Led by Rep. Phil Gingrey, members of the House Education & the Workforce Committee today introduced the Ready to Teach Act (H.R. 2211), the first in what will be a series of bills put forth by the Education & the Workforce Committee to reauthorize the Higher Education Act (HEA). The Ready to Teach Act is legislation designed to align teacher training programs with the high standards for accountability and results found the in the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB), the bipartisan K-12 education reform package signed into law in January 2002.
The No Child Left Behind Act calls for a highly qualified teacher in every classroom by the 2005-2006 school year, lending new urgency to the stated bipartisan goal of ensuring that teacher training programs are effectively training highly qualified teachers that will meet the needs of America’s school children.
“The Congress and the Bush administration have made accountability key for elementary, middle and high schools. We must have similar accountability for the colleges of education that are graduating the teachers of tomorrow,” said Gingrey, author of the legislation. “We’re acting proactively to attract and keep the best and brightest educators in the classrooms so that today’s children will be the best and brightest in the world.”
The Ready to Teach Act aligns teacher training programs under HEA with the definitions and provisions for highly qualified teachers in the No Child Left Behind Act, coordinating activities under the two Acts and bringing the accountability found in NCLB into teacher training programs. Reforms included in the legislation would infuse new quality and accountability measures into the grants administered for teacher training programs, and provide innovative approaches that would improve the teaching workforce so critical to the success of K-12 education reform.
“As the Committee begins the process of reauthorizing the Higher Education Act, there is no more important issue that we can undertake than to guarantee that we have quality teachers for our nation's children,” said Rep. Howard P. “Buck” McKeon (R-CA), chairman of the 21st Century Competitiveness Subcommittee. “Over the next decade, school districts will need to hire over 2 million additional teachers to keep up with increased student enrollment. It is our job to make sure there are qualified teachers in every classroom.”
“I commend Congressman Gingrey for introducing the Ready to Teach Act, which will improve the quality of the current and future teacher force by improving the preparation of prospective teachers and enhancing professional development activities. This will ensure that the best and the brightest teachers are teaching our children,” continued McKeon.
The bill authorizes three types of teacher training grants that each play a unique, yet critical role in the education of tomorrow’s teachers. State grant funds must be used to reform teacher preparation requirements and ensure that current and future teachers are highly qualified. Partnership grants allow effective partners to join together, combining strengths and resources to train highly qualified teachers and achieve success where it matters most – in the classroom. Teacher recruitment grants will help bring high quality individuals into teacher programs, and ultimately put more highly qualified teachers into classrooms.
Accountability: While current higher education law contains some annual reporting requirements, these reporting measures have proven ineffective in measuring the true quality of teacher preparation programs. In fact, the current requirements have often been manipulated, leaving data skewed and often irrelevant. The Ready to Teach Act includes accountability provisions that will strengthen reporting measures and hold teacher preparation programs accountable for providing accurate and useful information.
Flexibility: The Ready to Teach Act recognizes that flexibility should exist in methods used for training highly qualified teachers, and for that reason, would allow funds to be used for innovative methods in teacher preparation programs, such as charter colleges of education, which can provide an alternative gateway for teachers to become highly qualified. Pioneering programs such as charter colleges of education would also implement systems to gauge a true measure of teacher effectiveness – the academic achievement of students.
Effectiveness: In addition to strengthened accountability measures, the Ready to Teach Act supports effectiveness and quality in teacher training programs by including provisions to focus training on the skills and knowledge needed to prepare highly qualified teachers. The bill places a renewed emphasis on a broad range of skills required for effective teaching, such as the use of advanced technology in the classroom, rigorous academic content knowledge, scientifically based research, and challenging state student academic content standards.
“I’d like to commend Congressman Gingrey for his leadership on this issue, and for recognizing the critical role teachers play in the success of education reform in this country,” said Rep. John Boehner (R-OH), chairman of the Education & the Workforce Committee. “Holding teacher training programs accountable for training highly qualified teachers is a service not only to the teachers being trained, but to the students who benefit from the quality of the nation’s teaching workforce.”
The Ready to Teach Act is a measure that thoroughly, and intentionally, complements provisions outlining teacher quality in the No Child Left Behind Act. If approved, this legislation would work to improve the quality of teacher training programs and provide the highly qualified teachers that will be key to the success of the bipartisan No Child Left Behind Act.
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