In the 2018-2019 academic year, more than 560,000 prospective teachers attended more than 21,500 teacher preparation programs (TPPs) housed in more than 2,100 institutions in the United States. Some will either never complete their program or fail to seek or secure teaching positions, but the majority will, and they will become a substantial part…

The dialogue on what constitutes quality teacher preparation and how it should be assessed and evaluated is muddled. It begins neatly with a universal agreement and aspiration for quality teaching and enhanced PK-12 student achievement, then quickly scatters when there are attempts to define and weigh key components of academic excellence.…

In 2013, the National Academy of Education's (NAEd) report on teacher education program evaluation in the United States provided a substantial synthesis of how the nation approaches quality assurance for teacher education programs (Feuer et al., 2013). The United States, having no federal requirements for such quality assurance, proves to be a…

As the COVID-19 pandemic continues to spread across the United States and around the world, school systems everywhere are in crisis management, with education leaders and teachers struggling to provide continuous instruction via combinations of in-person, virtual, and hybrid learning modes. A fundamental and familiar question centers on the…

In this paper the authors examine the uses of teaching performance assessments (TPAs) as resources for learning, program evaluation, and improvement in teacher education. The authors begin by outlining their conceptual framing and related research questions about the uses of TPAs as resources for program evaluation and improvement. They describe…

This paper focuses on the evaluation of the clinical component of preservice teacher preparation. In this paper, clinical experience in teacher preparation refers to the "application of academic knowledge to practice" in classrooms, schools, and communities where candidates learn to "contextualize" the curriculum, learning…

Since 2010, a substantial number of large-scale, quantitative studies on preparation features associated with teaching effectiveness and retention have emerged. The purpose of this paper is to review this body of evidence and make sense of what it suggests for practitioners and policymakers. The paper begins by describing the groundbreaking work…

In 2010, as the result of a congressionally mandated study, the National Research Council (NRC) published the report "Preparing Teachers: Building Evidence for Sound Policy" (NRC, 2010). Reflecting the unprecedented attention to teacher quality that had emerged internationally in response to the exigencies of the "global knowledge…

The aim of the "National Academy of Education (NAEd) Educating for Civic Reasoning and Discourse" report is to better prepare students to examine and discuss complex civic, political, and social issues by ensuring that the curricula, pedagogy, and learning environments that they experience are informed by the best available evidence and…

This is the executive summary for the report, "Educating for Civic Reasoning and Discourse." This report aims to better prepare students to examine and discuss complex civic, political, and social issues by ensuring that the curriculum, pedagogy, and learning environments that they experience are informed by the best available evidence…

Based on the public health necessity presented by the COVID-19 pandemic, most U.S. schools closed their physical spaces in March 2020. Early evidence suggests that the closing of schools and migration to online learning has had harmful effects on children's academic performance. Moreover, the health crisis has surfaced for a broader public what…

This National Academy of Education (NAEd) volume provides guidance to key stakeholders on how to accurately report and interpret comparability assertions concerning large-scale educational assessments as well as how to ensure greater comparability by paying close attention to key aspects of assessment design, content, and procedures. The goal of…

In 2009, the U.S. Institute of Education Sciences (IES) allocated $120 million to establish the Reading for Understanding (RfU) initiative. This initiative responded to concern that children's improvement in reading comprehension had leveled off over the previous few decades, coupled with the observation that research on reading comprehension had…

As the COVID-19 pandemic continues to spread across the U.S. and around the world, school systems everywhere are in crisis management mode, hoping to reopen safely while simultaneously making valiant efforts at continuity of instruction via remote technologies and, where possible, "hybrid" models that blend in-person and virtual…

Results from international large-scale assessments (ILSAs) garner considerable attention in the media, academia, and among policy makers. Although there is widespread recognition that ILSAs can provide useful information, there is debate about what types of comparisons are the most meaningful and what could be done to assure more sound…