Are Teacher Colleges Producing Mediocre Teachers?

There has been a mantra of sorts going around education circles over the past few years: "Nothing matters more to a child's education than good teachers." (...) "Who's teaching my kid?" is an important question for parents to ask, there may be an equally essential (and rarely remarked upon) question — "Who's teaching my kid's teachers?" (...)By almost any standard, many if not most of the nation's 1,450 schools, colleges and departments of education are doing a mediocre job of preparing teachers for the realities of the 21st century classroom,"(...) It is nearly impossible in many states to tell which teachers produce the best student outcomes, let alone which teacher colleges. "And if we can't identify the skills that make a difference in terms of student learning, then what we're saying is that teaching is an undefinable art, as opposed to something that can be taught,"(...)
"If you want to get more-effective teachers, one of the obvious places to begin is to look at the supply side," says George Noell, a researcher at Louisiana State University who has worked for several years on the state's Teacher Quality initiative. "You need to know who's coming into teaching, how they were prepared and where they were prepared. Then you can make a link between who taught a kid, who trained the teacher and the overall efficacy of that teacher."(...)

See it completely at http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,1931810,00.html