Alumni of teacher education programs and the principals who hired them find their preparation lacking. Integrating technology into the curriculum, using student assessments to drive practice, implementing curriculum standards, maintaining classroom order, and addressing the needs of special populations are all skills that fall short according to a survey by the Education Commission of the States and the National Center for Teacher Transformation.

Their issue paper, State Partnerships for Quality Teacher Preparation, points out that teacher education faculty are disconnected from both K-12 classrooms and arts and sciences faculty across their own institutions. They can not anticipate the needs of the 21^st century learner.

• The U.S. Department of Education’s Partnership for Reform: Changing Teacher Preparation Through The Title II HEA Partnership Programfunded 25 separate initiatives to “make teacher trainingprograms accountable for producing high-qualityteachers and providing sustained and quality pre-service field. They have consolidated key lessons learned.
• Louisiana’s Value Added Teacher Assessment Model requires all teacher preparation programs to either redesign existing or establish new programs with the goals of having all programs be nationally accredited, deliver content-specific PRAXIS tests to all candidates and align their curriculum with state and national content standards. Louisiana also established measurements of their progress through four levels, planning, implementation, impact and growth of student learning.
•  Ohio’s Teacher Quality Partnership seeks to improve teacher preparation by collecting dataon new and practicing teachers and raising the academicachievement of students in the state’s schools.
•  Alabama Governor’s Commission on Quality Teaching made seven recommendations, one of which is to build partnerships between colleges of education, and P-12 schools and districts that improve teacher preparation
•  Arkansas Educational Renewal Zones create partnerships of public school districts, education service cooperatives and public higher education institutions to improve public school performance and academic achievement. Partnerships focus on continuous improvement processes, more efficient use of resources and to access the expertise of postsecondary institutions and other education providers to support public schools.
•  The Alaska Department of Education & Early Development is establishing a new, performance-based accreditation system for teacher education programs. Surveys of principals and graduates will help to gauge preparedness and effectiveness.
•  The Boston Teacher Residency, modeled on a medical residency, is a close collaboration between Boston Public Schools and the University of Massachusetts Boston. The 13-month teacher training program starts during the summer, with courses designed by BPS.
•  The Milwaukee Partnership Academy is a partnership of six colleges of education and the Milwaukee Public Schools to assess the impact teacher education graduates have on student achievement.
• The Teacher Education and Child Care Institute (TEACH) at Anne Arundel Community College is housed within the division that provides customized training for local employers. Here, the client is the local school district, and they work with a university consortium.
• St. Petersburg College leveraged Florida’s requirements to partner with P-12 schools in an effort to continuously improve their College of Education and to respond to the needs of the P-12 schools that their graduates serve.