Earlier this month, the TeachNY Advisory Council issued an important report on how New York State can transform teacher education, ensuring a pipeline of strong, dedicated teachers for generations to come.

Over at the Albany Times-Union, Arthur Levine — a member of the advisory council former president of Teachers College Columbia University, and current president of the Woodrow Wilson Foundation — offers some inspiration for how the Empire State can more this report from recommendation to action.

As Levine writes:

There is compelling evidence that the recommendations will work. States like Georgia, Indiana, Michigan, Ohio and New Jersey have already adopted some of the key recommendations from the TeachNY report. They have created the strong statewide partnerships necessary to transform teacher education. They have established bipartisan coalitions, led by governors and consisting of legislators, state higher education and K-12 system heads, universities, school districts, unions and other stakeholders to drive change, provide mutual support, assure accountability and enable third party-evidence based assessment.

These states have created a number of model teacher education programs of the type called for by the TeachNY report. They are characterized by four common features: high admissions standards, rigorous academic curricula, intense clinical experiences in the schools and three years of mentoring for beginning teachers.

In each case, the result has been a strong pipeline for recruiting, preparing and supporting excellent beginning teachers for hard-to-staff subjects in high-need schools. Be these urban or rural classrooms, these schools are now getting the effective science and math teachers they now need.

Give it a read!