ATTENTION NEA AFFILIATES: New policy brief identifies weaknesses of proposed federal regulations for teacher preparation programs ahead of February 2 public comment deadline

BACKGROUND
The U.S. Department of Education has drafted proposed new teacher preparation regulations that will affect how teaching programs in states nationwide prepare prospective teachers for K-12 classrooms and even determine state and federal funding well beyond 2020.

The proposal would require states to assess and rate every teacher preparation program every year with four Performance Assessment Levels (exceptional, effective, at-risk, and low-performing), and states would be required to provide technical assistance to "low-performing" programs. Additionally, programs that do not show improvement could lose state approval, state funding, and federal student financial aid.

WHY YOU SHOULD CARE
The proposals are subject to public comments, which face a February 2, 2015, deadline - making the first few weeks of 2015 critical for teachers, educators, higher education personnel, and others to weigh in and make their voices heard.

A new Think Twice review of the Proposed 2015 Federal Teacher Preparation Regulations identifies several significant shortcomings and flaws in the proposed regulations. Kevin K. Kumashiro, Dean and Professor of the School of Education at the University of San Francisco, reviewed the proposed regulations for the Think Twice think tank review project of the National Education Policy Center (NEPC). The project is funded by the Great Lakes Center for Education Research and Practice. Dr. Kumashiro is a leading expert on educational policy, school reform, teacher preparation, and educational equity.

The official link to submit comments is https://federalregister.gov/a/2014-28218

SUMMARY AND CORE MESSAGE
Dr. Kumashiro's review studies the evidence and data to provide a critique of the proposed regulations of teacher preparation programs and finds critical deficiencies, ranging from lack of research, to inadequate stakeholder inclusion and feedback, to federal overreach into state-level affairs that could have serious fiscal implications on state-level entities already struggling to balance tight budgets.

The following are central messages from Dr. Kumashiro's review for use in communicating concerns about the proposed regulations:
• The U.S. Department of Education's proposed regulations of teacher training programs are scientifically inadequate and shaped by discredited processes, not by sound research or substantive input from educational experts.
• The regulations will likely burden institutions with costs and labor greater than what the Department of Education estimates, creating a costly unfunded mandate.
• By pegging the quality of teacher preparation programs to K-12 student outcomes such as standardized tests, the regulations unfairly and inaccurately link low student performance to an overall preparation program without accounting for wider environmental factors affecting children, including poverty, family situations, healthcare access and crime.
      o The regulations unfairly attach failure or success of a preparation program to whether young inexperienced recently graduated teachers can perform as well as teachers with years of experience.
• The proposed regulations also disincentivize teachers to work in high-needs schools; limit financial aid to students in need; and discourage under-represented groups from becoming teachers.
• Kumashiro suggests the Department "should lead the country in imagining and building a public school system, a teaching profession, and the teacher preparation programs that serve them, in ways that truly improve education and society."