A Qualified Teacher in Every Classroom?
Appraising Old Answers and New Ideas

  • Title:

    A Qualified Teacher in Every Classroom?
  • Edited By:

    Kate Walsh,
  • Edited By:

    Kate Walsh,
  • Edited By:

    Kate Walsh
  • Paperback ISBN:

    1-891792-20-2
  • 256 Paperback pages
  • Hardcover ISBN:

    1-891792-21-0

Under the No Child Left Behind Act, states will have to ensure that every public school classroom is staffed by a highly qualified teacher. This mandate--and the fact that many children, especially low-income and minority students, are taught by underqualified teachers ill-equipped for the challenges ahead--gives new urgency to debates over teacher recruitment, preparation, and induction.

For several years, these debates have been dominated by competing groups of partisans. One denies that teaching requires a professional base of knowledge and skill, while the other tries to promote professionalism by ensuring that traditional programs retain their control over licensure and formal certification. The conflict confuses policymakers, frustrates educators, and stiffles potentially promising solutions.

In this volume, eleven contributors with rich experience in policy and teaching take a fresh look at a number of issues, including:

  • Current systems for preparing and licensing teachers, and how they affect the quality and supply of teachers in the work force;
  • An array of reform models for teacher preparation and licensure, and what they would mean for the profession;
  • Questions of rigor and ideology in the core curricula of education schools or programs;
  • The federal role in techer preparation and licensure, especially in light of NCLB.

A Qualified Teacher in Every Classroom?

lays out new approaches for ensuring high-quality teacher preparation while offering a candid assessment of the obstacles that may impede the implementation of such new models.


Frederick M. Hess is a resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute and the executive editor of Education Next.

Andrew J. Rotherham is director of the Progressive Policy Institute's 21st Century Schools Project and a former special assistant to President Bill Clinton on domestic policy.

Kate Walsh is the executive director of the National Council on Teacher Quality.

About the Author

 

Frederick M.
Hess
  • An educator, political scientist, and author, Frederick M. Hess studies a range of K-12 and higher education issues. He is the author of influential books on education including The Same Thing Over and Over, Education Unbound, Common Sense School Reform, Revolution at the Margins, and Spinning Wheels, and pens the Education Week blog "Rick Hess Straight Up."  His work has appeared in scholarly and popular outlets such as Teachers College Record, Harvard Education Review, Social Science Quarterly, Urban Affairs Review, American Politics Quarterly, Chronicle of Higher Education, Phi Delta Kappan, Educational Leadership, U.S. News & World Report, The Washington Post, New York Times and National Review. He has edited widely-cited volumes on education philanthropy, stretching the school dollar, the impact of education research, and No Child Left Behind.  He serves as executive editor of Education Next, as lead faculty member for the Rice Education Entrepreneurship Program, on the Review Board for the Broad Prize in Urban Education, and on the Boards of Directors of the National Association of Charter School Authorizers, 4.0 SCHOOLS, and the American Board for the Certification of Teaching Excellence. A former high school social studies teacher, he has taught at the University of Virginia, the University of Pennsylvania, Georgetown University, Rice University, and Harvard University. He holds an M.A. and Ph.D. in Government from Harvard University as well as an M.Ed. in Teaching and Curriculum.

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  • Email: rhess@aei.org
  • Assistant Info

    Name: Rebecca King
    Phone: 202-862-5904
    Email: Rebecca.King@aei.org
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