Cobb County’s school system will have to add 800 new teachers this year to maintain its 7,500 teacher work force. Usually, the system has to fill 1,000 to 1,300 positions each year.

“It’s not hard to find bodies to fill positions, but it is hard to find highly qualified people,” said Jay Dillon, spokesman for Cobb schools, explaining that colleges of education sometimes fall short in preparing teachers for the classroom.

In order for every child to have the opportunity to get an outstanding education, we must have outstanding educators in every classroom.

Through the No Child Left Behind Act, Congress and the president have mandated stringent standards to raise the levels of academic excellence for all students, regardless of race or economic background, to rekindle the promise of the American Dream.

As such, we’re increasing the standards of our public schools and implementing measuring sticks to assure that all schools are held accountable for the education and intellectual growth of their students. We’re also increasing the focus on core academic subjects – reading, science and math – that are the building blocks of knowledge and critical thinking skills.

Improving the quality of education in K-12 classrooms requires that we do more to better prepare our teachers to lead in the classrooms of tomorrow.

That’s why I introduced the Ready to Teach Act of 2003, which the House passed today (Wednesday, July 9, 2003).

The No Child Left Behind Act provides a deadline, the 2005-06 school year, to ensure that every teacher is highly qualified.

The Ready to Teach Act marks the House’s commitment to see that promise become a reality. The legislation will provide grants to improve teacher preparation and it will hold colleges of education accountable for how well their graduates – America’s future teachers – are prepared.

Grants to states will be used to elevate the standards for future teachers. We should be able to safely assume that graduates of Georgia’s colleges of education hold certain skills: They should know how to use advanced technology in the classroom; they should have a well-rounded knowledge of the subjects they teach; they should be capable of utilizing scientifically based research; and they should be capable of preparing their students to meet – indeed, exceed – the state of Georgia’s minimal standards of academic proficiency.

In addition, we’ll measure how colleges of education are performing by tracking the truest measure of teacher effectiveness, the academic achievement of students.

Innovative methods for teacher preparation programs, such as charter colleges of education, will be explored to provide an alternative gateway for teachers to become highly qualified. Unnecessary state barriers that prevent alternative certification will be eliminated, opening new doors to place well-prepared teachers in the classroom.

Another grant system will expand partnerships between colleges of education and local schools with high needs. The grants will allow the faculty of teacher-training programs to serve with and aid teachers in their classrooms. Not only do the teachers get much-needed help, but also the college faculty members get “real-world experience.”

Lastly, there will be teacher recruitment grants. As America holds colleges of education accountable, the need to recruit individuals into the teaching profession will only expand. The Ready to Teach Act recognizes the need of low-performing schools to recruit more highly qualified educators and aims to fill this need by increasing the number of high-quality teachers being trained.

It is an unfortunate reality that some teacher training programs are falling short when it comes to providing teachers with the skills they need to be highly qualified. Even worse, accountability measures, such as reporting requirements on certification rates, have been manipulated, leaving data skewed and often irrelevant.

What is the result of this? Our teachers, those on the front lines of educating our nation’s students, are not always adequately prepared to teach. This makes it increasingly difficult for states and school districts to place highly qualified teachers in the classrooms where they are needed the most.

I’m proud that I had an opportunity to work with members on both sides of the aisle to put forward a bill that makes common-sense improvements to teacher training programs. Supporting teachers is a bipartisan goal, and appropriately, this bill has received strong bipartisan support.