https://doi.org/10.1177/0022487119900628 Journal of Teacher Education 2020, Vol. 71(2) 169–171 © 2020 American Association of Colleges for Teacher Education Article reuse guidelines: sagepub.com/journals-permissions DOI: 10.1177/0022487119900628 journals.sagepub.com/home/jte Editorial Recent results of national and international assessments of student achievement often trigger media and policy com- ments to the effect that efforts to improve education in the United States are “disappointing” (e.g., Goldstein, 2019). The disappointment comes in part from high, probably unre- alistic, claims about how fast change happens. As a case in point, the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB) called for all students to be proficient within a dozen years, an aspiration that researchers have called unrealistic (Linn et al., 2002). From another perspective, the modest gains on the National Assessment of Education Progress (NAEP) and the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) should be seen in the context of decades in which financial incentives to enter and stay in teaching have declined (Allegretto & Mishel, 2018), with accompanying declines in students entering teacher preparation programs (Partelow, 2019). Moreover, given the challenges of health care, nutrition, and poverty, it is unrealistic to expect the educational system in general, or teacher education in par- ticular, to lift student achievement dramatically. One pessimistic takeaway might nonetheless be that the achievement results are evidence that teacher educators are not improving their programs, perhaps because they do not know how to make productive changes. This dour assess- ment ignores the wealth of knowledge, published in journals such as this one. Some of that knowledge has found its way into teacher preparation programs and efforts to support practicing teachers. As scholars of teacher education, we need to continue to build our knowledge base, and use that knowledge base to make changes and evaluate the results. Although the changes that come may be gradual, we should keep in mind that although slow progress is to be expected, that progress repre- sents a glass half full, not half empty. Remember, A Nation at Risk (National Commission on Excellence in Education, 1983) claimed that we were falling behind, with economic collapse imminent. While economic, social, and educational progress in the United States in the past three decades may be less than we hoped for, the current situation is better than A Nation at Risk led us to expect. As editors of the Journal of Teacher Education, we believe that, as a field, substantial work is being done in ways that are responsive to the challenges facing the field. Progress in elevating student scores on achievement tests has been frustratingly slow, but we are making progress in gen- erating knowledge that can support teacher educators in edu- cating teachers who can address these complex issues. Below we consider four areas that drive change in teacher education and briefly and selectively summarize the state of our under- standing of each of them. The areas are knowing your stu- dents, content and pedagogy, data and assessment literacy, and field-based experience. Knowing Your Students The message derived from research is clear— To teach effec- tively, it is not enough to “know” in a limited way the stu- dents one teaches. While, for example, understanding their likes and dislikes and the learning challenges they face as identified by those within the school system is important, such knowledge is not sufficient to provide the kinds of learning opportunities that are meaningful and powerful, and that are likely to result in substantial learning. This means developing an understanding of the kinds of experiences (learning opportunities) that students have outside of school, their family circumstances and “funds of knowledge” (González et al., 2006), and an appreciation of the values inherent in the communities in which they live and which the school serves (Epstein, 2018; Tutwiler, 2005). Developing this kind of knowledge is complex and requires programs that target these learning opportunities. These learning opportunities must be continuous and embedded in program- matic efforts to best prepare teachers to meet the needs of diverse learners and to prepare teachers themselves for diverse contexts (Richmond, 2017). Providing such opportu- nities is a particular challenge for more “generalist” pro- grams, and it requires that programs not only focus on excellence in the sense of preparing teachers to recognize and implement instructional practices demanded by recent standards and related reform documents, but at the same time focus on matters of equity so that all students have access to the resources they need to learn. Excellence and equity are 900628JTE XX X 10.1177/0022487119900628Journal of Teacher EducationFloden et al. editorial 2020 1 Michigan State University, East Lansing, MI, USA 2 University of Denver, CO, USA Corresponding Author: Robert E. Floden, Michigan State University, East Lansing, MI 48824, USA. Email: floden@msu.edu A Nation at Risk or a Nation in Progress? Naming the Way Forward Through Research in Teacher Education Robert E. Floden 1 , Gail Richmond 1 , and Maria Salazar 2