Teacher Professional Development as a State Policy Instrument
An enduring concern in American education has been the quality of the teaching force. Its contemporary manifestation is perhaps best voiced by Darling-Hammond (1997), who wrote: “Teaching all children for high levels of understanding will require more intensive teacher training, more meaningful licensure systems, and more thoughtful professional development” (p. 334). Horace Mann took the same position and argued that for the common schools to be successful, they must employ well-prepared teachers who would use the best and most up-to-date methods (Karier, 1986). From at least the mid-nine-teenth century on, the proper preparation and continuing education of teachers has been a critical state education policy concern.
One of the earliest mechanisms for providing for teacher quality was the teacher institute, often funded by the state but implemented at the county or local level. The idea of teacher training institutes began in the mid-nine-teenth century in Connecticut and passed to New York, and then on to the Midwest, where it was particularly prevalent in rural areas, which at that time meant most of the Midwest. In 1855, both the Michigan and Ohio legislatures had made modest appropri-ations to fund teacher institutes (Fuller, 1982). The typical teacher institute was funded by the state and controlled by county superintendents. It was held for a few days in the summer at the county seat for the ini-tial training of new teachers and the renewal or updating of skills and knowledge for veteran teachers. What we would now term teacher preparation and teacher professional development were combined in one institu-tion, created through state policy and funded by the state.
As the attempts to professionalize teaching continued, there was increasing dissatisfac-tion with the perceived low quality of the instruction at the teacher institutes (Theobald, 1995). As early as 1852 in Michigan and 1857 in Illinois, states began to establish state-supported professional teacher training schools, called normal schools, for the training and continuing edu-cation of teachers. By 1876 all the Midwestern states except Ohio had state nor-mal schools (Fuller, 1982). Normal schools prepared not only new teachers, but also masses of experienced teachers who returned during the summer for additional study. State normal schools remained the dominant form of teacher preparation and professional development through the Great Depression.
After the Second World War, many normal schools either closed or evolved into teachers colleges and then into state universities. The universities were far more autonomous than the normal schools and (after a century of direct state control of teacher education and continuing professional education) they began to dominate the direction of teacher quality. University laboratory schools, with their typical research orientation, played a large role in teacher education and in the continuing education of teachers. Professional development of teachers fell under the control of the universities and replaced the school orientation of the normal school with the discipline and research orien-tation of the university (Cremin, 1988).
Over the course of a century or so, policy mechanisms to improve the quality of teachers for the public schools passed from the states to the universities and professional organiza-tions. Recent concerns about the quality of the American teaching force has caused states to want to become more directly involved again in efforts to improve teacher quality.
In many cases, states desire to take back con-trol over teacher quality from the various other institutions that have come to dominate teacher quality issues. However, the state policy mechanisms of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries are no longer avail-able and would not be appropriate if they were. The policy environment has changed and public education has been transformed in many ways.
