A new report (pdf) studies the top-performing education systems worldwide. A major finding:
The logic for raising standards for getting into teacher education programs is the same everywhere. Low standards for entry means that people who could get into professional programs perceived as hard to get into see teaching as attractive only to people who do not have the skill or ability to do anything else, so they do not want any part of them. If these schools and programs are easy to get into, the message in the college or university is that they are low status and so higher education faculty who can get higher status jobs in their institutions do not want to teach in the education programs. Raising the standards for admission will attract a higher quality of applicant, and, at the same time, discourage lower quality applicants, and it will also attract a higher quality faculty, which also attracts a higher quality applicant.
The lesson Dana Goldstein draws:
[T]eaching reform efforts should focus more heavily on rebuilding the pipeline into the profession and less on creating complex reward and punishment systems for current teachers, most of whom oppose increased testing, and many of whom are demoralized by the direction of U.S. education policy.
The Dish 