A plan for a plan to reform the state’s teacher prep colleges

It’s been nearly two years since the State Board of Education launched an initiative to begin exploring how to reform the state’s teacher-preparation colleges to better prepare future teachers.

And on Wednesday, state education officials announced they received a $100,000 grant from the Council of Chief State School Officers to continue planning changes.

Two years ago Gov. Dannel P. Malloy proposed increasing GPA requirements for students to get into teaching colleges. After those efforts stalled in the legislature, a panel was created by the state board of the stakeholders to recommend changes.

While the panel proposed “guiding principles” for what the final changes will look like this past spring, no changes have been made yet to the entrance or exit criteria into these programs, performance assessments or data upgrades to collect outcome metrics of the state’s public and private colleges that graduate about 3,500 new teachers each year.

Education Commissioner Stefan Pryor said “approximately a year’s worth of work” remains before changes are recommended to the State Board of Education and legislature for action.

“This issue is of paramount importance… There is an enormous amount of momentum,” he said during a press conference in Hartford Wednesday.