Teacher Education and Standards

By Ann Bradley

In the past six years, hundreds of educators representing dozens of national organizations have begun developing two sets of national standards--one set for students, the other for teachers.

Now, those two parallel movements are beginning to come together. And yet, until a conference this month at the Wingspread center in Racine, Wis., a group of professionals with arguably the biggest stake in the standards-setting movement--teacher-educators--had never formally met with representatives of both of the standards-setting efforts to discuss how standards will affect the training of tomorrow's teachers.

After all, the intensive efforts now under way to define what students should know and be able to do in various subject areas won't amount to much if teachers themselves don't know the subject matter and aren't prepared to teach it. And many of the standards-setting efforts are calling for a new kind of teaching--one that helps students learn to think the way mathematicians and historians do, rather than to...