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There are two big articles about teacher preparation programs in the news this week — and one about poverty — that don’t focus specifically on LAUSD but are well worth knowing about for anyone concerned with education reform.

The first is Stephanie Simon’s piece in Reuters about Teach For America, which in addition to rehashing lots of debates you already know highlights the increasing reliance on charter school placements that’s been necessitated by expansion and reveals that TFA no longer stands by all its teacher effectiveness claims.

The second is Paul Tough’s New York Times Magazine piece about Obama, poverty, and school reform, available online now though it’s not out in print until Sunday.  Tough goes back to the Far South Side of Chicago, where Obama was a community organizer, and reflects on the President’s efforts to combat persistent, intergenerational poverty, though education and other means.

Last but not least, Stephanie Banchero’s Wall Street Journal article about the federal government’s $223 million search for a better, more pragmatic approach to teacher preparation features a Chicago example of one of the roughly 50 funded programs that provides extensive preservice clinical experience before putting a teacher in a classroom.

Anything else?  Let us know.