Effective college and university teacher-preparation programs could be the key to combating teacher shortages. Yet most programs don’t prepare teachers to meet the full scope of students’ needs, potentially leading many to leave the profession, a set of higher education and K-12 experts said at a Sept. 25 congressional hearing.
“Our teacher-preparation programs have been designed essentially to mass-produce identical educators,” said Carole Basile, dean of the teachers college at Arizona State University, one of the nation’s largest, and a witness at the hearing. “This tells us a lot about why so many credentialed educators would rather do something else than teach.”
Throughout the hearing, hosted by the U.S. House of Representatives subcommittee on early childhood, elementary, and secondary education, lawmakers asked the panel of witnesses to suggest strategies and policies that could help improve teacher preparation and ultimately help with recruitment and retention.
University and college teacher-preparation programs are often an educator’s first exposure to the job, but the programs have been slow to evolve. Few teacher-preparation programs teach instructional practices aligned with the “science of reading,” an increasingly common literacy education strategy based on the cognitive science behind how kids acquire reading skills. Classes on parent involvement, a key strategy to improving chronic absenteeism and student well-being, are not offered at many teaching colleges.
And nearly 40 percent of educators in a nationally representative EdWeek Research Center survey earlier this year said they didn’t receive explicit classroom-management training in their teacher-preparation programs—an increasingly important skillset as educators deal with an increase in student behavior problems.
Republicans and Democrats on the subcommittee agreed on the need for changes to teacher-preparation programs, though their suggestions differed.
Rep. Aaron Bean, R-Fla., the subcommittee’s chair, advocated for alternative certification programs that offer “a faster path to certification” for people switching careers who have a “passion for kids and learning.”
Rep. Suzanne Bonamici, D-Ore., the subcommittee’s ranking Democrat, called for greater investment in innovative teacher-preparation programs as well as those run by historically Black colleges and universities. She also called for expanded loan forgiveness for teachers.
“I encourage us all to encourage people to go into the teaching profession by recognizing the importance of our system of public education, not bashing it,” Bonamici said.
The core problem, witnesses at the hearing said, is that teacher-preparation programs treat all teachers—and, by extension, students—the same, asking teachers to be “everything to everybody.”
“The current model of teaching where one teacher works individually with a group of learners in a classroom—or a small box inside of a larger box that we call school—promotes unrealistic expectations by assuming individual teachers working in isolation can meet the needs of all students,” said Greg Mendez, the principal of Skyline High School in Mesa, Ariz.
The discussion was a productive look at potential innovations in how colleges and universities train teachers, said Jacqueline King, research, policy, and advocacy consultant at the American Association of Colleges for Teacher Education.
“It was such a positive and collegial and substantive discussion,” said King, who attended the hearing as an audience member. “That was very encouraging for us. It’s wonderful to see the interest of the committee and their commitment to wanting to support the work that’s happening around the country to address the teacher shortage both on the supply side and on the demand side.”
To better meet schools’ needs, panelists said teacher-preparation programs should offer paid apprenticeship opportunities and evidence-based alternative pathways to teacher certification for people switching careers. They should also align their curricula with current best practices like the science of reading and work to recruit and promote the training of teachers of color, the panelists said.
Panelists highlight team-teaching model as a way to boost job satisfaction and professional development
At Skyline High School, teachers work in teams—usually two teachers who share a roster of students and collaborate to develop strategies to best meet individual students’ needs. The idea stems from an Arizona State initiative called Next Education Workforce, which aims to reimagine the teaching profession to help keep teachers in the profession.
The goal is to move away from the traditional model of assigning new teachers 25 to 30 students and asking them to perform as effectively as experienced teachers, Basile said. That model is unrealistic, she said.
“We hope that every one of those teachers is the same, that every kid is going to get the same experience, and they’re not,” Basile said. “One of those teachers might be a brand-new teacher. One of them might be an emergency teacher. One might be somebody who came in, who was an engineer coming back. And somebody might have 15 years of experience.”
Instead, the initiative helps school districts redesign so groups of two to four teachers work together in the classroom with one teacher at the head providing the lesson and other teachers working with smaller groups of students.
Since adopting the team-teaching model, Skyline has seen an increase in job satisfaction and on-the-job professional development, Mendez said. The school partnered with ASU to place teacher candidates in teams with veteran teachers so they could complete their student-teaching requirements with seasoned educators and learn the team-teaching model.
“Our student-teachers who were on teams grew as professionals and were more prepared to meet the demands of a 21st-century student body than teachers who are not on teams,” Mendez said.
Mendez said he’s noticed in interviews with teaching candidates that “there’s a focus on scripted, one-size-fits-all lessons” and that most teacher-candidates are encouraged to confine themselves to a particular grade level and content area.
“Instead of being able to hire a specialized teacher in project-based learning, differentiated assessment, or competency-based learning and place them on a team, I’m confined to hiring simply a 9th- through 12th-grade math teacher,” Mendez said. “Because of this approach, teachers who are trained in the traditional prep programs are expected to be all things to all kids. This simply isn’t possible.”
Alternative certification pathways, mentoring, and coaching could help with recruitment of teachers of color
Teacher preparation programs also often fail to recruit teachers of color, said Sharif El-Mekki, founder and CEO of the Center for Black Educator Development and one of the panelists.
Only 7 percent of public school teachers nationally are Black, while Black students make up 15 percent of the public school student population, according to the National Center for Education Statistics, a wing of the Education Department.
Teachers of color, and their presence in classrooms, are linked to positive academic, social-emotional, and behavioral outcomes for all students, according to research published by the Annenberg Institute at Brown University.
El-Mekki urged lawmakers to support federal grants like the Augustus F. Hawkins Centers of Excellence Program, which helps historically Black colleges and universities improve teacher-preparation programs and recruit more teachers from diverse backgrounds, and invest in alternative teacher-certification pathways that are rigorous and accessible—and also pay teaching candidates.
He also advocated for mentor and coaching programs that pair aspiring teachers of color with more experienced teachers.
“When I first became a teacher I was on my way to law school and I decided to become a teacher because someone pointed out the impact that could make,” El-Mekki said. “I had an instructional coach and I had an in-house mentor. Those are two investments that allowed me to flourish.”
Many teacher-preparation programs are already working to implement many of the solutions and improvements suggested at the hearing, King, the AACTE consultant, said. Specifically, colleges and universities are working to expand apprenticeships and grow-your-own programs so more high-quality teachers are brought into the profession, she said.
“We want to eliminate unnecessary bureaucracy, but we don’t want to sacrifice quality,” King said. “This field has really been in an accelerated mode of innovation over the last number of years, but really intensively in the last five years.”
