Panel recommends teacher training be ‘turned upside down’

On Board Online • November 22, 2010

By Marc Humbert
Senior Writer

A blue-ribbon national panel on teacher training co-chaired by Nancy Zimpher, chancellor of the State University of New York, says the current system must be “turned upside down.”

Under the panel’s recommendations, which eight states including New York have already agreed to implement, prospective teachers will be spending much more time in elementary and secondary school classrooms and less time with their college professors.

The recommendations dovetail with an agenda that Zimpher had already been pushing for a number of years, calling for teacher training to be more like that provided by medical schools training doctors.

“Teaching, like medicine, is a profession of practice,” she said as the blue ribbon panel created by the National Council for Accreditation of Teacher Education released its report on Nov. 16.

“Making clinical preparation the centerpiece of teacher education will transform the way we prepare teachers,” Zimpher added.

The panel said that prospective teachers not only should be spending more time practicing teaching in front of real students, but should begin such training much sooner.

“For this transformation to take place, school districts and teacher education programs will need to work together and take joint responsibility for teacher preparation programs, and states must develop new policy frameworks and incentives for clinically based programs to flourish,” said Dwight Jones, the Colorado commissioner of education who co-chaired the panel with Zimpher.

While the panel’s recommendations are voluntary, New York along with California, Colorado, Louisiana, Maryland, Ohio, Oregon and Tennessee have already agreed to implement them.

Zimpher noted that SUNY alone trains more teachers each year, almost 5,000, than any other institution in the state.