The Hechinger Report – Emmanuel Felton
“America’s traditional teacher preparation programs are under siege; enrollment is dwindling, as prospective teachers turn to increasingly popular alternative programs. There are calls for regulators to step in to shut down the worst institutions and help many others improve. But where should experts look to for best practices? A panel of education experts, assembled to discuss two reports released by the National Center on Education and the Economy (NCEE), suggested looking abroad to four educational systems that perform best on international student achievement tests. The reports focus mainly on how these four systems – British Columbia, Hong Kong, Shanghai and Singapore – improve the craft of their current teachers. The panelists used the findings to discuss how America’s education schools should improve: have future teachers spend significantly more time in classrooms, focus more on deepening a teacher’s knowledge of a subject-area – particularly math for elementary school teachers – and give teachers the research tools they need to examine whether what they’re doing in the classroom is working.”(more)