Teacher-education programs would have to comply with stricter accountability provisions under a bill approved on Wednesday by members of an education subcommittee of the U.S. House of Representatives, marking the beginning of legislation this year to reauthorize the Higher Education Act.

A second bill approved by the lawmakers would provide greater forgiveness of student-loan debt to some mathematics, science, and special-education teachers.

The teacher-education bill, sponsored by Rep. Phil Gingrey, a Georgia Republican, also would provide grants to foster "innovative programs" such as alternative-certification routes and charter colleges of education. It attempts to reform previous requirements for the way that states must report on the quality of teacher-education programs. Loopholes in the earlier rules, mandated in the 1998 reauthorization of the Higher Education Act, allowed colleges to avoid reporting how many of their students failed state teacher-licensure tests.

"These reporting measures have proven ineffective in measuring the true quality of teacher-preparation programs," said Rep. Howard P. McKeon, the California Republican who leads the subcommittee in charge of the current reauthorization process. "In fact, the current requirements have often been manipulated, leaving data skewed and often irrelevant."

Mr. Gingrey's bill "will strengthen reporting measures and hold teacher-preparation programs accountable for providing accurate and useful information," Mr. McKeon added. "Institutions of higher-education have a great deal of responsibility in contributing to the preparation of our nation's teachers. This bill will make sure they're meeting their responsibilities."

Under the current law, the term "graduate" was undefined, so some institutions reported only on those candidates who completed all course work and passed the state-certification exam. Those institutions did not include students who had passed their classes but failed the state test, and, as a result, the colleges reported a 100-percent pass rate and revealed nothing about the performance of their teacher-training programs.

The new bill, named "The Ready to Teach Act" and approved on a voice vote, calls for colleges to report the exam pass rates for all students who have completed at least 50 percent of the course work required for the teacher-preparation program, if the students take the certification or licensing tests within three years of graduation. Higher-education institutions with fewer than 10 students who have completed 50 percent of the course work in their teacher-preparation programs would report an average pass rate over a three-year period. Colleges that fail to report the information promptly and accurately could be fined as much as $25,000.

As in the current law, the new bill calls for states to report on the performance of their teacher-education programs to the U.S. secretary of education, who will use the data to prepare a "report card" to present to Congress. In the new bill, students in teacher-preparation programs that have lost state approval and financial support because of "low performance" also would be unable to receive federal student aid. In addition, those institutions would be ineligible for federal grants for providing professional-development training to schoolteachers.

A second bill, the "Teacher Recruitment and Retention Act of 2003," also was approved by the subcommittee on a voice vote. It calls for increasing the total amount of loan forgiveness for some teachers in schools where at least 30 percent of the children come from low-income families. The amount now provided in the Higher Education Act is $5,000; it would increase to a maximum of $17,500 for mathematics, science, and special-education teachers in those schools.

Democrats on the subcommittee proposed several amendments to the measure that would have directed the money to teachers in schools that have more students who are poor and would have extended the loan forgiveness to teachers in the federal Head Start program for poor and minority preschool children. But Republican members of the committee struck down the amendments in close roll-call votes.

Rep. Robert E. Andrews, a New Jersey Democrat who cosponsored one of the defeated amendments, questioned why the federal government should subsidize math and science teachers in schools where two-thirds of the students aren't poor, while reading teachers and Head Start teachers in schools where nearly all the students are poor would be ineligible for the loan forgiveness. "You can't do math and science if you can't read," he said.

But several Republican members of the subcommittee said that they wanted to keep the bill focused on the three specified areas -- math, science, and special education -- where teacher shortages have been greatest. "We want a rifle-shot rather than a shotgun approach," Mr. McKeon said.

The two new bills will now proceed for consideration by the House Committee on Education and the Workforce.