Washington

Federal lawmakers on an education subcommittee of the U.S. House of Representatives vowed on Tuesday to improve requirements for the way that states must report on the quality of teacher-education programs, after loopholes in previous rules allowed colleges to avoid reporting how many of their students failed teacher-licensure tests.

Speaking at a hearing titled "America's Teacher Colleges: Are They Making the Grade?," Rep. Dale E. Kildee said that in reauthorizing the Higher Education Act, Congress would focus on improving the quality and supply of teachers. As part of that effort, lawmakers will emphasize the "need to improve how states report data, to ensure that we know how many graduates pass initial licensure exams," said Mr. Kildee, a Michigan Democrat and a member of the House Committee on Education and the Workforce.

Mr. Kildee's comments came after a report last fall by the General Accounting Office found that some teacher-education colleges have been able to circumvent a requirement in the 1998 reauthorization of the Higher Education Act that they report their graduates' pass rates on licensing exams.

Neither the law nor the Education Department defined the term "graduate," 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. That meant, essentially, that the colleges revealed nothing about the performance of their teacher-training programs (The Chronicle, October 10, 2002).

Despite those shortcomings in the accountability provisions, the Education Department's report on the state results revealed other problems in teacher-preparation programs, said Rep. Howard P. McKeon, a California Republican.

Those programs have faced criticism in recent years for failing to provide adequate training to prospective teachers in the academic subjects that they will teach, and for neglecting to involve arts-and-sciences faculty members at colleges in designing curriculums for teacher training. Such problems are all the more pressing because of demands for higher academic standards for schoolchildren, added Mr. McKeon, who leads the subcommittee in charge of reauthorization of the Higher Education Act.

Kati Haycock, director of the Education Trust, a Washington lobby group, urged the lawmakers to align the teacher-preparation requirements in the act with the federal efforts to raise the achievement of schoolchildren. In particular, she said, Congress should require states, in submitting the annual reports on teacher preparation, to show evidence that state standards for teachers are aligned with those for schoolchildren.

To eliminate the previous legislation's loophole in reporting pass rates on teacher-preparation exams, the lawmakers should require colleges to report pass rates for all test-takers who have been enrolled in a teacher-preparation program for at least two semesters, not just program completers, she added.

Arthur E. Wise, president of the National Council for Accreditation of Teacher Education, known as Ncate, recommended that lawmakers amend the law so that colleges and states could use his group's accreditation standards as a substitute for some or all of the current reporting requirements.

But Lisa Graham Keegan, chief executive officer of the Education Leaders Council, told the subcommittee that Ncate's standards lack sufficient emphasis on knowledge of academic subjects, and she urged lawmakers to consider alternative programs for training teachers that emphasize prospective teachers' ability to demonstrate what they know, rather than what courses they have completed.

Mr. McKeon said the lawmakers would consider their advice. The House committee plans to introduce four bills this summer on issues relating to reauthorization, including measures that would deal with accountability.