Hearing of the Early Childhood, Elementary, and Secondary Education Subcommitte and the Higher Education and Workforce Training Subcommittee of the House Education and the Workforce Committee - Exploring Efforts to Strengthen the Teaching Profession

Hearing

I am very glad that the Committee has called this important hearing. There is no more important school-level factor influencing our children's education than the quality of our teaching force.

On day one, our teachers need to enter the classroom with the skills and knowledge they need to succeed. Unfortunately, our system for preparing teachers is falling short.
According to a leading study of schools of education, almost two-thirds of education school alumni reported that schools of education at four-year colleges did not adequately prepare them for the classroom.

Moreover, students in high-poverty and high-minority schools are twice as likely to be assigned to new teachers. This means our most vulnerable students are bearing the brunt of a system that fails to consistently prepare high-quality educators.

We can do better. Across the country, innovative teacher preparation programs, like the Urban Teacher Center, the Relay Graduate School of Education, and MATCH Teacher Residency, are breaking the traditional classroom model, partnering with K-12 school districts, prioritizing practice and coaching instead of theory, and demonstrating that the first year teacher does not need to learn through failure.

These programs use video to emulate best practices, allow novice teachers to learn from professors who are themselves expert educators, and recommend students for licensure based on mastery, not "seat time." These innovations have lead to improved student outcomes and increased teacher retention.

Unfortunately, many of these programs are unable to offer federal financial aid because they are not able to make it through a burdensome, costly accreditation process that focuses more on inputs than outcomes like teacher performance, job placement, and retention.

On the state level, the Council of Chief State School Officers has partnered with seven states to adopt bold reform measures in teacher preparation and licensure. These and other states are taking a comprehensive approach to improve their human capital pipelines by raising the bar on teacher preparation program performance.

It is important for states and for the federal government to support innovation and reform in the field of teacher preparation. We need to remove the Higher Education Act's onerous input-based reporting requirements, and focus on outcomes.

We have a crucial role to play in collecting meaningful data on program results, holding teacher preparation programs accountable, and promoting best practices in the field.

Doing so requires increasing the selectivity of who enrolls in preparation programs, restructuring data systems to ensure that teacher performance can track back to programs, which 17 states currently have the ability to do, and ensuring that teachers have high-quality induction and mentoring experiences when they enter the classroom.

I look forward to hearing from our esteemed witnesses about their experiences and perspectives on improving the teaching profession and investing in America's future -- our children.

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