A r c h i v e d  I n f o r m a t i o n

Challenges from the U.S. Secretary of Education

In urging our nation to focus on teacher quality, U.S. Secretary of Education Richard W. Riley has issued a number of challenges to educators, states, and school districts.

Challenges to the Higher Education Community

(Overhead 20)

• Make the preparation of teachers a university-wide priority
• Develop stronger links between colleges of arts and sciences and colleges of education in order to ensure that teachers have strong content knowledge
• Develop stronger links between institutions of higher education and local schools so that future teachers develop the strong skills needed to teach
• Be accountable for high-quality teacher preparation

Challenges to States and School Districts

(Overhead 21)

• Eliminate within five years the practice of granting emergency licenses
• Raise teacher salaries and pay teachers for knowledge and skills
• Create demanding but flexible certification processes
• Enact policies encouraging portability of teaching credentials, credited years of experience, and pensions
• End the practice of teachers teaching out-of-field
• Develop long-term induction or mentoring programs to help new teachers
• Reform professional development to give teachers new knowledge and skills
• Improve outdated hiring practices

A Call for a National Dialogue on Teacher Licensure

In inviting a national dialogue about what states can do to create more rigorous but flexible teacher licensure systems, Secretary Riley has suggested one possible approach. (Overhead 22) He urged state and local leaders to design their own models that will better ensure teacher quality. The secretary's model includes:

• An initial license that would be granted for up to three years after a prospective teacher passed written exams of content and teaching knowledge and an assessment of teaching performance.
• A professional license—a middle step between initial licensure and voluntary advanced certification—that would be granted by the fourth year and be based on clear standards, developed by states, for what teachers should know and be able to do. Teachers would be assessed on their teaching performance by panels made up of a supervisor and peers from the same or other schools and trained in evaluation.
• A voluntary advanced license, one form of which currently exists through the National Board for Professional Teaching Standards, that would allow experienced teachers to measure their practice against high and rigorous standards for accomplished teaching.

[The Coming Crisis]

[Efforts to Address Our Teacher Quality Challenges]