Effective teaching has long been an issue of national concern, but in recent years focus on the effectiveness of programs to produce high-quality teachers has sharpened. Long-standing achievement gaps persist despite large-scale legislative changes at the federal and state levels, and American students
continue to show poorer performance on international tests compared to peers in other developed nations. These and other factors have resulted in the creation of new accreditation standards for teacher education programs. These
standards, developed by the Council for the Accreditation of Education Programs (CAEP), require teacher education programs to demonstrate their graduates are capable of having strong positive effects on student learning.

The data and methods required to evaluate the effectiveness of teacher education programs ought to be informed by well-established scientific methods that have evolved in the science of psychology, which at its core addresses
the measurement of behavior.