Good afternoon. I would like to welcome each of you to the hearing today as the Subcommittee continues its focus on reauthorization of the Higher Education Act. Today, we are holding our second hearing on teacher quality.

Last October, the Subcommittee held a hearing on "Training Tomorrow’s Teachers: Ensuring a Quality Postsecondary Education" to learn about the affects of amendments made in 1998 to Title II of the Higher Education Act on the quality of teacher education programs in the United States. At that hearing, we discussed the effectiveness of the competitive grant programs authorized under Title II and examined accountability provisions for teaching preparation programs under the Act. The purpose of today’s hearing is to discuss whether teacher colleges and other teacher preparation programs are producing a competent cadre of teachers.

The caliber of teacher education programs at institutions of higher education has come under increased scrutiny over the past several years. Among other things, teacher preparation programs have been criticized for providing prospective teachers with inadequate time to learn subject matter; for teaching a superficial curriculum; and for being unduly fragmented, with courses not linked to practice teaching and with education faculty isolated from their arts and sciences faculty colleagues. In particular, there have been concerns about high rates of failure of recent teacher college graduates on initial licensing or certification exams. A recent Congressional Research Service report noted that one of the most publicly reported instances of high failure rates was in 1998 when 59 percent of prospective teachers in Massachusetts failed that State’s new certification exam. These dismal results raised questions about the quality of the preparation and training prospective teachers had received from teacher preparation programs at institutions of higher education across the State.

In June 2002, the Secretary of Education issued the first full annual report on teacher preparation as required under Title II of the Higher Education Act. The report – Meeting the Highly Qualified Teachers Challenge: The Secretary’s Annual Report on Teacher Quality – concluded that the teacher preparation system in this country has serious limitations. Not only does acceptable achievement on certification assessments differ markedly among the States, the Secretary’s report found that most States, in setting the minimum score considered to be a passing score, set those scores well below national averages. The data collected for this report suggest that schools of education and formal teacher training programs are failing to produce the types of highly qualified teachers that the No Child Left Behind Act demands.

There is widespread awareness that the subject matter knowledge and teaching skills of teachers play a central role in the success of elementary and secondary education reform. More than half of the 2.2 million teachers that America’s schools will need to hire over the next 10 years will be first-time teachers, and they will need to be well-prepared for the challenges of today’s classrooms. For these reasons, the nation’s attention has increasingly focused on the role that institutions of higher education and States play in ensuring that new teachers have the content knowledge and teaching skills they need to ensure that all students are held to higher standards.

Approximately 1,200 institutions of higher education award undergraduate degrees in elementary and secondary education. In addition to earning baccalaureate degrees in education, other undergraduates get ready to teach by participating in a teacher education program while earning a degree in an academic subject area. Still other individuals enter teaching through post-baccalaureate certificate programs or master’s programs offered by institutions of higher education. Finally, alternative routes to teaching that target, for example, individuals changing careers, may also involve higher education institutions.

Title II of the Higher Education Act includes programs and provisions intended to improve the overall quality of teacher preparation programs administered by institutions of higher education, hold these programs accountable for the quality of their graduates, and strengthen recruitment of highly qualified individuals to the teaching profession. Institutions of higher education have a great deal of responsibility in contributing to the preparation of our nation’s teachers. We are here today to learn whether provisions under Title II of the Higher Education Act are working and whether our teacher preparation programs are making the grade.

We have a distinguished panel of witnesses today. I would like to thank you for your appearance before the Subcommittee today and I look forward to your testimony and any recommendations you may have as we work to reauthorize teacher provisions of the Higher Education Act.