The National Education Policy Center frequently engages independent scholars to review think tank reports, which are often advocacy reports.
In this report, the NEPC scholars review the latest report from the National Center on Teacher Quality, which was formed about 20 years ago to take down teachers’ colleges. See this post.
NEPC Review: 2020 Teacher Prep Review: Clinical Practice and Classroom Management (October 2020)
Reviewers: Jamy Stillman and Katherine Schultz March 16, 2021
NCTQ’s 2020 Teacher Prep Review focuses on two areas of teacher preparation: clinical practice and classroom management. The report uses an approach that is now familiar to readers of NCTQ publications: asserting a set of preferred practices and then applying those criteria to teacher education programs. Although NCTQ reports have been critiqued for their limited use of research and highly questionable research methodology, this report employs the same approaches as earlier NCTQ reports. Rather than analyzing the characteristics of successful programs preparing teachers for a wide range of contexts, the report is based exclusively on adherence to or compliance with NCTQ internal standards that are neither widely accepted nor evidence-based. Thus, the report’s value is diminished and is unlikely to transform teacher preparation
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Focusing on “clinical practice and classroom management” is a good way to ignore the real influences on education.
The main one is time. If you spend all your time on math and Language arts, you probably will not know much about geography. You might not be able to differentiate between totalitarian forms of government and representative forms.
Time also comes into play as various influences decide we should be proceeding at one pace or another through the various curricula. If we accelerate math education so that students are universally exposed to more advanced topics at a young age, we must needs rob from their ability to do other things.
We have wasted way too much time on inappropriate, unnecessary, misplaced, and meaningless math instruction. The focus on understanding why algorithms work instead of how math is applied in science, engineering, economics, geography, and other subjects have reduced it to a subject that is disliked by most students and has produced a nation of adults who mostly think that they “suck at math”.
As I have already said here, there is 3rd level research on what must me there for children to learn, Performance Standards for those who know What Learning Looks Like and what “Principles of Learning” must be in place for every classroom teacher and for the school management.
To facilitate the human brain of a child to actually learn complex skills like critical analysis DEMANDS that certain things be in place… and one of these principles is that there be in that classroom an experienced, educated, knowledgeable teacher, who knows what leaning looks like in EVERYO ONE OF THOSE KIDS WHO SIT THERE.
Thus, it is crucial for those who want to end public schools, to push disinformation and allow the 15,880 school systems in 50 states, to pursue whatever cockamaimie agenda on their table.
The expensive Pew research on the theory of those principles, which studied the practice of 20 thousand teachers in 12 districts across the US, disappeared when the Educational Industrial Complex made war on public schools and pushed worthless curricula and the ‘testing’ agenda.
Nothing changes. The same disinformation is pushed as this pandemic ends whatever progress we were making to fix and fund public education.
yes: the SAME disinformation….on and on and on
It is apparent that NEPC bases its suggested teaching practices on flawed and extreme libertarian/Alt-Right, fundamentalist evangelical thinking.
If NEPC really wanted to improve teacher training, they’d study how Finland does it and go from there.
The U.S. comes last on the top 20 list for best public education systems and that ranking will never improve with organizations like NEPC pushing extremist thinking as a way to train teachers to support that thinking.
Finland is ranked #1
Japan is in 2nd place.
China is ranked #14, and back in the late 1980s and early 1990s, China sent teams of educators to the U.S. to learn how to improve the public education system that the country was rebuilding after decades of destruction from mao’s Cultural Revolution. When those teams returned to China, they made recommendations to implement some of America’s best practices to improve their education system but for more than 20 years now, the U.S. has been abandoning the best practices that the Chinese adopted.
https://www.edsys.in/best-education-system-in-the-world/
Today, if China wanted to improve their education system more, I suspect they’d send their education teams to Finland and not the United States.
The wrongful assumption that teachers are flawed has been dragging down the quality of teaching in this country for two decades. Time to stop “improving” teachers.
Not sure you read this report.
The NEPC report does not make recommendations for improved teacher training. This Report is a scholarly criticism of the dubious recommendations from the “National Council on Teacher Quality.”
Reviewing the ed reform echo chamber output since passage of the stimulus, they’re all now lobbying to have stimulus funds spent on ed reform approved products and services:
https://thehill.com/opinion/education/543753-if-you-like-small-classrooms-you-should-love-learning-pods
You’ll recognize the proposals. It’s all variations on charter schools and vouchers. It all redirects funding FROM public schools TO the private contractors they prefer.
Same old, same old. The answer to every question in the ed reform “movement” is “privatize”. They offer nothing else.
Maybe this time public schools will get policy advice from people who actually value public schools, instead of from the charter/voucher lobby.
If you want more charters and vouchers, hire ed reformers. It’s the only reason anyone should elect or hire them- they do nothing else.