For almost as long as there have been institutions dedicated to the preparation of new teachers, the endeavor has come in for criticism. Teacher education has long struggled both to professionalize and to fully integrate itself into mainstream academia. At the core of this struggle was a perception that there was no body of specialized knowledge for teaching that justified specialized training. Accreditation is now being revamped under a new name, the Council for the Accreditation of Educator Preparation (CAEP). In this article, the author evaluates the essential need for teacher training. She goes on to discuss the Common Core State Standards (CCSS), which make the need to train teachers all the more pressing. The next challenge is to find ways to motivate institutions to change in the direction of effective training. The article concludes with five ways policymakers can make a big difference in the quality of teacher preparation.