Panel Examines Teacher Training

National effort aims to build blueprint for improvements.

Washington

A national panel of scholars met here last week to begin work on a mammoth task: synthesizing research on all the ways in which teachers are prepared across the United States and advising policymakers on how to improve the process.

The $1.5 million study, which members of Congress quietly commissioned last year as part of an appropriations bill, will take 2½ years to complete. It’s being overseen by the National Research Council, the research arm of the National Academies, a group created by Congress in 1863 to advise the federal government on scientific matters.

The project unfolds at a time when teacher education is rising in importance—and in controversy—on the national education agenda. The No Child Left Behind Act, the nearly 4-year-old federal law that set in motion President Bush’s signature education program, calls for staffing every classroom with a “highly qualified” teacher by this school year or next. Experts and policymakers bitterly disagree over...