News Brief
State Chiefs to Examine Teacher Prep, Licensing
By Stephen Sawchuk, Education WeekTwenty-five state schools chiefs are vowing to take action to update their systems of teacher preparation and licensing, with an eye to ensuring teachers are ready the minute they take charge of their own classrooms. The announcement Monday morning from the Council of Chief State School Officers is probably state officials' most explicit promise to engage in changes to teacher preparation, and it comes as the latest sign that the topic is likely be a major focus of K-12 policymakers in 2013. CCSSO plans to provide technical assistance, support, and guidance to the state chiefs as they audit their policies and determine how to make changes.
Janice Poda, the director of the CCSSO'S Strategic Initiative for the Education Workforce, said the task force concluded that reforms to certification are necessary because licensing no longer signals quality.
"The public does not have a lot of faith in licensure meaning that a teacher is qualified or effective. It's lost its ability to communicate that a person is ready for the classroom," she said. "We will raise the import of what it means. ... It should be more than a completion of a set of courses." How quickly, and how radically, states can make the changes outlined in the report remains in question. The regulatory structure in each state differs, and state chiefs exercise varying degrees of control over licensure, certification, and preparation rules.
Some state officials say they want to move quickly. Tennessee Commissioner Kevin Huffman said he wants his state's board of education to pass new rules on teacher licensure and program approval by next summer. "We do not have a rigorous performance-based bar" for teacher licensure, he said. "We have had a convoluted, bureaucratic bar, but not a rigorous one. I think we have it exactly backwards right now."
Next year will also see the publication of the NCTQ's review of every college of education; the release of new regulations governing teacher-preparation accountability by the U.S. Department of Education; and the unveiling of new standards by the Council for Accreditation of Educator Preparation.