Nearly three years ago, in an effort to understand just how to get student teaching "right," the National Council on Teacher Quality (NCTQ) entered into a comprehensive review of the student teaching experience. For this work, the authors focused on its delivery at the undergraduate level for future elementary teachers, but they can identify no reason why their findings and recommendations would not generally extend to both undergraduate and graduate preparation of all classroom teachers. The implications of this review stretch beyond student teaching. Given the many similarities among all forms of clinical practice, the findings and recommendations of this report have important implications for improving the full range of field work opportunities, as the National Council for Accreditation of Teacher Education (NCATE) intends. This report offers an in-depth preview of the aspects of student teaching that will be included in NCTQ's national review. This review looks at 134 higher education institutions offering an undergraduate student teaching program to elementary teacher candidates, approved by their states to prepare public school teachers. In all they comprise nearly 10 percent of the nation's institutions offering traditional teacher preparation. The authors selected the institutions using a stratified random sampling that was designed to include approximately three teacher preparation programs in every state and the District of Columbia. Appended are: (1) Documents Solicited from Institutions; (2) Elementary Principal Survey Instrument; (3) Methodology: Data Collection, Analysis and Production of Ratings; (4) Research Citations; (5) Biographies of NCTQ Student Teaching Advisory Group; (6) Standard-by-Standard Rationales, Methodologies and Findings; (7) Review of Student Teacher Evaluation Instruments Used by Institutions; and (8) Comments from Institutions. (Contains 51 footnotes.) [For "Student Teaching in the United States. Executive Summary," see ED521917.]