On October 20, 2026, Defending Education (DE) submitted a public comment to the U.S. Department of Education’s Office of Postsecondary Education on the Higher Education Act (HEA) Title II Report Cards on State Teacher Credentialing and Preparation. These are yearly federal reports on each state’s teacher preparation programs.
These report cards count enrollees and completers — but don’t give any grade, rating, or other form of assessment. The only quality measure is a state-defined “at-risk” or “low-performing” label, which applied to only about 1% of programs in 2019-2020. These report cards need to actually evaluate a program’s success, modeled on The Nation’s Report Card, based on measures like licensure data, graduate retention, performance evaluations, and student outcomes.
DE also asks that the report cards include course descriptions. Teacher preparation programs are “rife with ideological bias,” as shown in our CorruptED report and a 2026 supplement documenting far-left Southern Poverty Law Center materials in at least 100 colleges of education.
DE urges the Department to turn the Title II Report Cards into true report cards that grade programs, show what future teachers are taught, and provide timely data.
Read the full comment below: