Senate education committee Chairman Lamar Alexander made the following statement on the Education Department’s regulation on teacher preparation programs, which was made final Wednesday:
“Today’s regulation appears to violate the Higher Education Act, which specifically says that states—not bureaucrats at a distant department in Washington—are responsible for evaluating whether a college’s program gives teachers the skills they need for the classroom. The regulation also effectively mandates teacher evaluations and forces states to focus on students’ test scores in a way that Congress explicitly rejected just months ago when we fixed No Child Left Behind and its unworkable National School Board approach.”