternative routes for teachers and administrators in Iowa was opposed by the teachers' union and vetoed by Governor Thomas Vilsack who said the state wasn't ready to "run the risk of putting unprepared or under-prepared teachers in the classroom." Yet HB 670 called for more rigorous qualifications for alternative teachers than most other states. To meet the state's high standards and ensure that those moving into teaching from other professions have learned to teach, the bill would have required 12 semester hours of education classes before entering the classroom. The provisional teacher also would have worked with a mentor before taking an additional 12 hours of study either during the school year or the following summer.

Besides filling the need for teachers, Representative Grundberg says "alternative routes can help education programs determine the necessity and effectiveness of the content of their programs."

NEXT STEP FOR STATES

As states continue to examine teacher preparation policy, many issues are likely to merit discussion in 2002 sessions.

* Resources and status for preparation programs: "Education has been a cash cow for the university with engineering and other programs getting more resources and attention," says Indiana House Education Chair Greg Porter.

Schools of education generate revenue for universities as they are often funded at levels well below other professional programs and often segregated from the departments in the college of arts and sciences that provide the content for subject mastery. Berry argues that these issues would change if universities as a whole were held accountable for teacher test scores and rewarded through increased funding for sending more of their graduates into teaching.

"The leaders of the institutions that train teachers must take steps to see that the school of education is as high a priority as the business or law schools," Stoll says.

* Recruiting future teachers: States have been passing legislation to recruit, retain and provide professional development in addition to examining how they prepare teachers. Policies that support scholarships and loan forgiveness for potential teachers and other incentives to teach may be necessary to ensure that colleges are producing enough teachers to staff classrooms. Another idea is to offer more funding to schools that prepare teachers in shortage fields like math, science and special education and to give special scholarships to teachers pursuing those areas.

* Partnerships between K-12 and higher education: "The greatest promise for change is to ensure that universities and school districts work together, as it leads to reform in both settings," Bellamy says. New governance and financing systems, however, may be needed to provide incentives for more schools to adopt these partnerships. "What is most needed is a link back to the schools of education from classroom teachers, administrators and parents through these partnerships," Grundberg says.

State policy will be essential to transforming teacher preparation. Representative Porter has noticed changes in the quality of teacher preparation since Indiana moved to a performance-based licensing system that requires teachers to demonstrate their skills through a portfolio that shows examples of their work experience. "With our new system, preparation programs are becoming more accountable. If teachers are not meeting standards to get a license, it raises a red flag. Before that, there had been no accountability. Teachers have to develop a portfolio, have a mentor and universities must have measurement ... so we know a lot more about what the programs are doing."

Bellamy concurs. "State licensure policy and program approval have driven change. Policy has stimulated broader reform within our preparation program. We used it as an impetus for a serious look at the program, not just tweaking around the edges; it became an opportunity to revamp the process, streamline curriculum."

Eric Hirsch is NCSL's specialist in teacher training issues.

LONE STAR ACCOUNTABILITY

Texas created a high-stakes accountability law in 1995 for schools of education: Pass 80 percent of your prospective teachers cumulatively within each ethnic and gender group or lose accreditation. That rate will increase to 85 percent starting in fall 2002. Under the accountability system for educator preparation (ASEP), schools that do not meet the state's standards, as measured by the number of teachers passing the certification exam, are placed under review and assigned an oversight team for two years. If scores do not increase in the third year, an administrator appointed by the State Board for Educator Certification takes over the management of the school. After the three years, schools that fail to bring up scores to the state minimum lose accreditation--they are allowed to graduate their students, but not enroll new prospects. Three years ago, 16 of the 86 preparation programs statewide failed to obtain the necessary passing rates. Today that number is down to six, Only Rio Grande College, a satellite of Sul Ross State University, has been under review for the three years; without improvement the program will be shut down this fall. Passage rates across the state averaged over 92 percent and were more than 80 percent for all ethnic and gender groups.

"I don't think there is any question that the ASEP program has been effective," says Senate Education Chair Teel Bivens. "Exposing preparation programs to the light of day has been a huge motivator for change. It is therapeutic for the programs to see that the state means business."

WHAT DOES THE RESEARCH SAY?

Although more is known about what most influences student learning, this research has not necessarily translated into clear guidance about how colleges should train teachers. A new report from the Center for the Study of Teaching and Policy indicates that both knowledge of subject matter and how to teach it are important, but it argues that research is not clear on the types and amount of training that consistently help prospective teachers become better. Although field experiences are often the most powerful element in preparation, there is great variation in duration, supervision arrangements and settings.

"Evidence is not as strong as we would like, mainly because we have focused on developing the models and the new programs, and we are just now turning to documentation and data collection," says Robert Yinger, dean of the School of Education at Baylor University and president of the Holmes Partnership, a network of reform-oriented universities, schools and community organizations. Schools using research have "emphasized strong content majors, candidate learning experiences that are strongly connected to what's going on in real schools and extended field experiences like full-year internships in professional development schools."

Barnett Berry of the National Commission on Teaching arid America's Future, however, believes the research is more definitive. "Research is clear that prospective teachers need a lot more than just subject matter knowledge. Teachers today need to know how to teach literacy to a growing number of second-language learners, how to work effectively with parents and families, how to motivate learners groomed on computers, Nintendo and television, and how to serve increasing numbers of students with learning differences."

"There are four fundamental things necessary for all teachers," says Tom Bellamy of the School of Education at the University of Colorado-Denver. "They must know their subject; they must know how children learn; they must be able to swim in a sea of kids; and they must have character and commitment that makes parents comfortable.

"It is not that there is one right way to ensure that teachers are trained to have these four characteristics, but we know that there are a lot of wrong ways," he says. "And we know you can't measure these four things really well. That's why a state accreditation process is valuable. We need to look at schools individually and examine the relationships between university faculty, the master teacher and the student. That helps ensure quality."