ABSTRACT
Calls to reform teacher education are once again arising as part of a more general discussion of ways to improve public schooling in the United States. This chapter examines the historical roots of one particular problem that has plagued American teacher education over the years, its lowly status. It expostulate that the issue of status is not epiphenomenal but central to the kinds of problems that teacher education presents to potential reformers in the 1990s. The chapter explores the way in which the status of teacher education has been shaped by the workings of the market. It reviews several examples of the ways in which observers have characterized the status of American teacher education. The chapter then provides a short history of market influences on the status of the institution. In light of teacher education's unhappy history of market pressures and status problems, the chapter concludes with a discussion of how both proposals fail to provide appropriate reform solutions.
