Teacher education in the United States has been the subject of persistent and abiding concerns. Teacher educators have struggled for years to connect theory and practice, to place student teachers in classrooms that reflect state-of-the-art practice, and to construct program coursework that illuminates research on effective teaching in ways that are practice-relevant. The articulation and sustenance of a common vision, and the development of a shared understanding of the goals of student teaching, are similarly long-standing challenges. The creation of a curriculum that is systematic and synergistic across courses and across the university and school components of preparation has been difficult in most institutions. Finally, teacher education programs remain the stepchildren of most universities, underfunded and under resourced by many and treated with intellectual disdain by nearly all. Dissatisfaction with these conditions provoked a redesign of Stanford's Teacher Education Program (STEP) when one of these authors became a faculty sponsor of the program in 1998. The redesign efforts aimed to address not only the problems identified in this paper, but also the many new demands facing teacher education programs in California and nationally. These include growing student diversity, which requires greater attention to social equity and inclusion, as well as the evolving knowledge economy, which demands higher levels of learning for all. In response both to the constant challenges of teacher education and to these recent, pressing demands, the STEP redesign focused on four goals: (1) To develop a coherent program organized around professional standards and a common vision of good teaching; (2) To strengthen knowledge about how to teach challenging content to diverse learners; (3) To support stronger links between theory and practice; and (4) To contribute to the re-shaping of local teaching and schooling by creating powerful opportunities for student and teacher learning. In this paper, the authors describe how the redesigned STEP program seeks to pursue these goals, what the strategies have been for implementing specific changes in the program, and what additional efforts are needed to fulfill this vision. (Contains 2 figures and 1 note.)