Federal officials plan to overhaul the reporting requirements for higher education-based teacher preparation in favor of leaner, outcome-based indicators of program quality, according to plans outlined in the president's fiscal 2012 budget request. To bolster the overhaul, the budget also proposes a $185 million new formula grant program, dubbed…

One thing is immediately apparent when Erica Vuolle teaches: Not a moment of time is wasted. Ms. Vuolle is among the 40 teachers-in-training at the Match Teacher Residency, a teacher education program run by the Boston-based Match Education, a nonprofit charter-management organization that requires candidates to practice and master a repertoire of…

Some schools are cutting down on suspensions and office referrals by bolstering training in classroom management. Improving or overhauling classroom-management training is one of many ways states, districts, and teacher education programs are attacking the problem of too many out-of-school suspensions and office referrals, actions that…

The author reports the finding of a study released by the National Research Council, which is an arm of the National Academies, a scientific body created to advise the federal government on scientific matters. After six years of study, a national panel of prominent scholars has concluded that teachers from alternative programs appear no worse--or…

School after school in the Phoenix area has a banner hanging on the side of the building: iTeachAZ. It is shorthand for Arizona State University's new flagship undergraduate teacher education program, which integrates several high-profile--and hotly debated--reforms to teacher preparation today. Under the program, which debuted formally this…

This article reports on a Louisiana study which suggests that new teachers can be as effective as, or sometimes more effective than, their experienced colleagues. Experts say the study, the first of its kind to come out of a state that has implemented a multi-pronged approach to improving its teacher training, shows that it is possible for states…

The Boston Teacher Residency program is a yearlong, selective preparation route that trains aspiring teachers, many of them career-changers, to take on jobs in some of the city's highest-needs schools. The program, which fits neither of the two most common types of teacher preparation--alternative routes and traditional teacher education…

Teacher education programs have for years drawn criticism from policymakers and even some prominent voices in the field. Now, Congress is poised to slash spending on the main federal program aiding colleges of teacher education, despite efforts by some lawmakers to refocus the program to bolster partnerships between such colleges and school…

By and large, teachers in the southeastern corner of Missouri known as the Bootheel have been slow to seek out added training to teach English as a second language. Adelaide H. Parsons, a linguistics professor and the director of Southeast Missouri State, or SEMO's graduate program for teachers of English to speakers of other languages, a…

Aspiring middle school teachers in the United States take fewer math courses and are less knowledgeable in the subject than their counterparts in South Korea, Taiwan, and other countries. That gap in teacher preparation, coupled with curricular differences, could help explain achievement disparities between American students and their peers in…

"Quality Counts 2008" reintroduces state grades in six key areas, from the Chance-for-Success Index to the teaching profession. This special issue of "Education Week" includes the following articles: (1) Human Resources a Weak Spot (Lynn Olson); (2) Teacher Salaries, Looking at Comparable Jobs (Christopher B. Swanson); (3) Data…

Congress should pay for the development of a national teacher test, using performance to judge accomplishment, and the test results should be incorporated into state licensing requirements, a report released May 24 argues. Prepared by a panel of the National Academy of Education, the 112-page guide calls on federal and state policymakers to…

Replacing the association's longtime leader, David G. Imig, Sharon P. Robinson knows she has a weighty and sometimes unenviable task in front of her. Politicians and education leaders have new expectations of the nation's teacher-preparation programs. It's not enough that they run aspiring teachers through a specified number of courses during…

When Susan Moore Johnson began studying the experiences of new teachers, she wasn't motivated by some mandate about highly qualified professionals or the latest data on turnover. Instead, the Harvard University professor was inspired by watching her own daughter, Erika, grapple with whether to apply to a traditional teacher education program in…

Policymakers often complain that teacher education programs do not have to answer for the quality of their graduates. Over the past five years, as a result of new accreditation rules, hundreds of those institutions have been quietly revamping how they collect and use data about their students. This article reports on the use of performance…