A vital and well-crafted piece of legislation is making its way through the House Committee on Education and the Workforce. The Ready to Teach Act of 2003 which is part of the reauthorization of the Higher Education Act would enact measures to help reform our nation s ailing schools of education, aid compliance with the No Child Left Behind Act, and ultimately improve the quality of teachers.

The Ready to Teach Act strengthens the accountability of teacher preparation programs by creating new reporting requirements. It also provides room for flexibility in new teacher preparation programs while mandating things that we know work, such as content knowledge. Finally, the Ready to Teach Act provides resources to realize its goals in the form of state grants, partnership grants, and teacher recruitment grants.