Introduction: Teacher and Leadership Preparation and Development: No Strangers to Politics

Debates over the quality of the nation’s teaching force extend at least as far back as the early 1900s. Today, teacher quality is again at the top of the reform agenda for America’s public schools. Consensus over the substance of reform, however, has not yet been achieved. Before introducing the articles in this double issue and discussing their individual and combined value for the study of educational politics, this article provides a brief history of the politics surrounding teacher and administrator preparation, unpacks the arguments behind the two national reform agendas for America’s teachers (professionalization and deregulation), and parses out a quality problem within a political discourse that stresses teacher shortages.