Where Next After NAEP 2005?

A feisty Saturday editorial in the Times makes fun of "happy talk" from the Bush administration about NAEP scores and highlights the need to look at instructional capacity of teachers -- and at ed schools -- to make big improvements: Happy Talk on School Reform

“Real reform will require better teacher training and higher teacher qualifications, which will in turn mean cracking the whip on teachers' colleges that have basically ignored the standards movement."

Agree or disagree, few would argue that teacher quality and teacher preparation are issues that the USDE (and many states and districts and teacher preparation programs) continue to duck.

And this isn't the first time the Times editorial page has told the Administration to grow a pair when it comes to enforcing NCLB or suggested something close to blowing up the ed schools. For more on this, see: NYT on Ed Schools, Don't Leave Teachers Out.

Over at EdWeek, there's one related commentary on the neverending effort to revamp teacher prep by making it more like med school (Doctoring Schools) and another calling for an end to the ideological wars between traditiona and alternative preparation (The Preparation Question).

In the meantime, new guidance from USDE on HQT is coming out in a week or two, but I wouldn't hold my breath that there's going to be anything new or tough about it.