The Center for Improving Teacher Quality (CTQ) is a collaborative project of the Council for Chief State School Officers (CCSSO) and its program, the Interstate New Teacher Assessment and Support Consortium (INTASC); the National Association of State Directors of Special Education (NASDSE); the American Association of Colleges for Teacher Education (AACTE); the Council for Exceptional Children (CEC); the federal Regional Resource Centers (RRCs); and the federal educational laboratories and comprehensive centers.

The mission of the Center is to develop exemplary models for how to build an effective statewide system of preparation, licensure, and professional development for general and special education teachers of students with disabilities.

The Center's goals are:

1. To provide states a means through which they can examine their current system of teacher preparation, licensure and professional development, identify areas for improvement, and make initial commitments to a focused reform effort using the INTASC Model Standards for Licensing General and Special Education Teachers of Students with Disabilities (2001) and state standards as road maps for reform;
2. To collect, articulate and disseminate common state challenges, promising approaches, and successful strategies related to reform and alignment of state teacher preparation, licensure and professional development systems;
3. To assist states in customizing successful strategies to their unique contexts;
4. To promote state strategies of reform that recognize the contribution of and involve multiple stakeholders in creating a coherent, responsive and sustainable system within the state;
5. To build affiliations and promote dialog among individuals within states who can leverage influence and resources to affect positive change; and
6. To help states build cross-state learning communities that are committed to providing state-to-state peer technical assistance.

The Center is funded through the Office of Special Education Programs at the U.S. Department of Education.

For information or assistance, contact Lisa Stooksberry, CTQ Project Leader at AACTE.

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