 |
By Tom Chorneau
Thursday, October 31, 2013
Just as common national curriculum standards are transforming instruction inside the K-12 classroom, a new report from the Council of Chief State School Officers is calling for a similar refocusing of teacher preparation programs.
Strategies that states are being urged to adopt include new visions surrounding licensing that account not only for what new teachers and principals should know about the Common Core standards but also changes in pedagogy such as cross- or inter-disciplinary perspectives; teaming and collaborative problem solving; assessment literacy to define, collect and interpret data.
Members of a national task force on educator preparation also called for a move away from testing as the only means for defining competency to an actual showing of a candidates’ knowledge and skill.
The panel, led by Tom Luna, state schools chief in Idaho, also called for a tiered system of employment that offers