Alternative teacher training has been tried but to this point has had little impact. Given the regulatory partnership between the teacher training programs and state licensing agencies, training that substantially disagrees with the learner-centered view has been pretty well bottled up in a hostile environment. For the most part, only alternatives that fit progressive strictures have been permitted flourish. Until there is a greater public awareness of the degree to which state education agencies are the captives of the parties they purport to regulate, teacher training that breaks the learner-centered mold will continue to be stifled. Perhaps graduates of such institutions might be required to both pass objective subject matter exams and demonstrate an ability to produce student achievement gains in a school setting.
Teacher training is a de facto monopoly and there is no real incentive for it to change.
Yet until its intellectual stranglehold is broken, no amount of planning or funding is going to substantially change the performance of public schools. Teacher training as traditionally constituted is not the cure, it is the problem. J. E. Stone, Ed.