About A Qualified Teacher in Every Classroom?

Under the No Child Left Behind Act, states will have to ensure that every public school classroom is staffed by a highly qualified teacher. This mandate--and the fact that many children, especially low-income and minority students, are taught by underqualified teachers ill-equipped for the challenges ahead--gives new urgency to debates over teacher recruitment, preparation, and induction.

For several years, these debates have been dominated by competing groups of partisans. One denies that teaching requires a professional base of knowledge and skill, while the other tries to promote professionalism by ensuring that traditional programs retain their control over licensure and formal certification. The conflict confuses policymakers, frustrates educators, and stifles potentially promising solutions.

In this volume, eleven contributors with rich experience in policy and teaching take a fresh look at a number of issues, including:

• Current systems for preparing and licensing teachers, and how they affect the quality and supply of teachers in the work force;
• An array of reform models for teacher preparation and licensure, and what they would mean for the profession;
• Questions of rigor and ideology in the core curricula of education schools or programs;
• The federal role in teacher preparation and licensure, especially in light of NCLB.

A Qualified Teacher in Every Classroom? lays out new approaches for ensuring high-quality teacher preparation while offering a candid assessment of the obstacles that may impede the implementation of such new models.

About the Editors:

Frederick M. Hess is a resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute and the executive editor of Education Next.

Andrew J. Rotherham is director of the Progressive Policy Institute's 21st Century Schools Project and a former special assistant to President Bill Clinton on domestic policy.

Kate Walsh is the executive director of the National Council on Teacher Quality.

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Table of Contents for A Qualified Teacher in Every Classroom?

Introduction

• Chapter 1
  Back to the Future: The History and Politics of State Teacher Licensure and Certification
  Andrew J. Rotherham and Sara Mead
  
• Chapter 2
  The Shift from Hands-Off: The Federal Role in Supporting and Defining Teacher Quality
  Heidi A. Ramírez
  
• Chapter 3
  Why Do We License Teachers?
  Dan D. Goldhaber
  
• Chapter 4
  Assessing Traditional Teacher Preparation: Evidence from a Survey of Graduate and Undergraduate Programs
  David L. Leal
  
• Chapter 5
  Preparing Tomorrow's Teachers: An Analysis of Syllabi from a Sample of America's Schools of Education
  David M. Steiner, with Susan D. Rozen
  
• Chapter 6
  The Preparation and Recruitment of Teachers: A Labor-Market Framework
  Donald Boyd, Hamilton Lankford, Susanna Loeb, and James Wyckoff

New Models of Teacher Licensure

• Chapter 7
  Model 1. Cultivating Quality in Teaching: A Brief for Professional Standards
  Gary Sykes, with Marisa Burian-Fitzgerald
  
• Chapter 8
  Model 2. Cultivating Success through Multiple Providers: A New State Strategy for Improving the Quality of Teacher Preparation
  Bryan C. Hassel and Michele E. Sherburne
  
• Chapter 9
  Model 3. A Candidate-Centered Model for Teacher Preparation and Licensure
  Kate Walsh
  
• Chapter 10
  Model 4. Improving Academic Performance in U.S. Public Schools: Why Teacher Licensing Is (Almost) Irrelevant
  Michael Podgursky

Conclusion

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Publishing Information

A Qualified Teacher in Every Classroom?
Appraising Old Answers and New Ideas
Edited by Frederick M. Hess, Andrew J. Rotherham, and Kate Walsh
©2004
ISBN 1-891792-21-0 $49.95 library, ORDER
ISBN 1-891792-20-2 $22.95 paperback, ORDER
256 pages

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