Accreditation Body Announces New Effort to Improve Teacher Training

If you had a nickel for every time someone urged universities to collaborate with public schools, you’d be rich indeed. But a newly announced committee has some promise of actually making those university-district collaborations a reality: The National Council for Accreditation of Teacher Education has announced a heavyweight 28-member panel whose mission is to improve the preparation of new teachers.

In a statement, the council said that education schools should be restructured in ways that recognize that teaching is “a practice-based profession akin to medicine, nursing, or clinical psychology.”

Better clinical training might include “sustained, intense, mentored school-embedded experiences,” according to the statement. The committee, known as the NCATE Blue Ribbon Panel on Clinical Preparation, Partnerships, and Improved Student Learning, will hold its first meeting later this week in Washington.

The committee’s chairs are Dwight D. Jones, Colorado’s commissioner of education, and Nancy L. Zimpher, chancellor of the State University of New York. (Ms. Zimpher has been writing about this topic for many years.)

Also on the committee are Arthur Levine, a persistent critic of education schools, and Sharon P. Robinson, president of the American Association of Colleges for Teacher Education.

The committee is expected to release its findings and recommendations by the end of 2010. —David Glenn