WASHINGTON ― Although the Obama administration says its newly-proposed teacher preparation regulations are meant to spur “continuous improvement,” the leader of the association that represents college-based teacher preparation programs says the proposed rules could have the opposite effect.
“In their current form, these proposed regulations have the potential to halt or even reverse the hard-won progress of current teacher preparation program reform efforts,” said Sharon P. Robinson, president and CEO of the American Association of Colleges for Teacher Education, or AACTE, in a statement Wednesday.
“We are deeply concerned about the proposed regulations for the approximately 25,000 teacher preparation programs across this nation,” Robinson said.
She said the rules not only highlight the Obama administration’s intent to create a federal ratings system for higher education, but that they could also “turn back the clock on innovation and reform in educator preparation.”
“Given the potentially wide-ranging implications, we are meticulously reviewing the details of the proposed regulations in their current form and working with our members and our partners to ascertain the effects on the field should they be implemented,” Robinson said of the regulations, which—at more than 500 pages—are the size of a novel.
In a telephone conference earlier this week to discuss the basics of the proposed regulations, U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan said the proposed rules—which would tie eligibility for a certain federal student aid for teacher preparation programs to measures such as job placement rates for graduates and various learning outcomes for the K-12 students their graduates teach—are meant to “build on and support” existing state efforts to bring about greater transparency, accountability, and program improvement.
“I want to be clear about why this is so important,” Duncan said. “Nothing in a school matters so much as the quality of the teaching that our students receive.
