Teacher Education in the United States: Approaches to Improvement

There is a consensus among educators, researchers, policymakers, and the general public that despite the existence of some outstanding teacher education programs, the education of teachers in the United States needs to become much better and do more to contribute to addressing the opportunity and achievement gaps that continue to exist in public education. These problems with inequitable access to a high-quality public education are not solely due to weaknesses in teaching and in the programs that prepare teachers or even to schooling itself; therefore, they cannot be solved by school and teacher education reform alone. At the same time, however, research has clearly identified enduring weaknesses in teacher preparation that have not been addressed in a significant way despite all of the research over ...