A Tale of Two Futures: A Fable of Teacher Education in the United States, 2025; Teacher Education in 2010 Stands at a Pivotal Moment. Choices Being Made Today Could Dramatically Reform Teacher Education over the Next 15 Years

As teacher educators in 2025, we know that the years after 2010 were a time of significant change for teacher education. Indeed, the changes that have occurred in the past 15 years are more profound than those that occurred in the previous 50. U.S. teacher education had not seen such change since the years following World War II. At the end of World War II, most U.S. teachers were still prepared in state teachers' colleges, which previously had been normal schools. Few states required a baccalaureate degree as long as an aspiring teacher had completed a program at such an institution and passed the exams. By 1960, however, every state required a bachelor's degree to teach in elementary and secondary schools. Independent teachers' colleges often became regional campuses of state universities. Almost universally, teacher education was conducted in schools or departments of education in larger, multipurpose universities, though the education faculty often complained of second-class status in those institutions. Teacher exams had generally been replaced by a system of state program approval--often augmented by independent accreditation--in which the university and the state agreed on a curriculum for future teachers and the state then automatically licensed the graduates. By 1960, the post-war changes were firmly established. For the next 50 years, a state-approved teacher preparation program was, with rare exceptions, the only route to teaching. Though there were always critics--very sharp critics in the 1950s and 1980s--teacher education programs in universities exhibited amazing stability. Following a series of reports in the 1980s, teacher education began to change. In 2002, federal law mandated a highly qualified teacher in every classroom. Although the law allowed each state to define those qualifications, school districts found it more difficult to hire people who had no qualifications for the classes they were to teach. Although some university programs were significantly redesigned during this period, many remained as they had for decades. These university programs still provided most of the nation's teachers. However, alternative routes to teaching were beginning to appear. Teach for America was the most prominent of the independent organizations that provided short-term teacher preparation that didn't involve universities. Several of the nation's largest school districts created their own teaching fellows programs--sometimes in cooperation with a local university, but often not. And universities themselves began to create alternative programs that could be completed more quickly than the traditional ones. School superintendents, soon joined by federal and state policy makers and private funders, moved from criticizing university-based programs to simply bypassing them. By 2010, these alternative programs produced about 10% of the nation's new teachers and up to 20% in large cities. Many of these new teachers had never taken a traditional university education course. Nevertheless, traditional university programs remained the field's dominant player, preparing the vast majority of the nation's new teachers. Still, the university programs were nervous about their standing with governments, funders, and the public. It is now hard to remember how different things were just 15 years ago in 2010. Back then, ... Tale One ... many education faculty grew increasingly angry at the public criticism of their work. These professors argued that the critiques missed the central role of university-based teacher education programs. These faculty argued that the market forces undermined not only traditional teacher preparation, but also teaching as a mature profession. For these critics, the attack on teacher education was part of a larger effort to undermine public education. Unfortunately for those who made this argument, only teacher educators and a minority of K-12 teachers were convinced. …