The Dialectics between Excellence and Equity of Teacher Education in the United States

In order to develop and increase the quality of school teachers, countries all over the world start to reform their educational systems since the year of 1990. There is no exception in the United States. The former Secretary of Department of Education, Margaret Spellings (2006, p.1) emphasized that teacher quality is the foundation of students’ achievement so how to recruit high quality college students for teacher education, how to ensure every teacher education institution could provide high quality pre-service teacher education programs, how to make sure that every state could be a good gatekeeper for highly qualifies teachers, how to increase the teachers’ professional development through teacher evaluation and accreditation, and finally how to make highly qualified teachers in every classroom have become the most crucial issues that teacher education policies need to encounter and solve during the last two decades. In this research article, the principal investigator conducts a series of document analysis including No Child Left Behind (NCLB) in 2001, Race to the Top in 2009, Common Core State Standard(CCSS) in 2010, and Every Student Succeed Act (ESSA) in 2015 along with the recent Teaching and Learning International Survey (TALIS) in 2013 to figure out the dialects between excellence and equity in the context of the United States.