Colleges Play Catch-Up With HEA

Even while Obama administration officials have outlined plans to revamp measures of teacher-preparation quality, states and colleges of education are busy catching up to the existing requirements added less than three years ago.

Named for the section of the Higher Education Act dealing with teacher education programs, the Title II data collection now under way is the first to be based on changes instituted in the federal law’s 2008 reauthorization.

That rewrite expanded reporting requirements first put into place in 1998. In general, both preparation programs and states produce "report cards" for the public based on the data, along with generating information for an annual report put out by the...