Improving teacher preparation is critical to long-term improvement in teacher quality. More than 200,000 new teachers enter classrooms each year. Increasing student enrollment, the retirement of baby boom generation teachers, and high attrition in their first five years (between 40 and 50 percent of new teachers leave the profession) have…

Our nation's educational system has scored many extraordinary successes in raising the level of reading and writing skills in younger children. Yet the pace of literacy improvement in our schools has not kept up with the accelerating demands of the global knowledge economy. In state after state, the testing data mandated by No Child Left Behind…

On April 7, 1982, the Connecticut State Board of Education passed a resolution commending the work of the Professional Development Council and approving the recommendations contained in the report, "Recommendations for Ensuring Professional Competence." Pursuant to three recommendations from this report, an advisory committee was…