REFORMING TEACHER EDUCATION: COMPETING AGENDAS

In the media and in public policy discussions, there is intensified emphasis on the quality of public education and the nation's teaching force. Teacher preparation in particular has received enormous attention as part of highly publicized and politicized efforts to get tough about results and standards with concentrated pressure on the higher education institutions that prepare teachers either to get better at teaching or get out of the business. Current pressures on teacher education have bite as well as bark, with some of the teeth provided by new mandatory Title II reporting, which will affect eligibility for federal funding and result in a federal report card on the states and on teacher preparation institutions. It is useful to note that there are at least three agendas driving reforms in teacher education at national and/or state levels: the professionalization agenda, the deregulation agenda, and what some people are calling the over-regulation agenda. Although overlapping in certain ways--with the degree of overlap dependent in part on the regulations and professional relationships established by individual states--these three agendas are also competing and even contradictory in other ways. The professionalization agenda for reforming teacher education is part of efforts during the past several decades to establish a professional knowledge base for teaching and teacher education and on efforts by the National Council for the Accreditation of Teacher Education, the National Board for Professional Teaching Standards (NBPTS), and the Interstate New Teacher Assessment and Support Consortium (INTASC) to professionalize teacher education. Particularly influential on the current professionalization agenda was the publication of What Matters Most: Teaching for America's Future (National Commission on Teaching and America's Future [NCTAF], 1996) and the materials and initiatives that followed it. Spearheaded by NCTAF and Linda Darling- Hammond, key professional organizations are now collaborating on a common national system of teacher preparation and development based on professional consensus and high standards for teacher preparation, initial teacher licensing, and board certification of experienced teachers. Alongside the professionalization agenda, however, is the well-publicized and now well-known movement to deregulate teacher education by dismantling teacher education institutions to break up the "monopoly" that the profession has "too long enjoyed." Spearheaded by conservative political groups and foundations such as the Fordham Foundation and the Pioneer Institute, deregulationists assert that the requirements of teacher preparation programs and state licensing agencies present unnecessary hurdles that keep bright young people out of teaching and focus on social goals rather than academic achievement. Chester Finn's Fordham Foundation, which frames its agenda in explicit opposition to professionalization, advocates alternate routes into teaching and high-stakes, state-level teacher tests as the primary gatekeepers into the profession (Kanstoroom & Finn, 1999). Although some of these tests have been criticized for their poor technical quality, their inconsistency with teacher education curricula, and/or their lack of validity as predictors of either teaching practice or student achievement, tests are generally accepted as public evidence that teachers are (or are not) meeting high standards. In addition to high-stakes tests, most states across the country now have additional new regulations intended to reform curricula, programs, and policies for teacher preparation at higher education institutions. In some states, new regulations are largely in sync with the professionalization agenda, focusing on performance-based assessments of teacher candidates that are linked to INTASC and NBPTS standards. In other states, however, new regulations represent unprecedented moves to establish external control of nearly every aspect of teacher preparation, including allowable arts and sciences majors, amount and content of education course work, quality and kind of subject matter preparation, and extent and type of fieldwork experiences that teacher candidates have in schools. …