Over $460 million has been awarded or approved in grants under the 1998 HEA amendments to enhance the quality of teacher training programs and the qualifications of current teachers. The legislation requires that states may receive a state grant only once and that the grants must be competitively awarded. Three types of grants were made available: (1) State grants are available for states to implement activities to improve teacher quality in their states. (2) Partnership grants are available to eligible partners to improve teacher quality through collaborative activities. Eligible partnerships must include at least three partners—teacher training programs, colleges of Arts and Sciences, and eligible local school districts. Partnerships may also include other groups, such as state educational agencies, businesses and nonprofit educational organizations as partners (see fig. 1). (3) Recruitment grants are available to states or partnerships to use their funding for activities to help recruit teachers. Recruitment (states and partnerships) The legislation requires monitoring and evaluation of activities supported by these grants. Each grantee is required to submit an annual report to Education on its progress toward meeting program goals specified in the legislation, which must include performance objectives and measures to determine if grant activities were successful. The legislation also required Education to evaluate all grant activities and to broadly disseminate information about successful and unsuccessful practices. In addition to the grants, the 1998 HEA amendments include an annual reporting requirement on the quality of teacher training programs and the qualifications of current teachers. This component of the legislation, called the “accountability provisions,” requires an annual three-stage process to collect and report information in a uniform and comprehensible manner. The reporting requirements under the accountability provisions mandated, for the first time, that colleges and universities who train teachers be held accountable for how well they prepared teachers. The legislation requires that Education, in consultation with states and teacher training institutions, develop definitions for key terms—including definitions for the consistent reporting of pass rates—and uniform reporting methods related to the performance of teacher training programs. Education officials told us that they made significant efforts to define key terms so that the terms reflected the uniqueness of teacher training programs, state reporting procedures, and data availability. In the first stage, nearly every institution that prepares teachers—not just those receiving teacher quality enhancement grants—is required to collect and report specific information to its state, including the pass rate of the institution’s graduates on state teacher certification examinations. Then in the second stage, states are required to report to Education the pass rate information institutions reported in the first stage, supplemented with additional statewide information, including a description of state certification examinations and the extent to which teachers in the state are allowed to teach without being fully certified. The third and final stage is comprised of a report to the Congress from the Secretary of Education on the quality of teacher training programs and the qualifications of current teachers. The first round of institutional reports were submitted to states in April 2001; subsequently, state reports were submitted to Education in October 2001. Using this information, the Secretary of Education reported to the Congress in June 2002. How one determines the quality of teacher training programs and the qualifications of current teachers has long been debated. The debate is currently centered on the best way to train teachers: the traditional approach, which typically includes extensive courses in subject matter and pedagogy, or alternative training methods that either (1) accelerate the process of training teachers by reducing courses in pedagogy or (2) allow uncertified teachers to teach while receiving their training at night or on weekends. This debate is further complicated because the quality of teacher training programs and the qualifications for current teachers varies by state. Every state sets its own requirements for teacher certification, such as which certification examination(s) a teacher candidate must take, what score is considered passing on this examination, and how many hours teacher candidates must spend student teaching—practice teaching during their teacher preparation program—in order to become a fully certified teacher in that state. In this way, a teacher who is fully certified in one state may not meet the qualifications for certification in another state. For example, in Virginia, Minnesota and Mississippi, teacher candidates are required to take the same test to be certified to teach high school mathematics. But teacher candidates in Virginia must score 178 (50th percentile of all test takers) to pass the examination, whereas in Minnesota and Mississippi teacher candidates must score 169 (20th percentile of all test takers). While the 1998 HEA amendments provided grants and reporting requirements to improve the quality of teacher training programs and the qualifications of teachers, it was not until the recent No Child Left Behind Act that the Congress defined a highly qualified teacher. For the purposes of that act, the legislation defines highly qualified teachers as those who demonstrate competence in each subject they teach, hold bachelors degrees, and are fully certified to teach in their state. See appendix II for more information on HEA and the No Child Left Behind Act. Education awarded grants to applicants according to the legislation but failed to maintain an effective system for communicating with grantees. The legislation outlined certain program requirements, such as the requirement that states may receive a state grant only once, that 45 percent of total grant funding be available for state grants, and that Education shall broadly disseminate information on successful and unsuccessful practices. However, it left the implementation of the grant program to Education. The department established the Teacher Quality Enhancement Grant Office to determine the procedures by which the grants were to be awarded and administered. Once the grants were awarded, the office was charged with administering the grant program and, to do so, it developed some operating procedures for the program. However, Education failed to maintain an effective system for communicating with grantees about reporting deadlines and successful and unsuccessful practices. Soon after the legislation was passed in 1998, Education created a new office, the Teacher Quality Enhancement Grant Office, that set the grant program in motion by developing applications, advertising the grant opportunities, and convening technical review sessions for potential applicants. When the office was first established, it conducted focus groups with representatives from different areas—states, local school districts, institutions that train teachers, and community groups—to decide how to implement the legislation. Education officials used this input to develop applications for the state, partnership, and recruitment grants. Education officials advertised the grants and provided opportunities for potential applicants to receive technical assistance on the application procedures. These technical assistance sessions, which grantees told us were helpful, were offered across the country and allowed Education officials to answer questions and explain the criteria by which applications would be judged. In accordance with the legislation, the office provided funding to state agencies and partnerships between higher education institutions and local school districts with three types of grants—state, partnership, and recruitment—through a competitive process. The legislation required Education to use peer reviewers to determine which applicants would receive grant funding. The office convened panels of peer reviewers to judge the applications. Each peer review panel consisted of representatives from local school districts, states, community groups, teacher training programs, and colleges of Arts and Sciences. In 1999, the first year grants were available, the peer review panel reviewed 371 applications: 41 for state grants, 222 for partnership grants, and 108 for recruitment grants. Of these applications, the office awarded 24 state grants, 25 partnership grants, and 28 recruitment grants (see fig. 3). Since then an additional 21 state, 8 partnership, and 17 recruitment grants have been awarded or approved using the same process. Between 1999 and 2002, the office awarded or approved a total of 123 grants. Grant duration and funding amount vary depending on the type of grant. According to the legislation, grants can be awarded to states and partnerships only once, though the funding is dispersed over several years. State and recruitment grantees receive funding for three years, whereas partnership grantees receive funding for up to five years. State grants ranged from just over $500,000 awarded to Idaho to $13.5 million awarded to Virginia. Partnership grant awards ranged from $1.2 million awarded to Graceland University in Iowa to over $13.2 million awarded to Arizona State University. Recruitment grants ranged from $523,890 awarded to Norfolk State University to $1.4 million awarded to the San Diego University Foundation (see fig. 4). When we divided total grant awards by the duration of the grants, the average annual award for state grants ($1.6 million) was larger than the average annual award for partnership grants ($1.2 million), and the average annual award for recruitment grants ($340,054) was the smallest. Forty-five of 59 eligible states have already been approved for or awarded state grants, and because the legislation specifically requires that these grants can only be awarded once, only 14 states will be eligible to receive future state grants under the current authorizing legislation (see fig. 5). Given this, and because the legislation requires that 45 percent of total grant funding be available for state grants, it is possible that some funding the Congress appropriates for teacher quality enhancement grants will remain unspent. Grantees reported that Education failed to maintain an effective system for communicating with them about reporting deadlines and successful and unsuccessful practices. Communication from Education to the grantees, specifically the frequency and accuracy of Education’s efforts, was problematic. Education officials and grantees reported that in the beginning of the grant program, staff assigned to assist grantees communicated with them regularly, informing them of reporting deadlines and answering specific questions related to the grant program. However, the office experienced several disruptions in staff and management, and grantees told us that this level of communication with Education was not maintained. Since the grant program began 4 years ago, the Teacher Quality Enhancement Grant Office has had five different managers, and staff in the office has fallen from nine to two. Several officials at Education told us that the constant changes in the office led to a lack of program continuity, which affected the communication with grantees. Almost 75 percent of the grantees reported that the management and staff turnover at Education had been a problem.