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We have been hearing a lot recently about the importance of teacher evaluation in ensuring high-quality teachers in every classroom. We have been hearing a bit, though it seems to me much less, about the roles of teacher preparation and professional development in ensuring high-quality teachers in every classroom. But until very recently, we haven’t heard much about the role of hiring decisions in ensuring that high-quality teachers are in every classroom.

To me, it seems like kind of a “duh” statement. If you are serious about raising achievement substantially, you need teachers who can hit the ground running. And also, as has been made clear of late, it can be difficult – and costly – to get teachers out of the classroom once they get there.

But in the past, it seems that some districts have not always taken a close look at their new hires. According to a recent EdWeek article, teacher hiring in some districts typically consists of ...

Colleges of teacher education have been taking a lot of heat recently. Everyone from the Secretary of Education to NCATE (the National Council for Accreditation of Teacher Education) has called for teacher education to be “turned upside down” - to move from academic coursework to the clinical practice that will help prepare soon-to-be-teachers for life in the classroom.

Of course, some schools of ed have been on this track for years. Take the University of Florida’s College of Education. For ten-plus years they have been working in partnership with the communities they serve, developing clinical programs to meet schools' needs while helping their students gain relevant experience in the classroom. And they track their graduates, using what they learn to drive improvements in their program. One example? A major shift in how they teach students to interact with English language learners.

Elizabeth Bondy, Professor and Interim Director of the School of Teaching and Learning at the University of Florida’s College of Education, recently told us more.

Ensuring Relevancy in Teacher Preparation

Public School Insights: Many critics of university teacher preparation programs see them as largely irrelevant to the challenges that teachers face in their everyday lives. How do you ensure that the teachers you graduate are ready for the classroom?

Bondy: The concept we refer to as “professional development communities” is really at the center of much of the work in our program. The idea is to get university folks, school-based folks and others, such as family members, to come together to support learning.

It must be ten years that we've really worked hard at developing these kinds of relationships. In them, we emphasize the learning of the children and what needs to be done in a particular school to help all its children be successful. It is not just the business of the teachers and other school-based folks to make learning happen. As people who go into a school, it is our responsibility to put the learning of the children at the core of our work.

Given that framework, you almost can’t help but make sure the work that the pre-service folks are doing is relevant. Because you're doing the work in partnership with people who are committed to the children and, in fact, you are committed to ...

No one would deny that having a high-quality teacher in every classroom is important. Research confirms that effective teaching improves student achievement. So it stands to reason that very few would deny that it’s important for all teachers to have access to high-quality professional learning. After all, research confirms it is a significant pathway to more effective teaching.

Yet as evidenced by a recent report from Learning Forward (formerly the National Staff Development Council), the National Education Association, American Federation of Teachers and Council of Chief State School Officers, far too few states and school districts ensure that their educators have access to effective professional learning activities.

Advancing High-Quality Professional Learning Through Collective Bargaining and State Policy takes an in-depth look at the professional learning policies of six states. The conclusion? Professional learning does not have a significant place in policy and collective bargaining language. But there is hope—the report offers recommendations and examples of collectively bargained language, legislation, regulations and administrative guidelines to inform the development of policy language that can strengthen the quality of professional development in the future.

To learn more about the report and its implications, we spoke to three individuals who each brought a unique perspective to this issue: Joellen Killion (Deputy Executive Director of Learning Forward), Linda Davin (Senior Policy Analyst at NEA) and Joyce Powell (now serving on the NEA Executive Committee after four years as the president of the New Jersey Education Association and decades in the classroom).

Public School Insights: Why is it important to do address professional development through collective bargaining and state policy?

Killion: At Learning Forward, we believe that if there are strong policies in place that set clear expectations, then there will be improved practice. So when collective bargaining language addresses with clarity the importance of the opportunity for teachers to engage in professional development, and when state policy simultaneously provides resources, guidelines and expectations for effective professional development, we believe that the practice of professional development will be improved.

Davin: I couldn’t agree more. Although we know that we can have high quality professional learning in districts where it is not included in collective bargaining language, we also know that ...

We spend an awful lot of time in this country debating the relative merits of "traditional" and "alternative" approaches to education. We'd do far better to spend our time looking for what works, whether it's new or old, sexy or boring, alternative or traditional.

The National Research Council's new report on teacher preparation bears out this point. The report's authors found that "there is more variation within the 'traditional' and 'alternative' categories that there is between these categories." What's more, they found "no evidence that any one pathway into teaching is the best way to attract and prepare desirable candidates and guide them into the teaching force."

And that's our biggest problem. We lack evidence to inform our ever more strident debates between new and old.

It's natural to exalt the new and disdain the old. It's common to see the best new programs as standard-bearers for all new programs and the worst old programs as the embodiment of all old programs. The best new programs represent the promise of another way. The worst old programs represent all the burdens of tradition and complacency.

But the NRC study suggests that all those new, shiny alternative programs could add up to little more than a parallel system that does nothing more than the ...