Wednesday | April 13, 2016

555 New Jersey Avenue, NW, Washington, D.C. 20001

Controversial new regulations for teacher education have been proposed by the U.S. Education Department. Under the regulations, post-secondary institutions engaged in teacher education would be required to provide evidence of the teaching performance of their graduates. Teacher preparation programs that fail to meet their goals could eventually be blocked from offering federally-backed loans and grants to students and incur other financial penalties. According to the media, these proposed regulations drew over 2,300 comments, most of them negative. Although there are many objections to the new regulations, the controversy centers on the proposed measures of teaching performance -- student test scores, as seen through the prism of value-added measurements, and surveys. Are these regulations a workable path toward program quality? Are there better alternatives? Can they be replicated at scale? Given the need for teacher education schools to prepare novice teachers to do well from their first day in the classroom, what is the best way to ensure that all teacher preparation programs are of the highest possible quality?

Speakers:

Benjamin Riley, Executive Director, Deans for Impact

Carmel Martin, Executive Vice President for Policy, Center for American Progress

Sharon P. Robinson, President and Chief Executive Officer, American Association of Colleges for Teacher Education

Frances O’Connell Rust, Senior Fellow and Director of Teacher Education programs, University of Pennsylvania Graduate School of Education

 

Sponsored by the Albert Shanker Institute and the American Federation of Teachers, this conversation series is designed to engender lively and informative discussions on important educational issues. We deliberately invite speakers with diverse perspectives, including views other than those of the Albert Shanker Institute and the AFT. What is important is that these participants are committed to genuine engagement with each other. .