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A Think Twice Review of:

A New Agenda: Research to Build a Better Teacher Preparation Program

Think Twice - Mar 28, 2017

Publisher/Think Tank - Bellwether Education Partners (BEP)

Author(s) - Ashley LiBetti Mitchel & Melissa Steel King

Bellwether Education Partners (BEP) released a report calling into question the effectiveness of teacher preparation programs in the U.S. The report proposed that improving teacher quality could be accomplished through teacher preparation program redesign. Further, it asserted that teacher preparation programs are “blindly swinging from one popular reform to the next” and decades of input- and outcome-based research have failed to improve teacher education.


Reviewer(s) - Marilyn Cochran-Smith, Stephani Burton, Molly Cummings Carney, Juan Gabriel Sánchez, and Andrew F. Miller; Boston College

Despite a reasonable assumption that teacher quality can be improved through redesigned teacher preparation programs, the reviewers find that the report includes mischaracterizations of teacher education research and omits relevant literature. In conclusion, the reviewers find that the report “represents a missed opportunity to offer guidance to [either] policymakers or institutions.”