Innovating Through Partnerships and Practice: The Senate's New Bill for Teacher Preparation

Last month, New York schools chief MaryEllen Elia and Chancellor of the State University of New York (SUNY) Nancy Zimpher teamed up to launch TeachNY, a comprehensive plan for overhauling how the state prepares its teachers—a quarter of whom currently come out of the SUNY system. SUNY brought together a group of state and national experts to recommend improvements to the often-stagnant universe of teacher education. One specific recommendation was to develop stronger partnerships between the state’s universities and nearby districts in order to better meet individual districts’ distinct workforce needs and provide prospective teachers with greater opportunities to work alongside experienced teachers before taking on a classroom of their own.

Historically, partnerships like this have been rare among traditional teacher preparation institutions. Perhaps due to state policies governing teacher preparation and licensure, traditional teacher preparation programs housed in institutions of higher education have stayed the course in their techniques—heavy on theory and self-exploration, light on practical knowledge and classroom experience—for decades.  

But such partnerships between districts and institutions of higher education have emerged more frequently in recent years, in part due to funding from sources like the federal Teacher Quality Partnership (TQP) grants. The TQP grants, first authorized in the 2008 version of the federal Higher Education Act, aimed to spark experimentation and reform in teacher preparation using competitive funds. To apply for these grants, interested districts are required to propose a partnership with an institute of higher education (IHE) to align teacher training with their specific needs.

While districts can propose including other entities, such as alternative teacher preparation programs, as part of their TQP partnership, these entities can only be supplemental partners to the IHE. This is despite the fact that some alternative preparation programs housed outside of IHEs have more experience creating these types of district partnerships than IHEs do. For example, several non-IHE based “teacher residency programs” partner with districts to place aspiring teachers in a classroom for a full year of practice under supervision of a mentor teacher (while the aspiring teachers also engage in traditional coursework). Another limitation on teacher residency programs under TQP is that they are required to issue program completers a master's degree from an IHE, despite limited evidence that master’s degrees are highly correlated with teacher effectiveness.

While TQP has sparked some experimentation in traditional teacher preparation, its prohibition on alternative teacher preparation programs as primary partners and its additional requirements for residency programs may be limiting its potential to produce improved teaching and learning in winning districts. While alternative programs can be controversial, they can also bring much-needed innovation to the sector and serve as key suppliers of teachers in areas of teacher shortages.

In response to this issue, a bipartisan group of U.S. senators—Orrin Hatch (R), Michael Bennet (D), John Cornyn (R), and Mark Warner (D)—introduced a new bill this past April that would expand the pool of potential primary district partners under TQP. Entitled the "Elevating Educator Preparation through Innovation Act of 2016," the bill would allow districts to choose and partner directly with a wider variety of teacher preparation organizations, including alternative preparation programs. The legislation also removes the previous requirement that partner teacher residency programs culminate in a master's degree for their teacher candidates, which signals the value that strong clinical preparation can provide regardless of its tie to a degree-granting program.

The bill, which received statements of support from a number of education reform and teacher leadership organizations (such as TNTP, Urban Teachers, Hope Street Group, and TeachPlus), proposes several other key changes to the current TQP legislation. First, it would allow grant recipients to use up to ten percent of funds to develop a "feedback loop" between preparation programs’ curriculum and districts’ professional development for beginning teachers. Although significant improvements to preparation curriculum and professional development will require more than this language alone, it at least signals to states and districts the importance of providing relevant, high-quality teacher professional development.

Second, the bill introduces a stronger evaluation requirement for TQP recipients. Whereas the current Higher Education Act simply states that the "Secretary shall evaluate the activities funded under this part and report the findings," the new legislation would require that the Institutes of Education Sciences carry out an "independent evaluation to measure the effectiveness" of funded programs. Again, this language doesn't guarantee stronger program practices, particularly since there are no clear consequences for partnerships found to be less effective. But it does indicate the importance of measuring and sharing "what works" in the teacher preparation field.

The Elevating Educator Preparation through Innovation Act, which would amend the Higher Education Act, is currently awaiting consideration by the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions. While the likelihood of its adoption is speculated to be low, the bill carries the possibility of providing TQP grantee districts with more, and possibly more innovative, options for creating a better prepared pipeline of teachers for their students.