The Politics of Accountability Teacher E (1)

472725
EPX27210.1177/0895904812472725Educational PolicyLewis and Young
© The Author(s) 2013
Reprints and permission:
sagepub.com/journalsPermissions.nav
The Politics of
Accountability:Teacher
Education Policy
Educational Policy
27(2) 190–216
© The Author(s) 2013
Reprints and permission:
sagepub.com/journalsPermissions.nav
DOI: 10.1177/0895904812472725
epx.sagepub.com
Wayne D. Lewis1 and Tamara V. Young2
Abstract
Drawing on Kingdon’s multiple streams framework, this study examines how
teacher education policy has gained prominence on the federal decision
agenda in recent years.
Keywords
accountability, policy, policy formation, politics of education, teacher certification/
licensure, teacher education, teacher preparation, teacher quality
The political debate surrounding teacher quality and the effectiveness of teacher
education programs has reached new heights over the past two decades
(Cochran-Smith, 2005; Cochran-Smith & Fries, 2001; Weiner, 2000; Wiseman,
2012). The current debate, however, is not a new one. Rather, it is an extension
of an ongoing national policy debate about teacher education policy that has
existed since the 1960s when the federal government began to closely examine
whether federal funds for public endeavors were producing desired outcomes
(Rossi, Lipsey, & Freeman, 2004) and scholars began to study whether teachers
impact student learning, and if so, how (Arnold, Denemark, Nelli, Robinson, &
Sagan, 1977), with answers to these questions varying (e.g., Coleman et al.,
1
University of Kentucky, Lexington, KY, USA
North Carolina State University, Raleigh, NC, USA
2
Corresponding Author:
Wayne D. Lewis, University of Kentucky, 134B Taylor Education Building, Lexington, KY 405060017, USA.
Email: [email protected]
Downloaded from epx.sagepub.com at NORTH CAROLINA STATE UNIV on March 16, 2015
Lewis and Young
191
1966; Jencks, Smith, Acland, & Bane, 1972). Since that time, the empirical
literature has grown exponentially, with it by and large converging on the conclusion that teachers do matter. However, conflict remains around how teachers
matter and what type of preparation for teachers is likely to contribute to their
effectiveness. For example, although some research has shown that on average,
preparedness, effectiveness, and retention are higher for new teachers who
have completed preservice programs than for new teachers who received less
preparation prior to entering the classroom (Boyd, Grossman, Lankford, Loeb,
& Wyckoff, 2006, 2008; Clotfelter, Ladd, & Vigdor, 2007; Darling-Hammond,
2006; Darling-Hammond, Holtzman, Gatlin, & Helig, 2005), other studies
have concluded that preservice teacher education programs matter little, if any,
to how effective a teacher is in the classroom (Ballou & Podgursky, 2000;
Kane, Rockoff, & Staiger, 2008; Walsh, 2001).
With significant advances in understanding the importance of teacher
quality, there have been several policy initiatives, such as the Carnegie Task
Force on Teaching as a Profession and the founding of the National Board for
Professional Teaching Standards that have attended to the inputs and processes of teacher education (e.g., recruitment, selection, retention; the content, experiences, and requirements of preservice preparation programs;
accreditation and certification; mentoring new teachers; and continuing professional development). There has also been a focus on student outcomes,
specifically, student achievement as a primary indicator of teacher effectiveness. However, over the past decade the focus on outcomes has intensified, as
evident by calls for and, in some instances, the systems where teachers are
evaluated on the basis of student outcomes.
This focus on holding teachers accountable for outcomes, accompanied
by the plethora of research on teacher education and modern advances in
technology facilitating the ability to gather, store, analyze, and link student
data across P-20 educational settings and beyond, has brought about
increased interest in assessing the effectiveness of teacher education programs based on outcomes as well. Approaches to outcomes-based accountability for teacher preparation programs have fallen into one of four main
categories: (a) evaluation based on the achievement scores of students taught
by program graduates, (b) evaluation based on teacher candidates’ demonstration of research-supported teaching behaviors, (c) evaluation of teacher
candidates during their preparation period based on how students perform in
response to their teaching, and (d) evaluation based on how students perform
in response to programs graduates’ teaching during graduates’ early years of
teaching (Cochran-Smith & Powers, 2010). Different forms of accountability models for teacher preparation programs now exist in several states,
Downloaded from epx.sagepub.com at NORTH CAROLINA STATE UNIV on March 16, 2015
192
Educational Policy 27(2)
including Texas, Florida, and Ohio. Darling-Hammond (2010) remarked of
this heightened attention to teacher preparation:
For teacher education, this is perhaps the best of times and the worst
of times. It may be the best of times because so much hard work has
been done by many teacher educators over the past two decades to
develop more successful program models and because we have just
elected a president of the United States who has a strong commitment
to the improvement of teaching. It may equally be the worst of times
because there are so many forces in the environment that conspire to
undermine these efforts. (p. 35)
Some argue that forces that Darling-Hammond references are motivated by
politics rather than authentic concern for improving teacher effectiveness.
Cochran-Smith and Fries (2001), for example, have characterized the current
national debate as being embedded within two overlapping, simultaneously
competing, and even at times contradictory larger national agendas: “The
agenda to professionalize teaching and teacher education, which is linked to
the K-12 standards movement” . . . [and] “the movement to deregulate
teacher preparation, which aims to dismantle teacher education institutions
and break up the monopoly of the profession” (p. 3). This professionalism–
deregulation debate, or P-D debate as termed by Fenstermacher (2002), has
been carried out through scholarly writing and research, the media, local
boards of education, state legislatures, Congress, and the U.S. Department of
Education.
Interestingly, this keen focus on the effectiveness of teacher education was
forecasted decades earlier by Arnold et al. (1977), who remarked,
Public demands for accountability, combined with the awakened
interests of teachers and the press upon school systems and colleges
for better utilization of resources, will continue and expand the
already significant development of personnel development centers or
other collaborative mechanisms for improving the education of
teachers. (p. 78)
This study examines the extent to which the factors that Cochran-Smith
and Fries (2001) highlighted a decade ago and Arnold et al. (1977) pointed
out more 35 years ago are transpiring in our contemporary. Using Kingdon’s
(1984) multiple-streams model, this study examines the political dimension
of teacher education accountability policy, with specific attention to the
Downloaded from epx.sagepub.com at NORTH CAROLINA STATE UNIV on March 16, 2015
Lewis and Young
193
policy formation of teacher education accountability initiatives formulated in
the past few years. This study is important because “if we do not fully consider the political dimension, the ways we think about teacher education will
be partial and distorted, and our efforts to intervene in the policy and practice
of teacher education will be less effective and salutary” (Ginsberg & Lindsay,
1995, p. 4). To situate our analysis, the next section of the article provides an
overview of federal involvement with teacher education and describes the
theoretical framework guiding our analysis.
Federal Government Involvement With Teacher
Education and Teacher Quality
The federal government’s interest in teacher education and teacher quality
began in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, but this early involvement
was largely limited to financial support for teacher professional development
in targeted areas and in response to identified areas of national importance
and perceived national crises (Cohen-Vogel, 2005; Earley, 2000). As illustrated by federal attention to teacher quality and training after the launch of
Sputnik, during the cold war, and following the release of the Reagan administration’s A Nation at Risk: The Imperative for Educational Reform, teacher
education and teacher quality began to make routine appearances on the
federal policy agenda beginning in the latter half of the 20th century (CohenVogel, 2005; Earley, 2000). The circulation of education reform documents
during the 1980s, like A Nation at Risk, set the stage for reform conversations
and federal policy response to come in the following decades. During those
years, education leaders, including leaders of national associations of colleges of teacher education, began to endorse the adoption of a systemic
education reform agenda and national standards, and as pressure increased
for students to be held accountable to world-class, uniform, national standards, so did the pressure increase for holding teachers and teacher education
programs accountable for student outcomes (Weiner, 2000). That type of
pressure in part led to the eventual reauthorization of the Higher Education
Act (HEA) with significantly strengthened accountability provisions for
teacher education programs.
National Commission on Teaching and America’s Future (NCTAF) 1996
report made bold recommendations for increased scrutiny of teacher education programs (National Commission on Teaching and America’s Future,
1996). The report proposed that by 2006 every student would be provided
with “what should be his or her educational birthright: access to competent,
caring, qualified teaching in schools organized for success” (p. 10). As
Downloaded from epx.sagepub.com at NORTH CAROLINA STATE UNIV on March 16, 2015
194
Educational Policy 27(2)
evidenced by their subsequent policy response in the reauthorization of the
HEA in 1998, federal policy makers gleaned five key messages from that
report:
(a) more people must be recruited into teaching,
(b) teachers are not well prepared in the subjects they are expected to
teach,
(c) teacher education is disconnected from the needs of K-12 schools
and from collegiate arts and sciences units,
(d) the regulation of teacher preparation and licensure works against
teacher quality, and
(e) presidents of institutions of higher education with teacher education
programs pay little attention to these units. (Earley, 2000, p. 30)
Ideas about the revision of the teacher education provision of HEA to
address issues raised in the NCTAF report emerged not only from Congress
but also from education organizations and the U.S. Department of Education.
Although the details of proposals for improving teacher education varied
considerably, there was an apparent agreement on two points: (a) the recruitment of teachers should be addressed, and (b) support for colleges of teacher
education should be linked to their partnership with K-12 schools (Earley,
2000). The teacher education provisions of the HEA that resulted proved to
be quite controversial, with Congress showing a willingness to “intervene in
the affairs of institutions of higher education as never before” (Cohen-Vogel,
2005, p. 31) to improve teacher quality.
A new Title II of the HEA to address teacher education was divided into a
section for categorical programs for partnerships and states, and a section for
mandatory accountability requirements for states and institutions of higher
education. The whole of Title II accomplished three general aims; it (a)
authorized programs to recruit persons into the teaching profession, (b) supported partnership arrangements between higher education institutions and
K-12 schools for teacher preparation, and (c) gathered data on the teacher
education system as a way of holding the system accountable for the quality
of teachers entering the profession (Earley, 2000).
Specifically, Title II required states and colleges of teacher education receiving federal funds either directly or indirectly through HEA to provide the U.S.
Downloaded from epx.sagepub.com at NORTH CAROLINA STATE UNIV on March 16, 2015
Lewis and Young
195
Department of Education with data on teacher preparation standards and licensure procedures. Through whatever state agency tasked with teacher licensure
and/or teacher education program approval, states were required to send
(a) the information they receive from institutions of higher education;
(b) a description of licensure requirements and the extent to which
K-12 standards and teacher licensure requirements are aligned; (c) the
percentage of teaching candidates who passed each required teaching
license examination; (d) the pass rate scores on these exams disaggregated by education school, college, or program; (e) the number of
licensure waivers granted each year, disaggregated by low- and highpoverty schools; (f) a description of alternate routes to teaching and the
percentage of teachers licensed through such routes; (g) the criteria
used by the state to evaluate or approve education schools, colleges, or
programs; and (h) the name of any institution denied state program
approval. (Earley, 2000, p. 34)
An emphasis on improving the quality of teachers continued into the
George W. Bush administration but with a decreased emphasis on pedagogical training for teachers. Bush administration Secretary of Education Rod
Paige called for the redefinition of teacher preparation and credentialing to
place greater emphasis on subject matter knowledge and less emphasis on
education coursework, making student teaching and attendance at schools of
education optional (Darling-Hammond, 2010; Kaplan & Owings, 2003;
Paige, 2002). Paige’s views are evident in the highly qualified provisions of
the federal No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB). In fact, NCLB’s primary
mechanism for improving teacher quality was an insistence that teachers
demonstrate mastery of the subject matter they teach.
It is within this complex political milieu with increasing involvement of
the federal government in teacher education that this study aims to describe
how teacher education accountability continues to occupy space on the federal agenda. The next sections describe the theoretical framework we draw
upon to guide our analysis and explain the methods we used to gather and
analyze data.
Theoretical Framework: Kingdon’s MultipleStreams Framework
As Ginsburg and Lindsay (1995) have pointed out, there is a political dimension to teacher education policy formation. “Policy formation in teacher
Downloaded from epx.sagepub.com at NORTH CAROLINA STATE UNIV on March 16, 2015
196
Educational Policy 27(2)
education is political both in the sense of individuals and groups exercising
power, but also in the sense of material and symbolic resources being distributed (to individuals, groups, communities, nations, etc.)” (p. 6). This political
dimension is particularly evident when considering how the answers to a
series of questions influence the distribution of both power and material
resources:
1. Where should (pre-service and in-service) teacher education programs be located, in terms of institutions and communities?
2. From what sources and at what amount should teacher preparation
programs be funded?
3. Who should be enrolled in teacher education and for how long?
4. To what knowledge and perspectives should students in teacher
education programs be or not be exposed?
5. Who should determine the curricular content and the evaluation
procedures employed in the programs?
6. Who should be employed as instructors in teacher preparation programs and how should they be prepared, selected, and supervised?
7. Who should administer and evaluate teacher preparation programs?
(Ginsburg & Lindsay, 1995, p. 6)
This study pays particular attention to the final question that attends to the
evaluation of teacher education programs.
Because of the complexity of policy development, policy processes must
be examined through the lenses of theoretical frameworks (McDonnell &
Elmore, 1987) that allow researchers to describe, understand, and evaluate
governments, policies, processes, systems, and behaviors. For this study, we
rely on a framework that is widely used to describe policy formation—
agenda setting and alternative specification—Kingdon’s (1984, 1995) multiple-streams framework. An extension of the garbage-can model (Cohen,
March, & Olsen,1972), Kingdon’s framework conceives of the policy formation process as composed of three streams—problem, policy, and politics—
that largely develop and operate independently. However, when a compelling
problem emerges or when certain changes in the political stream occur—a
Downloaded from epx.sagepub.com at NORTH CAROLINA STATE UNIV on March 16, 2015
Lewis and Young
197
policy window briefly opens and policy entrepreneurs couple their solutions
to problems or take advantage of the political climate and bring about the
convergence of the three streams, and an issue rises to the top of the governmental agenda.
Because educational policy scholars have used MSM to describe decentralization of higher education (McLendon, 2003), social promotion (Brown,
2007), diversity in Minnesota (Stout & Stevens, 2000), reading policy
(Young, Shepley, & Song, 2010), and governance structure in Chicago Public
Schools (Lieberman, 2002), applying Kingdon’s (1995) framework to study
teacher educational policy will allow us to not only understand the processes,
systems, and behaviors involved in the development of teacher education
accountability policy but also systematically discern which aspects of teacher
education accountability policy formation are similar or different to other
policy processes within the education domain.
The Problem Stream
The problem stream is the process in which societal conditions become
recognized as problems by policy makers through three mechanisms: indicators, focusing events, and feedback (Kingdon, 1995). Indicators assess the
magnitude of the condition. When conditions are severe or circumstances
have changed significantly, the public and policy makers see the condition
as a problem. Crises or disasters, popularization of powerful symbols, or
personal experiences of policy makers are seen as focusing events that capture the attention of the public and policy makers. The feedback that officials receive from constituents or program evaluators about the performance
of a program, notably a failure to meet goals or the presence of unanticipated consequences, can also change policy makers’ perceptions of a societal condition, leading them to conclude that something should be done to
change the condition.
The Political Stream
Three mechanisms within the political stream—swings of national mood,
organized political forces, and events within government itself—can contribute to an issue becoming prominent on the governmental agenda. Policy
makers’ sensitivity to changes in the national mood—political climate or the
presence of a broad social movement—can lead to the promotion or demotion of an issue’s prominence on the policy agenda. Also, policy makers’
perceptions of the level of support or opposition of organized political forces
Downloaded from epx.sagepub.com at NORTH CAROLINA STATE UNIV on March 16, 2015
198
Educational Policy 27(2)
(i.e., parties, legislative politics, and pressure groups) can influence the
prominence of an issue on the agenda. The last mechanism within the political stream, events within the government, involves the turnover of key personnel or shifts in the jurisdictional boundaries of government officials that
lead to the eminence of an issue.
The Policy Stream
At the heart of the policy stream is a set of solutions—policy alternatives
(Kingdon, 1995). Many solutions are floating around a “policy primeval
soup,” where “they bump into one another, they combine with one another;
some survive, some die out, and some survive quite different from their origins” (p. 131). The solutions that do make their way out of the policy community and surface on the policy agenda do not do so in a manner that
reflects rational decision-making processes based solely on the content of the
ideas. Policy entrepreneurs who advocate for particular initiatives “soften
up” the policy community to improve the receptiveness of their ideas.
Specific characteristics of an alternative—technical feasibility, value acceptability, and absence of anticipated future constraints (i.e., budget constraint
and public acquiescence)—also enhance its likelihood of floating to the top
of the soup. After ideas survive these criteria, they make it onto a short list
of ideas. Eventually, consensus spreads through a policy community, and an
agreement on solutions or proposals is reached.
Method
We examined public documents related to teacher education initiatives, such
as legislation, newspapers, press releases, and journal articles, to answer our
research question: How has teacher education accountability come to be so
prominently featured on the governmental decision agenda in recent years?
To complement the data from these sources, we used this archival data to
identify government policy actors, interest groups, and scholars who were
closely associated with the issue to serve as informants to supplement our
initial findings. After policy actors were identified, we sent them emails
requesting their participation in an interview. The email explained the purpose of the research, specified the interview questions, and included an
informed consent statement ensuring confidentiality (n = 6; response rate =
40%, 6 out of 15). A standard open-ended, structured interview schedule,
loosely adapted from Kingdon (1995, p. 235), served as the primary data
collection instrument.
Downloaded from epx.sagepub.com at NORTH CAROLINA STATE UNIV on March 16, 2015
Lewis and Young
199
We reviewed the archival documents and the six interview narratives or
field notes from the interviews with the informants to discover themes related
to the research questions. We used both inductive and deductive coding to
analyze the data. Inductive analysis involved detailed analysis of the raw data
to derive key themes (Miles & Huberman, 1994). Deductive analysis involved
applying Kingdon’s (1995) framework to categorize the emergent themes.
Results
The findings indicate that there is no one specific event or person solely
associated with the prominence of teacher education accountability policy on
the federal governmental decision agenda. There are many forces at play, but
by and large it is multiple, complementary energies that have created what
some respondents termed “the perfect storm” and what Kingdon considers a
coupling of the streams or a policy window. Organized according to
Kingdon’s framework, we discuss the various elements that contribute to the
prominence of teacher education accountability on the government decision
agenda. Paraphrases and quotes of both archival data (e.g., legislation and
journal articles) and informants’ remarks are included in our narrative to
provide a rich, textured description of the policy milieu that has buoyed
teacher education accountability policy to the forefront of the federal education policy agenda.
Problem Stream
Within the problem stream, indicators, feedback, and focusing events
played a role in driving teacher education accountability to the forefront of
governmental decision agenda. Generally, there was consensus that low
student achievement (the primary indicator),especially for disadvantaged
students and students of color, is a concern for the nation. There was also
significant agreement that improving teacher quality is vital to increasing
student achievement (e.g., Ballou, Sanders, & Wright, 2004; DarlingHammond, 1999, 2010; Hanushek, Kain, & Rivkin, 1998). However, there
was some disagreement about what policies and practices support teacher
effectiveness. Divergent views about what pre- and in-service endeavors
contribute to teacher quality have led to critique of traditional, higher
education–based teacher preparation programs, and both proponents and
opponents of traditional preparation programs (TPP) declare that empirical
research (the secondary indicator) supports their conclusions. Supporters
of TPP programs believe that teacher preparation is related to teacher practices,
Downloaded from epx.sagepub.com at NORTH CAROLINA STATE UNIV on March 16, 2015
200
Educational Policy 27(2)
Table 1. Factors Contributing to the Prominence of Teacher Education Policy.
Stream
Themes
Problem stream
Indicators
Feedback
Focusing events
Policy stream’s
primeval soup
Political stream
Organized political
forces
Events within the
government
National mood
-Low student achievement
-Empirical evidence that teacher quality influences
student achievement
-Conflicting empirical findings about the
effectiveness of traditional higher education
teacher education programs
Ineffective traditional higher education–based
teacher education programs
No Child Left Behind (NCLB)
Race to the Top
-Redesigning teacher education programs
-National Council on Teacher Quality (NCTQ) and
U.S. News and World Report
-Value-added assessment
-Council for the Accreditation of Educator
Preparation (CAEP)—standards and accreditation
-edTPA
-Alternative pathways
-Educator Preparation Reform Act
-Proponents of professionalization
-Proponents of deregulation and alternative
programs
-Obama administration
-Accountability for K-12
-Accountability for higher education
teacher effectiveness, and teacher retention (Clotfelter et al., 2007;
Darling-Hammond, 2010; Kaplan & Owings, 2003), and reforming these
programs—through increased regulation and modifications to curriculum
requirements, such as changes in subject matter requirements, clinical experiences, and exposure to strategies working with diverse learners—will
improve teacher effectiveness. Advocates of higher education–based programs also contend that there is wide variation in the quality of teacher
preparation programs, and legitimate critique of a subset of programs that are
in fact ineffectual has been unjustly applied to all programs. This feedback
Downloaded from epx.sagepub.com at NORTH CAROLINA STATE UNIV on March 16, 2015
Lewis and Young
201
about ineffectual programs, which some consider to be as one informant
stated, “hyperbole,” coupled with a lack of faith in teacher accreditation
agencies, has added to the focus on teacher education accountability. Also
fueling the fire were critics of TPP research-based claims (e.g., Aaronson,
Barrow, & Sander, 2007; Chicago Public Schools, 2007; Duckworth,
Quinn, & Seligman, 2009) that TPP programs have minimal to no influence
on teacher effectiveness. Many critics of TPP also reason that the current
degree of regulation and calls for increasing regulation (an approach advocated by many supporters) are unnecessary and even counterproductive
because they may shrink the applicant pool and further diminish average
teacher quality in high-need school districts (Podgursky, 2005a, 2005b).
Indicators and feedback alone were not adequate to bring teacher education policy to the forefront of the policy agenda. Two federal policies function as focusing events that propelled interest in teacher education
accountability. NCLB required that all teachers be highly qualified to teach in
their respective areas. To be considered highly qualified, teachers were
required to have a bachelor’s degree, hold the appropriate state-level certification or license, and demonstrate competence in the subject matter that he or
she teaches. However, by leaving highly qualified somewhat loosely defined
at the federal level, depending on states’ standards for certification and states’
adoption of procedures for teachers demonstrating subject matter competence, the term came to mean relatively little across states. States’ lack of
capacity to truly monitor and enforce the requirement resulted in noble policy
intentions producing little change in the quality of the nation’s teachers. Quite
simply, implementation did not correspond with intention. Nevertheless, the
highly qualified teacher requirement illuminated teacher education curriculum, state policies for licensing teachers, and teacher education accreditation,
underscoring a need for heightened accountability.
Race to the Top (RttT; Shear & Anderson, 2009) had a different and arguably more significant impact on the national debate over teacher education
and accountability. Through RttT, the U.S. Department of Education used
financial incentives to entice states to reform their teacher tenure and evaluation policies and systems, and as a result, many states have done so. RttT
required districts in any state receiving RttT funding to publish teacher and
principal evaluation information online. Furthermore, eligibility to even
apply for RttT funding required that states not have any law prohibiting
student achievement data from being used as part of teacher evaluation. That
requirement alone resulted in 6 states removing such statutory prohibitions
and prompted 11 states to pass legislation requiring that student achievement data be used as a part of teacher evaluation or tenure decisions (e.g.,
Downloaded from epx.sagepub.com at NORTH CAROLINA STATE UNIV on March 16, 2015
202
Educational Policy 27(2)
McGuinn, 2006, 2012). RttT not only provided momentum for teacher
accountability based on student performance, but it also amplified attention
to teacher education accountability and fostered the development of statewide data systems that could be used to assess teacher effectiveness of program graduates.
Overall, NCLB put into motion the emphasis on teacher quality and
accountability. However, its approach (highly qualified teachers) was primarily on inputs. RttT, which could have only occurred in a post-NCLB era,
compounded the attention on teacher quality and accountability by stressing
outcomes. An emphasis on both inputs and outcomes undoubtedly led to
heightened attention to teacher preparation program accountability.
Policy Stream
Teacher education accountability policy solutions. Some teacher education
programs have responded to criticism, state reform mandates, and the push
for program improvement by groups like American Association of Colleges
for Teacher Education (AACTE) by significantly overhauling their programs,
and there is research to suggest that such reformed programs have resulted in
higher-quality new teachers (Darling-Hammond, 2010). A few of the more
recent program reforms have included (a) redesigning programs around standards; (b) increasing and strengthening clinical practice; (c) placing increased
emphasis on developing subject matter content knowledge; (d) strengthening
coursework around student learning and development theory, assessment,
subject matter pedagogy, and teaching English language learners and students with special needs; and (e) connecting coursework directly to practice
in more extensive practicum settings (Darling-Hammond, 2006, 2010;
Darling-Hammond et al., 2005). However, these efforts have not halted concerns about the quality of teacher education programs and their graduates.
Indeed, several other alternatives have floated to the top of the primeval soup
(Kingdon, 1995), and current circumstances suggest that several of the solutions will be put in place, indicating that there will be multiple mechanisms
of accountability.
National Council on Teacher Quality (NCTQ) and U.S. News and World
Report. The NCTQ announced in 2011 that it would conduct a comprehensive review of teacher preparation programs across the nation. The goal of the
evaluation and the public report is twofold: (a) to identify programs that are
doing a good job of preparing teachers, highlight them, and holding them up
as models for other programs to emulate, and (b) to identify programs in serious need of improvement. NCTQ contended that publishing the findings and
Downloaded from epx.sagepub.com at NORTH CAROLINA STATE UNIV on March 16, 2015
Lewis and Young
203
rankings in U.S. News and World Report ensures that preparation programs
will take note and that the results will influence the teacher preparation and
teacher markets, with school districts looking to hire teachers from more
highly rated institutions and students choosing to enroll in higher-ranked
preparation programs.
Alarmed by what they deemed to be a methodology unsubstantiated by
research, many colleges of education were apprehensive about the evaluation.
AACTE, for example, claimed that the NCTQ’s evaluation “utilized methodologies that do not meet the standard of basic scientific research”. . . including
“assess[ing] course syllabi and handbooks against ‘standards’—that are neither research based nor representative of any established consensus—as a
means of evaluating teacher preparation programs” (AACTE, 2012). Though
many colleges initially refused to offer documents for the NCTQ review,
NCTQ moved ahead with its review and issued public records requests to
obtain documents from public institutions that refused to voluntarily participate (Sawchuck, 2011; Wiseman, 2012).
Value-added assessment. The NCTQ evaluation is not the only teacher
education accountability initiative to contribute to the heated debate in the
teacher education community. There are volumes of reports and articles
highlighting the benefits and limitations of value-added modeling (VAM) to
assess teachers and more recently to teacher education programs (see for
example, Journal of Teacher Education Special Issue November/December
2012). Teacher education programs point out that linking teacher preparation to student outcomes is a complex task because (a) a plethora of student
and school variables that contribute to student achievement may not be adequately included in VAM, (b) state-administered tests may not be appropriate measures for measuring the contribution of teachers and teacher
education programs, and (c) teacher preparation is a multifaceted enterprise
(e.g., recruitment, subject matter knowledge, pedagogy, and clinical experiences) and understanding the influence of any of these activities in isolation
or in aggregate on study achievement is difficult to study. Despite the concerns of teacher preparation programs, a few states have initiated efforts to
use VAM to assess teacher preparation programs. Using a longitudinal database that linked teacher programs and their graduates’ students’ standardized
test scores, Louisiana was the first state to implement a comprehensive system for evaluating teacher preparation programs. Arkansas, Florida, Louisiana, North Carolina, and South Carolina are sharing teacher performance
data with their respective teacher preparation programs and Tennessee published the VAM data for the teacher education programs (Data Quality Campaign, 2011). In collaboration with the Network for Excellence in Teaching,
Downloaded from epx.sagepub.com at NORTH CAROLINA STATE UNIV on March 16, 2015
204
Educational Policy 27(2)
teacher preparation programs in Minnesota, North Dakota, and South Dakota
are using educational achievement data to improve their programs. It is
likely that increasingly more states, with considerable encouragement from
the federal government (e.g., RttT), will develop data systems linking student achievement and growth data to teachers and to teacher preparation
programs. One informant explained the drift toward VAM for teacher education preparation in this way:
This is the data we have always wanted because it is outcome data; it
is about effectiveness, student learning. So the country is building this
capacity. States haven’t fully yet used that capacity for accountability,
but in the case of Louisiana, they are moving that way definitely. And
the federal government is also asking states to provide that information
so that they can make choices about where federal resources go for
teacher preparation.
Concerns about linking sanctions with VAM results were pervasive. Groups
representing schools of education at predominantly minority-serving institutions, for instance, believe that using VAM for program accountability would
likely negatively affect their programs, prevent their students from receiving
financial aid through the TEACH grant program, and ultimately lead to a less
diverse teaching force. Nevertheless, the teacher education policy community
understands that the momentum behind VAM cannot be halted, and as such has
shifted from attempting to impede VAM by highlighting its limitations to
encouraging its use as one of multiple measures of the effectiveness of teacher
preparation programs. As one policy insider shared with us,
I don’t think value-added data will be the sole method used; I think there
will be other metrics as well: retention, principal and district satisfaction,
licensure pass rates. . . . There is going to be a definite limit on how much
information we will be able to gather about teacher preparation programs
using value-added methods. It is still going to require that states actually
observe in some fashion what is happening in teacher preparation programs and make decisions about accountability.
Another informant suggested that VAM should be part of a balanced
approach that considers inputs, processes, and outcomes. Even the Obama
Administration’s Secretary of Education Arne Duncan has consistently
articulated the goal of having teacher preparation programs “held to a clear
standard of quality that includes but is not limited to their record of preparing
Downloaded from epx.sagepub.com at NORTH CAROLINA STATE UNIV on March 16, 2015
Lewis and Young
205
and placing teachers who deliver results for P-12 students” (U.S. Department
of Education, 2011, p. 2). The Obama administration’s efforts to support
VAM for teacher education programs has received support by some individuals and groups, including Chiefs of Change, Teach for America (TFA),
NCTQ, and Dean Deborah Lowenberg Ball (School of Education, University
of Michigan; Ball, 2011).
Council for the Accreditation of Educator Preparation (CAEP). The unification
of the National Council for Accreditation of Teacher Education (NCATE) and
the Teacher Education Accreditation Council (TEAC) into the new Council
for the Accreditation of Educator Preparation (CAEP) has the potential of
greatly influencing teacher education policy in the coming years (Wiseman,
2012). The merger grew out of a desire for a single accreditor of educator
preparation programs that could speak to the quality of programs across the
nation. CAEP will emphasize many of the teacher preparation program
design principles that NCATE has championed for the past several years, and
most notably, expanding the clinical foundation of the nation’s teacher education programs. A CAEP Commission on Standards and Performance Reporting has been charged with the responsibilities of developing standards and
accompanying evidence for teacher preparation programs and developing
recommendations for greater public accountability for programs. On the
whole, CAEP’s efforts focus on “self-policing” in an effort to compel programs to better prepare teachers (Levine, as cited in Basu, 2012)
edTPA. The edTPA, formerly known as the Teacher Performance Assessment, is an assessment tool for teacher candidates developed from a partnership between the Stanford Center for Assessment, Learning, and Equity
(SCALE) and AACTE. Developers allege that the new assessment will provide teacher preparation programs with a multiple-measure assessment
aligned to the Common Core Standards and InTASC Standards, to help assess
teacher candidates’ mastery of essential instructional capacities. The assessment is subject area specific and is intended to be used for teacher incensing
and to support accreditation efforts. SCALE has partnered with Pearson to
provide the assessment to preparation programs.
The edTPA has the endorsement of AACTE and the Teacher Performance
Assessment Consortium (TPAC), which is comprised of 24 states, the District
of Columbia, and approximately 160 teacher preparation programs. However,
the validity and utility of the edTPA are being questioned by some in the
policy community, and as one informant explained,
We have not seen any correlation between performance on the edTPA
and student achievement. You want to have teachers who perform well
Downloaded from epx.sagepub.com at NORTH CAROLINA STATE UNIV on March 16, 2015
206
Educational Policy 27(2)
on the Ed-TPA, they are also teachers who you could show later down
the road have by and large greater gains for students. . . . We haven’t
seen exactly how various states are going to set cut scores for this
assessment. . . . Like any other kind of assessment, it ultimately
depends on what is defined as passing. Just like any other licensure
test, those are decisions left to states, but there is certainly the question
of what do various cut scores mean in terms of relationship to student
achievement? . . . If on a four-point scale you need a 1 on the edTPA,
and 99% of teachers who go through teacher preparation in a state get
a 1, then you say why are we imposing this assessment if we are going
to set it at such a point that everyone passes anyway?
Alternative pathways. Proponents of alternative routes to teaching argue
that these programs benefit teacher quality and student learning by deregulating teacher education; allowing the free market to attract, train, and place
teachers; and expanding cultural, racial, and professional diversity of the
American teaching force (Lahann & Reagan, 2011). The quality of such alternative programs has been loudly criticized by advocates of traditional teacher
preparation programs, but research indicates that the quality of both alternative pathways and TPPs and the quality and/or effectiveness of the teachers
these programs produce vary considerably (Huang, Yi, & Haycock, 2002;
Kaplan & Owings, 2003; Zeichner & Conklin, 2005). And it appears that the
variation in the quality of teachers produced by traditional university-based
programs, at least in part, has been responsible for the growth of alternative
teaching pathways (Sykes, Bird, & Kennedy, 2010).
A few notable national alternative pathways to teaching include Transition
to Teaching, Troops-to-Teachers, and The New Teacher Project (TNTP).
Indisputably, Teach for America (TFA) has been the most visible, and some
would argue most successful, national program offering an alternative route
to teaching. To go along with its popularity, however, TFA has also been one
of the most criticized alternative pathways to teaching. An often-leveled criticism of TFA has been that it has exacerbated the problem of placing the least
experienced and least trained teachers in schools that serve predominantly
economically disadvantaged students (Darling-Hammond, 2010; Labaree,
2010). In addition, TFA critics have charged that the program sets up a contrast between TFA corps (TFA Corps Profile, 2009) members and traditional
teachers, undermining the standing of traditional teachers. As Labaree
explains, “If coming from an elite college and passing through a highly selective admissions process is what it takes to be a good teacher—which is the
message presented loud and clear by TFA—then this leaves the other teachers,
Downloaded from epx.sagepub.com at NORTH CAROLINA STATE UNIV on March 16, 2015
Lewis and Young
207
who constitute the large majority of professionals in American classrooms,
looking second-rate” (p. 52).
Nonetheless, each year TFA continues to break records for applications,
and in some high-needs urban schools, TFA corps members constitute either
a majority or a sizeable minority of the teaching staff. In addition, alternative
pathways are not exempt from calls for accountability. For example, the
strengthened accountability provisions of the proposed Educator Preparation
Reform Act would apply to both TPPs and alternative routes to teacher licensure. Moreover, their inclusion in the discussion indicates that alternative
pathways are now a mainstay to the recruitment, training, and certification of
teachers in the United States.
The Educator Preparation Reform Act. In September 2012, Senator Jack
Reed (Democrat, Rhode Island) and Rep. Mike Honda (Democrat, California) sponsored a bill titled The Educator Preparation Reform Act. If passed,
the bill would make relatively significant changes in how the federal government supports, monitors, and distributes resources for teacher preparation
programs and alternative pathways. First, the bill would require that both
higher education–based and non–higher-education-based preparation programs submit report cards to the public reporting on program features including admissions standards; candidate selectivity—including candidate grade
point averages and scores on standardized assessments; clinical preparation
requirements; and outcomes measures, including program graduates’ placement, retention as teachers, and their teaching performance.
The bill would make revisions to the current Teacher Quality Partnership
(TQP) grants program of Title II of the HEA. TQP was established for the purposes of improving student achievement; improving the preparation of prospective teachers and professional development for in-service teachers; raising
standards of accountability for teacher preparation programs; and recruiting a
more diverse and highly qualified pool of candidates into the teaching profession. To accomplish these goals, the program incentivizes the development of
partnerships between higher education institutions and high-needs local school
districts and early childhood education programs. These partnerships have the
goal of creating model teacher preparation programs at the undergraduate level,
and/or model teaching residency programs for promising teacher candidates
without teaching experience. The proposed bill will would amend the program
to (a) require that funded partnerships be used for reforming undergraduate
teacher preparation programs, establishing teacher and/or principal residency
programs, or a combination of the two, and (b) to allow grant funds to be used
to support and improve programs for training other educators, including librarians, literacy specialists, and school counselors.
Downloaded from epx.sagepub.com at NORTH CAROLINA STATE UNIV on March 16, 2015
208
Educational Policy 27(2)
The act would significantly strengthen the current requirement that states
(a) identify and report low-performing preparation programs, (b) provide
technical assistance to those programs, and (c) report programs that have lost
state approval. It would revise the criteria for eligibility for the Teacher
Education Assistance for College and Higher Education (TEACH) grant program by targeting funding specifically to students in the latter half of their
undergraduate preparation programs and students in graduate programs. The
bill would also restrict eligibility for students in programs deemed “low-performing” or “at-risk.”
The act is supported by AACTE and includes many of AACTE’s recommendations for reauthorization of Elementary and Secondary Education Act
(ESEA) and HEA, including revamping the TQP program, streamlining the
accountability provisions of Title II with a focus on program outcomes, and
the federal government enforcing Title II provisions around the identification
and closure of low-performing preparation programs. The act has received a
strong endorsement from the Higher Education Task Force on Teacher
Preparation, a consortium of 11 higher education organizations.
Interestingly, in the problem stream, proponents of TPP contended that
criticism was largely, as an informant described it, “unfair and unfounded.”
Yet in the policy stream proponents of were actively engaged in developing
policies to address this very critique. At first glance this behavior appears to
reflect an “If you can’t beat them, then join them” tactic. However, it could
also represent an attempt to engage the agenda setting and alternative specification processes on multiple fronts. By being involved in the development of
solutions that are likely to gain serious attention, entities threatened by reform
can potentially minimize its damaging impact by diluting or eliminating undesirable aspects of the proposed policy before adoption. In addition, responding
to the criticism, proponents of TPP seemed to stand united in the problem
stream but were divided in their backing of the different initiatives in the policy stream. This division can either undermine the acceptance of certain policies or lead to the implementation of multiple accountability policies.
Political Stream
Organized political forces: Professionalization versus deregulation and alternative pathways. The movement to further professionalize teaching has been led
largely by Linda Darling-Hammond, other scholars, and the NCTAF and furthered through the efforts of the National Council for the Accreditation of
Teacher Education (NCATE), the NBPTS, and the Interstate New Teacher
Assessment and Support Consortium (INTASC). Largely, as described in the
Downloaded from epx.sagepub.com at NORTH CAROLINA STATE UNIV on March 16, 2015
Lewis and Young
209
policy stream, their efforts focus on a wide range of reforms, such as standardization and extensive clinical preparation, that center not only on improving the effectiveness of TPPs but also on reducing the wide variability in
quality of programs.
In the 1980s alternative pathways to teaching were developed to meet
shortages and replace emergency licensure (NEA, n.d.). However, supported
by conservative political groups and several foundations, including the
Thomas B. Fordham Foundation, the Heritage Foundation, the Pioneer
Institute, and the Manhattan Institute, alternative pathways have become a
permanent fixture in teacher preparation. The emergence and proliferation of
alternative teacher preparation and certification programs has played a major
role in policy conversations around teacher education and credentialing.
NCLB act’s encouragement of such programs served to heighten their visibility and stimulate their growth in the 2000s (Darling-Hammond, 2010).
Currently, all 50 states and the District of Columbia provide some alternative
route to teaching (Lahann & Reagan, 2011).
Significant to the professionalization versus deregulation political debate,
more than a few TFA alumni now serve as high-level educational administrators and educational reform leaders. Some of these alumni include John
White, Louisiana State superintendent of education; Kevin Huffman,
Tennessee commissioner of education; Chris Barbic, superintendent for
Tennessee’s Achievement School District; Michelle Rhee, former chancellor
of the District of Columbia Public Schools, and founder and CEO of
StudentsFirst; and Kaya Henderson, current chancellor of the District of
Columbia Public Schools.
As these organized political forces continue to advocate for their preferred
models for teacher preparation, they face increasing accountability requirements. The results from the accountability debate may either support or
undermine the claims of effectiveness that advocates of these conflicting
models proclaim.
Events within the government: Obama administration. U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan has offered a rather pointed critique of the state of teacher
preparation programs in the United States. Secretary Duncan has said of
some programs:
They operate partially blindfolded, without access to data that tells
them how effective their graduates are in elementary and secondary
school classrooms after they leave their teacher preparation programs.
Too many are not attracting top students, and too many states are not
setting a high bar for entry into the profession. . . . And too few teacher
Downloaded from epx.sagepub.com at NORTH CAROLINA STATE UNIV on March 16, 2015
210
Educational Policy 27(2)
preparation programs offer the type of rigorous, clinical experience
that prepares future teachers for the realities of today’s diverse classrooms. (U.S. Department of Education, 2011, p. 1)
In response to this assessment, under the Obama administration’s education reform agenda includes investing heavily in teacher preparation and training through (a) service scholarships for preparing teaching candidates commit
to teach in high-needs fields and communities, (b) improving the effectiveness
of teacher preparation programs, (c) providing high-quality alternative pathways for aspiring teachers, and (d) increased and improved professional
development and collaboration. The RttT grant competitions have embodied
these principles. In an effort to expand high-quality alternative pathways into
the teaching profession, RttT awarded points to states with legal or regulatory
provisions allowing alternative routes to teacher certification; that committed
to building comprehensive education data systems, tying teachers’ evaluation
to their students’ achievement data; that committed to holding schools and
school staff accountable for student achievement; and that had developed or
were developing a process for monitoring, evaluating, and identifying areas of
teacher shortage and preparing teachers to fill vacancies in those areas. One
study participant characterized the Obama administration’s philosophy specifically around alternative teacher pathways in the following way:
A very prominent corporate reform ideology has been embraced by the
Obama administration; with tenets of that ideology being accountability, transparency, investing in alternatives. The administration has
brought those tenets to education; investment in alternatives will generate competition, which will improve the public schools. The parallel
in teacher preparation is to invest in alternate routes: Teach for
America, New Leaders for New Schools, etc.
National mood. There was no indication that this new era of accountability
for teacher preparation programs will be short-lived. Instead, it is widely recognized that higher standards of accountability for programs will be a part of
the new normal. In evaluating how accountability for preparation programs
came to this point, one study informant explained that proaccountability sentiment applied pressure to teacher education from two frontiers: K-12 and
higher education, remarking,
There has been a bit of a vacuum, and higher education has had such a
vacuum on teacher education. Teacher education has been more
Downloaded from epx.sagepub.com at NORTH CAROLINA STATE UNIV on March 16, 2015
Lewis and Young
211
aligned with the traditions of the academy than with K-12 education.
As pressure has become more prominent on K-12, it has spilled over
onto teacher education. Transparency and accountability have been
insufficient. Like the rest of higher education, the goals with teacher
education were graduation and degree attainment, with less attention to
the skill-level and success of the teacher in the classroom, without
teacher education programs being responsible for teachers’ success.
Well, the world has changed and calls for accountability are higher
than they have ever been.
Organized political forces and national mood were insufficient to place
teacher education policy on the governmental agenda. The Obama administration was the primary mechanism for making teacher education prominent on
the federal agenda. By providing incentives in a time of fiscal distress to states
(RttT), the Obama Administration was able to encourage states to conform to
the administrations’ preferences for education. This initiated a chain reaction
that is still unfolding. The administration’s advocacy of teacher accountability
based on student achievement, the development of more sophisticated data systems, and the expansion of alternative pathways to licensure, all helped to set
in motion the next set of initiatives currently being proposed that focus on
teacher preparation accountability policy. A political benefit to the Obama
administration has been that accountability for teacher preparation is supported
by both political parties, and the organized political forces are not voicing
strong opposition to being held accountable per se; rather the conversation centers on which accountability policies are most appropriate.
Discussion and Conclusions
Education policy rarely if ever results from the rational deliberation of lawmakers, informed by high-quality educational research. Instead, policy formation is messy and is often driven by competing agendas supported by
opposing casts of policy actors. In some cases there is a winning side, but
more often than not, policies that result come from compromise. Thus,
understanding the politics of education is essential to understanding the
origins and development of education policies that shape learning for children in schools across the country. Using Kingdon’s (1995) framework to
describe how teacher education accountability has come to be prominently
featured on the federal agenda, we found that teacher education accountability achieved agenda status largely because of multiple mechanisms at
play in the political stream. Public and government sentiment favored public
Downloaded from epx.sagepub.com at NORTH CAROLINA STATE UNIV on March 16, 2015
212
Educational Policy 27(2)
accountability; it had support from both political parties and organized
political forces. Although there are divergent opinions about the effectiveness of traditional and alternative models, no one appears to providing
strong opposition to some form of accountability. In fact, in the policy
stream many groups are helping to shape accountability policies. More
important, the Obama administration has been able to allocate fiscal
resources to support teacher education accountability policy. The opening of
a policy window in the political stream is also indicative of federal involvement in teacher education that is increasing in frequency and scope.
One focus of this study was to examine the extent to which the factors that
Cochran-Smith and Fries (2001) highlighted a decade ago and Arnold et al.
(1977) pointed out more than 35 years ago are transpiring in contemporary
times. We found that the Cochran-Smith’s professionalization–deregulation
debate played an important role in drawing attention to the variability in quality of TPPs, which was used as an indicator in the problem stream to advocate
for accountability policy. In the future the outcomes of the accountability policies that may be implemented could provide data that could extend the debate
if the results prove one approach to be more effective than the other or curtail
the debate if they are viewed as similar in quality. Time will tell. We found
Arnold et al.’s remarks to be applicable to today: “Public demands for accountability, combined with the awakened interests of teachers and the press upon
school systems and colleges for better utilization of resources,” will lead to the
improvement of the education of teachers. What they did not forecast was the
extensive role the federal government, notably the executive branch, would
play in driving teacher education accountability policies.
This article represents an overview of the current policy landscape. We
highlight how teacher education accountability policy has achieved agenda
status and what policies are currently being considered. What policies will be
implemented and the consequences of those policies for both traditional and
alternative programs have yet to be decided. What is certain, however, is that
the professional and technical issues of teacher education are in the political
arena and this can be “the best of times or the worst of times for teacher education” (Darling-Hammond, 2010).
Authors’ Note
Both authors contributed equally to this article.
Declaration of Conflicting Interests
The authors declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research,
authorship, and/or publication of this article.
Downloaded from epx.sagepub.com at NORTH CAROLINA STATE UNIV on March 16, 2015
Lewis and Young
213
Funding
The authors received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
References
Aaronson, D., Barrow, L., & Sander, W. (2007). Teachers and student achievement
in the Chicago public high schools. Journal of Labor Economics, 25(1), 95-135.
American Association of Colleges for Teacher Education. (2012). AACTE members
respond to NCTQ “research” efforts. Retrieved from http://aacte.org/TraditionalMedia/Resources/aacte-members-respond-to-nctq-qresearchq-efforts.html
Arnold, D. S., Denemark, G., Nelli, E. R., Robinson, A., & Sagan, E. L. (1977). Quality control in teacher education. Washington, DC: AACTE and ERIC Clearing
House on Teacher Education.
Ball, D. L. (2011). Why isn’t University of Michigan boycotting the NCTQ-U.S.
News & World Report joint survey of teacher education programs? Retrieved
from http://www.edweek.org/media/dball_why%20we%20will%20not%20boycott%20nctq.pdf
Ballou, D., & Podgursky, M. (2000). Reforming teacher preparation and licensing:
What is the evidence? Teachers College Record, 102(1), 5-27.
Ballou, D., Sanders, W., & Wright, P. (2004). Controlling for student background
in value-added assessment of teachers. Journal of Educational and Behavioral
Statistics, 29(1), 37-65.
Basu, K. (2012, February). Raising the bar. Inside the Higher Education. Retrieved
from http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2012/02/28/new-approach-gaugingquality-teacher-education-programs#ixzz2DHmSnUEF
Boyd, D., Grossman, P., Lankford, H., Loeb, S., & Wyckoff, J. (2006). How changes
in entry requirements alter the teacher workforce and affect student achievement.
Education Finance and Policy, 1, 178-216.
Boyd, D., Grossman, P., Lankford, H., Loeb, S., & Wyckoff, J. (2008). Teacher preparation and student achievement (NBER Working Paper No. W1414). Cambridge,
MA: National Bureau of Economic Research. Retrieved from http://www.nber.
org/papers/w14314.pdf
Brown, C. P. (2007). Examining the streams of a retention policy to understand the
politics of high-stakes reform. Education Policy Analysis Archives, 15(9), 1-28.
Chicago Public Schools. (2007). SES tutoring programs: An evaluation of year 3 in
the Chicago public schools. Chicago, IL: Author. Retrieved from http://sesiq2.
wceruw.org/documents/chicago_ses.pdf
Clotfelter, C., Ladd, H. F., & Vigdor, J. L. (2007). How and why do teacher credentials
matter for student achievement? Economics of Education Review, 26, 673-682.
Downloaded from epx.sagepub.com at NORTH CAROLINA STATE UNIV on March 16, 2015
214
Educational Policy 27(2)
Cochran-Smith, M. (2005). The politics of teacher education and the curse of complexity. Journal of Teacher Education, 56, 181-185.
Cochran-Smith, M., & Fries, M. K. (2001). Sticks, stones, and ideology: The discourse of reform in teacher education. Educational Researcher, 30(8), 3-15.
Cochran-Smith, M., & Powers, C. (2010). New directions for teacher preparation.
Educational Leadership, 67(8), 6-13.
Cohen, M. D., March, J. G., & Olsen, J. P. (1972). A garbage can model of organizational choice. Administrative Science Quarterly, 17(1), 1-25.
Cohen-Vogel, L. (2005). Federal role in teacher quality: “Redefinition” or policy
alignment. Educational Policy, 19, 18-43.
Coleman, J. S., Campbell, E., Hobson, C. J., McPartland, J., Mood, A. M.,
Weinfeld, F. D., & York, R. L. (1966). Equality of educational opportunity. Washington, DC: U.S. Department of Health, Education & Welfare. Office of Education.
Darling-Hammond, L. (1999). Teacher quality and student achievement: A review
of state policy evidence. Washington, DC: Center for the Study of Teaching and
Policy, University of Washington.
Darling-Hammond, L. (2006). Powerful teacher education: Lessons from exemplary
programs. San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass.
Darling-Hammond, L. (2010). Teacher education and the American future. Journal of
Teacher Education, 61, 35-47.
Darling-Hammond, L., Holtzman, D. J., Gatlin, S. J., & Helig, J. V. (2005). Does
teacher preparation matter? Evidence about teacher certification, Teacher for
America, and teacher effectiveness. Education Policy Analysis Archives, 13(42).
Retrieved from http://epaa.asu.edu/ojs/article/view/147
Duckworth, A. L., Quinn, P. D., & Seligman, M. E. P. (2009). Positive predictors of
teacher effectiveness. The Journal of Positive Psychology, 4, 540-547.
Earley, P. M. (2000). Finding the culprit: Federal policy and teacher education. Educational Policy, 14, 25-39.
Fenstermacher, G. D. (2002). Reconsidering the teacher education reform debate: A
commentary on Cochran-Smith and Fries. Educational Researcher, 31(6), 20-22.
Ginsberg, M. B., & Lindsay, B. (1995). Conceptualizing the political dimension in
teacher education. In M. B. Ginsberg & B. Lindsay (Eds.), The political dimension in teacher education: Comparative perspectives on policy formation, socialization and society (pp. 3-19). Washington, DC: Falmer.
Hanushek, E. A., Kain, J. F., & Rivkin, S. G. (1998). Teachers, schools, and academic
achievement (NBER Working Paper No. 6691). Retrieved from http://www.nber.
org/papers/w6691
Huang, S., Yi, Y., & Haycock, K. (2002). Interpret with caution: The first state Title II
reports on the quality of teacher preparation. Washington, DC: Education Trust.
Retrieved from http://www.edtrust.org/print/184
Downloaded from epx.sagepub.com at NORTH CAROLINA STATE UNIV on March 16, 2015
Lewis and Young
215
Jencks, C., Smith, M., Acland, H., & Bane, M. (1972). Inequality: A reassessment of
the effect of family and schooling in America. New York, NY: Basic Books.
Kane, T. J., Rockoff, J. E., & Staiger, D. O. (2008). What does certification tell us
about teacher effectiveness? Evidence from New York City. Economics of Education Review, 27, 615-631.
Kaplan, L. S., & Owings, W. A. (2003). No Child Left Behind: The politics of teacher
quality. Phi Delta Kappan, 84, 687-692.
Kingdon, J. W. (1984). Agendas, alternatives, and public policies. Boston, MA:
Little, Brown & Co.
Kingdon, J. W. (1995). Agendas, alternatives, and public policies (2nd ed.). New
York, NY: Addison-Wesley.
Labaree, D. (2010). Teach for America and teacher ed: Heads they win, tails we lose.
Journal of Teacher Education, 61, 48-55.
Lahann, R., & Reagan, E. M. (2011). Teach for America and the politics of progressive neoliberalism. Teacher Education Quarterly, 38(1), 7-27.
Lieberman, J. M. (2002). Three streams and four policy entrepreneurs converge: A
policy window opens. Education and Urban Society, 34, 438-450.
McDonnelll, L. M., & Elmore, R. F. (1987). Getting the job done: Alternative policy
instruments. Educational Evaluation and Policy Analysis, 9, 133-152.
McGuinn, P. (2006). No Child Left Behind and the transformation of federal education policy, 1965-2005. Lawrence: University Press of Kansas.
McGuinn, P. (2012). Stimulating reform: Race to the top, competitive grants, and the
Obama education agenda. Educational Policy, 26, 136-159.
McLendon, M. K. (2003). Setting the governmental agenda for state decentralization
of higher education. The Journal of Higher Education, 74, 479-515.
Miles, M. B., & Huberman, A. M. (1994). Qualitative data analysis: An expanded
sourcebook (2nd ed.). Beverly Hills, CA: SAGE.
National Commission on Excellence in Education. (1983). A nation at risk: The imperative for educational reform. Washington, DC: U.S. Department of Education.
National Commission on Teaching and America’s Future. (1996). What matters most:
Teaching for America’s future. New York, NY: Author. Retrieved from http://
nctaf.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/01/WhatMattersMost.pdf
Paige, R. (2002). Meeting the highly qualified teachers challenge: The secretary’s first
annual report on teacher quality. Washington, DC: U.S. Department of Education.
Retrieved from http://www2.ed.gov/about/reports/annual/teachprep/2003title-iireport.pdf
Podgursky, M. (2005a). Teacher licensing in U.S. public schools: The case for simplicity and flexibility. Peabody Journal of Education, 80(3), 15-43.
Podgursky, M. (2005b). Teaching is not medicine. Academic Questions, 18(1), 69-78.
Rossi, P. H., Lipsey, M. W., & Freeman, H. E. (2004). Evaluation: A systematic
approach (7th ed.). Thousand Oaks, CA: SAGE.
Downloaded from epx.sagepub.com at NORTH CAROLINA STATE UNIV on March 16, 2015
216
Educational Policy 27(2)
Sawchuck, S. (2011). Education schools refuse to take part in U.S. News-NCTQ
Review. Education Week, 30(29), 12-13.
Shear, M. D., & Anderson, N. (2009, July 23). President Obama discusses new “race
to the top” program. The Washington Post. Retrieved from http://math.coe.uga.
edu/olive/EMAT6990Sp10/Obama_Interview_on_Race_to_the%20Top.pdf
Stout, K. E., & Stevens, B. (2000). The case of the failed diversity rule: A multiple
streams analysis. Educational Evaluation and Policy Analysis, 22, 341-355.
Sykes, G., Bird, T., & Kennedy, M. (2010). Teacher education: Its problems and some
prospects. Journal of Teacher Education, 61, 464-476.
TFA Corps profile. (2009). Retrieved from http://www.teachforamerica.org/assets/
documents/corps.profile.2009.pdf
Walsh, K. (2001). Teacher certification reconsidered: Stumbling for quality. Baltimore, MD: The Abell Foundation. Retrieved from http://www.nctq.org/p/publications/docs/ed_cert_1101_20071129024241.pdf
U.S. Department of Education. (2011). Our future, our teachers: The Obama administration’s plan for teacher education reform and improvement. Retrieved from
http://www.ed.gov/sites/default/files/our-future-our-teachers.pdf
Weiner, L. (2000). Research in the 90s: Implications for urban teacher preparation.
Review of Educational Research, 70, 369-406.
Wiseman, D. L. (2012).The intersection of policy, reform, and teacher education.
Journal of Teacher Education, 63, 87-91.
Young, T. V., Shepley, T. V., & Song, M. (2010). Understanding agenda setting in
state educational policy: An application of Kingdon’s multiple streams model
to the formation of state reading policy. Education Policy Analysis Archives,
18(15), 1-23.
Zeichner, K. M., & Conklin, H. G. (2005). Teacher education programs. In
M. Cochran-Smith & K. M. Zeichner (Eds.), Studying teacher education: The
report of the AERA Panel on Research and Teacher Education (pp. 645-735).
Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum.
Author Biographies
Wayne D. Lewis is an assistant professor in the Department of Educational
Leadership Studies at the University of Kentucky. He is codirector of the Education
Policy and Law Lab and coeditor of the Kentucky Journal of Higher Education Policy
and Practice. His research focuses on education policy, school–community collaboration, and social justice issues in education.
Tamara V. Young is associate professor in the Department of Leadership, Policy, and
Adult and Higher Education at North Carolina State University. Her research focuses
on the politics of education and implementation evaluation of education programs
and policies.
Downloaded from epx.sagepub.com at NORTH CAROLINA STATE UNIV on March 16, 2015