Grossman: Improving teacher education programs will improve student achievement

October 26, 2016

Pam Grossman, Penn GSE
Dr. Pam Grossman

The U.S. Department of Education has a role to play in improving the quality of teacher education across the country, Penn GSE Dean Pam Grossman writes in the Huffington Post.

Raising the quality of the more than 1,300 college programs preparing teachers and the scores of alternative training options would significantly benefit students, Grossman says.

“The federal government could and should invest in research on the factors that distinguish effective teacher preparation, such as the work my colleagues and I have done in New York City,” Grossman writes. “The federal government requires teacher education programs to collect reams of data, but the focus has been accountability rather than improvement. Instead, let’s incentivize research that focuses on improvement and on the aggregation of knowledge across programs.”

In her piece, Grossman also detailed ways that teacher education programs have changed in recent years, including having student teachers film, and then study, their lessons. 

Read the full piece here.

 

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