[Congressional Record Volume 149, Number 78 (Friday, May 23, 2003)]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Pages E1072-E1073]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




             INTRODUCTION OF THE READY TO TEACH ACT OF 2003

                                 ______
                                 

                          HON. JOHN A. BOEHNER

                                of ohio

                    in the house of representatives

                         Thursday, May 22, 2003

  Mr. BOEHNER.Mr. Speaker, I rise in support of the Ready to Teach Act 
of 2003, introduced today by Representative Gingrey. The Ready to Teach 
Act is the first, in what will be a series of bills, the Committee on 
Education and the Workforce will consider in our continuing efforts to 
reauthorize the Higher Education Act.
  The No Child Left Behind Act calls for a highly qualified teacher in 
every classroom by the end of the 2005-2006 school year, lending new 
urgency to the reauthorization of the Higher Education Act as we seek 
to ensure that teacher colleges are producing highly qualified 
graduates. Provisions in the Ready to Teach Act complement the No Child 
Left Behind Act and will help to improve the quality and accountability 
of teacher preparation programs to ensure that highly qualified 
teachers are teaching our children.
  As we work to place highly qualified teachers in classrooms across 
the nation, I am particularly pleased that this legislation allows for 
innovative programs that provide alternative options to the traditional 
teacher training programs. Proposals outlined in the bill, such as 
charter colleges of education, provide a much-needed alternate route to 
training highly qualified and effective teachers. This bill takes the 
important step of recognizing that individuals seeking to enter the 
teaching profession often have varied backgrounds--and by creating 
flexible approaches that step outside the box, these individuals can 
become highly qualified teachers through training programs as unique as 
their individual experiences.
  The key to producing highly qualified teachers is not the path by 
which they travel, but the destination they reach. Teachers trained 
through innovative options, or certified through alternate means, will 
still be held to the same standards of accountability and quality, but 
will not be constrained by artificial requirements that could place 
barriers between high quality individuals and the classrooms where they 
are desperately needed.
  In addition to innovative options such as alternative training and 
certification options to prepare highly qualified teachers, the Ready 
to Teach Act makes several improvements to the programs responsible for 
training the teachers of tomorrow. The bill authorizes three types of 
grants, each with a specific and important role to play in the training 
of America's teachers.
  State and partnership grants under the Act must be used to reform 
teacher preparation

[[Page E1073]]

requirements, coordinate with teacher activities under Title II of the 
No Child Left Behind Act, and ensure that current and future teachers 
are highly qualified. Authorized grant activities will place a renewed 
emphasis on the skills needed to meet the highly qualified standard: 
the use of advanced technology in the classroom, rigorous academic 
content knowledge, scientifically based research, and challenging state 
student academic content standards. In particular, states are 
authorized to use grant funds for innovative methods for teacher 
preparation programs, such as charter colleges of education, that 
exchange flexibility in meeting state requirements for institutional 
commitments to produce results-based outcomes for teacher education 
graduates--measured based on increased student academic achievement.

  The Ready to Teach Act authorizes partnership grants to enable 
effective partners to join together, combining strengths and resources 
to train highly qualified teachers and achieve success in the 
classroom. These partnerships will require faculty of participating 
teacher preparation programs to serve with a highly qualified teacher 
in the classroom, allowing effective in-class experience to ensure that 
highly qualified teachers are truly prepared to teach.
  Teacher recruitment grants under the Act will help bring high quality 
individuals into teacher preparation programs and gives a funding 
priority for applicants that will emphasize measures to recruit 
minorities into the teaching profession, providing a teaching workforce 
that is both highly qualified and diverse.
  The Ready to Teach Act will also hold teacher preparation programs 
accountable for preparing highly qualified teachers. While current 
higher education law contains annual reporting requirements, these 
reporting measures have proven ineffective in measuring the true 
quality of teacher preparation programs. In fact, the current 
requirements have often been manipulated, leaving data skewed and often 
irrelevant. The Ready to Teach Act includes accountability provisions 
that will strengthen reporting measures and hold teacher preparation 
programs accountable for providing accurate and useful information.
  This bill makes needed reforms to improve the quality and 
accountability of our nation's teacher preparation programs. I would 
like to commend Mr. Gingrey for his work on the Ready to Teach Act. I 
would also like to thank Mr. McKeon, Chairman of the Subcommittee on 
21st Century Competitiveness, for his continuing efforts to improve all 
aspects of our country's higher education system. I look forward to 
working with my colleagues on both sides of the aisle and believe that 
this legislation will enjoy broad support in the Congress.

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