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Teacher Pipeline

Overview

Qualms about the quality of teacher-training programs—and of the students they attract—have long been a feature of the education landscape. Consider this statement from an article in the Journal of Educational Sociology in 1946:  “One of the weaknesses attributed to teachers colleges is the low caliber of their students.” Or this one, from the same journal five years later: “Was it not ‘common knowledge’ that teachers colleges overemphasized instructional methods while discounting the importance of mastery of subject matter?”     

Sixty years later, criticism of teacher preparation has not abated. In a high-profile 2005 report, former Teachers College President Arthur Levine called for sweeping changes, including making five years of university-level training the floor for novice teachers. U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan declared in 2009 that “America’s university-based teacher-preparation programs need revolutionary change—not evolutionary tinkering.” In 2011, Tim Knowles, chief of the University of Chicago Urban Education Institute, argued at an EWA seminar that schools of education amount to a “cartel” that collectively resists efforts to revamp the preparation of people for classroom careers.

Attempts in recent decades to improve the caliber of teaching recruits and upgrade their preparation have included the Holmes Group, a consortium of leaders from 250 universities who vowed in 1986 to undertake reforms; the development of alternative routes to certification at the local, state, and national levels; and the creation of residency-style programs that give students extensive experience in schools similar to those in which they aspire to teach.

Preparation programs not based at universities, meanwhile, have attracted admirers and detractors. The most famous alternative route to the classroom is Teach For America, which for the past 20 years has been recruiting strong students from highly selective universities to teach for two years in disadvantaged schools around the nation.

In a move to ratchet up pressure on preparation programs, some states have begun to require schools of education to track the success of their graduates, spurred in part by federal incentives. Louisiana, North Carolina and Tennessee are among those that track graduates in attempt to make connections between teachers’ training and their classroom success.

Despite reform efforts, studies have shown that U.S. schools of education typically enroll students with less impressive academic profiles than their counterparts in countries that fare better on international tests of K-12 students. A 2010 report from McKinsey & Company, for example, showed that all teacher recruits in Finland, Singapore and South Korea—where teacher-preparation programs are more selective than their U.S. counterparts—came from the top one-third of high school graduates, based on GPA, national exams and/or education school screening tests. In the United States, the same can be said for only about a quarter of new teachers.

Additional subsections:

Publications

Student Teaching Across the Nation 

Student teaching serves as a capstone experience for nearly 200,000 teacher candidates each year. In an effort to understand how to get student teaching "right," the National Center on Teacher Quality embarked on an ambitious effort to measure student teaching programs nationwide, assessing the degree to which they have the right pieces in place necessary for delivering a high quality program. Julie Greenberg, Laura Pomerance and Kate Walsh, National Council on Teacher Quality, July 2011

Closing the Talent Gap: Attracting and Retaining Top Third Graduates to the Teaching Field

Improving teacher effectiveness to lift student achievement has become a major theme in U.S. education. Most efforts focus on improving the effectiveness of teachers already in the classroom or on retaining the best performers and dismissing the least effective. Attracting more young people with stronger academic backgrounds to teaching has received comparatively little attention. Byron Auguste, Paul Kihn and Matt Miller, McKinsey & Company, September 2010

Cracks in the Ivory Tower? The Views of Education Professors Circa 2010

The report is a follow-up to a 1997 report on attitudes of teacher education professors with a close examination of how their attitudes about teacher education and education reform have changed in the last 12 years. Some attitudes have changed substantially, while others have barely budged. Steve Farkas and Ann Duffett, for the Fordham Institute, September 2010

Impacts of Comprehensive Teacher Induction: Results from the Second Year of a Randomized Controlled Study Executive Summary
Mathematica Policy Research releasd a study that finds teachers who were offered one or two years of comprehensive induction support were more likely to have a mentor and spent more time with a mentor than were teachers in a randomly assigned control group who received the prevailing induction offered by the district, which was less comprehensive and intensive. August 31, 2009

The Effect of Certification and Preparation on Teacher Quality

Researchers found that highly selective alternative route programs can produce effective teachers who perform about the same as teachers from traditional routes after two years on the job. And they find that teachers who score well on certification exams can improve student outcomes somewhat. Limited evidence suggests that certification requirements can diminish the pool of applicants, but there is no evidence on how they affect student outcomes. The researchers also found that schools have a limited ability to identify attributes in prospective teachers that allow them to improve student achievement. Donald Boyd, Daniel Goldhaber, Future of Children, Spring 2007

Teacher Quality in a Changing Policy Landscape: Improvements in the Teacher Pool

The teaching profession is attracting more qualified people. The new crop of teachers scored higher on national exams such as the SAT and earned higher grades in the classroom.
Drew H. Gitomer, Educational Testing Service, Dec. 12, 2007

Educating School Teachers 

The report identifies several model programs but finds that most education schools are engaged in a "pursuit of irrelevance," with curriculums in disarray and faculty disconnected from classrooms and colleagues. The schools have not kept pace with changing demographics, technology, global competition, and pressures to raise student achievement. Arthur Levine, The Education Schools Project, September 2006

Preparing Teachers for a Changing World: What Teachers Should Learn and Be Able to Do 

Stemming from the results of a commission sponsored by the National Academy of Education, Preparing Teachers for a Changing World recommends the creation of an informed teacher education curriculum with the common elements that represent state-of-the-art standards for the profession. Linda Darling Hammond and John Bransford, February 2005

News Stories

Iowa Plan Would Turn Away Hundreds of Aspiring Teachers

One in five prospective teachers at Iowa’s public universities would have been denied admission last year to teaching programs under guidelines proposed in the governor’s education reform blueprint, a Des Moines Register review of data shows. Jens Manual Krogstad, Des Moines Register, Dec. 3, 2011

Big Expansion, Big Questions for Teach For America

Across the country, enthusiastic but inexperienced instructors from Teach for America are trying to make progress where more veteran teachers have had difficulty: raising students’ reading and math scores. By 2015, with the help of a $50 million federal grant, program recruits could make up one-quarter of all new teachers in 60 of the nation’s highest need school districts. That growth comes as many districts try to make teachers more effective. But Teach for America has had mixed results. Christine Armario, Associated Press, Nov. 27, 2011

Five Big Changes to the Future of Teacher Education

Barnett Berry’s new book, co-written with working teachers, details five big changes that will have to happen for ed schools to survive.  Tina Barseghian, KQED MindShift, Nov. 22, 2011

Detroit’s Teach For America Recruits Stuck in the Middle of Broader Battle

Teach for America recruits in Detroit find strong resistance to incorporating them into the city’s classrooms. Many Detroiters see TFA as another outside intervention robbing residents of decision-making power. Joy Resmovits, Huffington Post, Nov. 16, 2011

Nation’s Biggest Teacher-Prep School Revamps Training, Stephen Sawchuk, Education Week, Nov. 15, 2011

Arizona State University, the largest undergraduate education program in the country, is launching an ambitious effort that includes year-long apprenticeships for teachers and demonstration of teaching skills. It wants to graduate teachers who are already effective their first year on the job. 

The Recruitment Problem, The Economist, Jan. 11, 2011

High-performing countries select teachers carefully. In Singapore, for example, the teacher-training program accepts about one in eight applicants. In America teacher-training program have a financial incentive to admit almost anyone who applies.

Improving Louisiana Schools, Starting With Teachers, Amy Scott, MarketPlace, American Public Media, Nov. 18, 2011

American Public Media examines how Louisiana tracks students who graduate from its teacher preparation programs.  The state also is putting more focus on training like doctors, with more time spent learning on the job with actual kids.

West Virginia Learns Finland's 'Most Honorable Profession': Teacher

When newly minted West Virginia Schools Superintendent Dr. Steven Paine told parents, teachers and educators in 2005 that he wanted to use Finland as a model for their education system, he got a lot of blank stares: Finland? What, people asked, does West Virginia have to do with Finland? Paul Frysh, CNN, Aug. 31, 2011

Rookie Teachers Asked to Help Louisville's Troubled Schools

In Kentucky, Jefferson County Public Schools is relying heavily on teachers with no experience to help turn around seven chronically low-performing schools that were ordered to overhaul their staffs. Antoinette Konz, Louisville Courier-Journal, July 24, 2011

U.S. Is Urged to Raise Teachers’ Status

To improve its public schools, the United States should raise the status of the teaching profession by recruiting more qualified candidates, training them better and paying them more, according to a new report on comparative educational systems. Sam Dillon, New York Times, March 16, 2011

Arne Duncan: We need more black men in classrooms

Less than 2 percent of the nation’s teachers are black males. U.S. Education Secretary Arne Duncan, film director Spike Lee and Congressman John Lewis will try to change that Monday when they appeal to the men of Morehouse College to consider teaching as a career. Maureen Downey, Atlanta Journal-Constitution, Jan. 29, 2011

California's Teacher Supply Plummets

The number of Californians seeking to become teachers has plummeted by 45 percent over a seven year period – even as student enrollments are projected to rise by 230,000 over the next decade and as many as 100,000 teachers are expected to retire. Louis Freedberg, California Watch, Dec. 14, 2010

How to Recruit Better Teachers

A whole new industry has emerged to encourage recent college graduates and experienced professionals to regard teaching as national service. The most prestigious program, Teach for America (TFA), is enjoying its 20th anniversary amid a wave of fulsome press and a crush of applications from Ivy League and other elite applicants. More than 46,000 sought TFA positions for this fall; 12% were accepted. John Cloud, TIME Magazine, Sept. 23, 2010

Building a Better Teacher.

Is teaching an art or a craft? Doug Lemov studied the numbers and came up with techniques he argues guarantee better teaching.  Other researchers are videotaping  lessons and analyzing how to improve the training of teachers. Elizabeth Green, New York Times Magazine, March 2 2010

Teacher Training: What’s the Best Way?

Some policymakers say the focus needs to be on improving traditional education schools, while others are advocates of so-called alternative models, which can speed up entry into the profession. Amanda Paulson, Christian Science Monitor, March 27, 2009

How to Make Great Teachers

Across the country, hundreds of school districts are experimenting with new ways to attract, reward and keep good teachers. Many of these efforts borrow ideas from business.
Claudia Wallis, TIME Magazine, Feb. 13, 2008

Training Better Teachers

Research has found that teacher preparation programs across the country frequently have low admissions requirements, low exit criteria and a lack of academic rigor. The vast bulk of teachers receive training that is disconnected from what they will experience in actual classrooms. Coursework tends to be long on theory and short on practical training in such essentials as classroom management and how to actually teach specific subjects. Camille Esch, Los Angeles Times Op-Ed