Report: Teacher preparation programs an ‘industry of mediocrity’

A new report–already proving divisive hours within of its release–claims that, based on eight years of research, U.S. teacher preparation programs in colleges and universities are broken, directly affecting “America’s educational decline.”

The National Council on Teacher Quality (NCTQ) says it went through 10 pilot studies to develop the standards used to rank the 1,130 teacher preparation institutions that prepare 99 percent of the nation’s traditionally-trained new teachers (approximately 170,000 novice teachers annually).

NCTQ officials said the effort was inspired by a study conducted more than a century ago, the Flexner Report of 1910, which evaluated the nation’s medical schools and led to consolidations and upgrades that “transformed the system of training doctors into the world’s best,” states the report.…Read More