Sponsors (5)
Official title: To amend the Higher Education Act of 1965 to enhance teacher and school leader quality partnership grants.
Introduced February 13, 2025 by Jennifer McClellan · Last progress February 13, 2025
This bill aims to raise educator quality, diversify and better support the teacher pipeline, and increase transparency—especially for students with disabilities and English learners—but does so by imposing significant new reporting, compliance, and financial requirements that may strain states, districts, institutions, and the short-term teacher supply while raising privacy and reputational risks.
Teachers, prospective teachers, and school leaders will receive stronger, evidence-based preparation (residency/mentoring/clinical experience, induction, leader development), which should improve classroom readiness, retention, and student outcomes.
Students who are English learners and students with disabilities will benefit from educator training aligned to IDEA and stronger EL preparation (including use of modern terminology), improving inclusive instruction and reducing stigma.
States, districts, and consumers gain better data and transparency (uniform program-level pass rates, median GPA, clinical hours, public lists of at-risk/low-performing programs) to compare programs, guide workforce planning, and inform student choices.
States, institutions, LEAs, and eligible partnerships face substantially higher administrative, reporting, and compliance burdens (data collection, validated assessments, disaggregation, new metrics), which will increase costs and strain limited district and program capacity.
Raising performance standards, pass-rate thresholds, stricter certification requirements, and tighter improvement timelines risks reducing the supply of eligible teachers and could deepen short-term staffing shortages—especially in high-need or rural areas—and may lead to program closures.
Mentors, teacher residents, and candidates may face new financial pressures: districts must fund paid release time or stipends, stipend matching is limited, and recipients accepting financial support may owe repayment with interest if service obligations aren't met.
Based on analysis of 12 sections of legislative text.
Strengthens educator preparation and partnership grant rules: advisory study, new definitions, expanded reporting/evaluation, residency priority, and State oversight of at‑risk/low‑performing programs.
Updates and expands federal law on educator preparation and partnership grants to strengthen teacher and school leader training, accountability, and state oversight. It creates an advisory committee and feasibility study, revises definitions and grant application requirements, lengthens certain program periods, raises reporting and evaluation standards for preparation programs, and requires States to identify and act on at‑risk and low‑performing teacher and school leader programs. The bill changes what institutions must report (program assessment pass rates, candidate demographics, supervised clinical hours), broadens eligible partnerships and prioritized programs (including residencies and school leader programs), extends some measurement windows to five years, and directs the Department of Education to publish a clearinghouse of State certification practices. It also modernizes terminology (e.g., "English learner") and imposes new State assessment, improvement, and closure rules with specified timing and transitional support requirements for students in closing programs.