Superintendents and principals have long wondered what on earth their new teachers had been doing when studying to become a teacher. Many if not most teachers come to their first classrooms woefully unprepared for real kids in real schools.

Last fall, the Education Schools Project issued a scathing report, “Educating Teachers,” on teacher-preparation programs, which confirmed what educators have long suspected. Only about a third of the programs are any good. Fully 62 percent of the graduates of teacher-education programs thought they’d been badly prepared.

And the project confirmed that many colleges use their teacher-prep programs as cash cows to support departments that generate less income. With low admissions and academic standards — and virtually no accountability — colleges are not motivated to compete for the best students and train them efficiently. Requiring pointless course work is money in their pockets.

My biggest beef with teacher prep programs is that they rarely work in partnership with public schools. Every program should have at least one practicum site, for each grade level it professes to teach. In that practica, anyone could observe the quality of the program’s student and mentor teachers. Naturally, the relationship would be reciprocal, with the college helping to shape the curriculum and practices at the school. If the school does not thrive with the college’s presence, the program should stop.

Without a practica relationship, how can a college stay current with the needs of actual schools, districts and children? They can’t. They get incredibly out of touch and teach a lot of theory and methodology that has no practical application.

So here’s a quick bureaucratic fix: have colleges certify teachers. The state would still issue a license, which could be revoked if need be, but the responsibility for teacher quality would rest with the colleges. Faculty know their students’ merits better than staff at the Department of Education possibly could. The state’s energies would be far better spent on overseeing the work of the institutions than on auditing individual transcripts that colleges already prepared and approved for a diploma. Make the diploma the certification.

Then certifications would cease to be mere permission slips, such as fishing licenses, but have brand names, such as Brown University, Providence College or the University of Rhode Island. When the state issues a license, it can collect data on the teacher, and create reports that describe how the teachers are doing. Branding the certification holds the institution accountable for what, precisely, it prepared its students for. If a college’s poor reputation became an obstacle for placing students, the program would either go out of business or change. Isn’t this the sort of accountability we’re hoping for from schools themselves? Why not apply it to the colleges?

Washington, D.C., accepts the colleges’ certifications, and has a three-day turnaround time for licenses as a result.

Over the past year, I’ve been asking professors and deans in teacher-preparation programs if there was at least one student currently each program that they would probably not certify if the institution had to take responsibility for that student. After a deep breath, they each said yes. Often those less-than-desirable students had poor people skills but were academic high-performers. For these students, state certification becomes a shield against inadequacies. Get rid of it.

The Department of Education is moving in the direction of trusting colleges to certify. They have a “batch certification” system that processes a group of students from an institution faster and with somewhat less auditing. They did this to free up time to work on improving the programs.

Paulajo Gaines, director of the Education Department’s certification office, concedes that when she took the helm a year and a half ago, the office was about compliance and checklists. “But now the focus is on teacher quality,” Gaines says.

The Education Department does have the power to certify or approve teacher-preparation programs. It shut down a leadership-training program at one of the colleges. Already RIDE’s program-approval process is significantly more rigorous than that of the National Council for the Accreditation of Teacher Education (NCATE). Some of the colleges are whining that they’d rather be certified by NCATE. Gaines’ office is working as up close and personally as it can with the eight teacher-prep institutions in the state. But they could do much more.

Gaines says, “I’m pushing higher ed to accept the fact that they can’t graduate students and say goodbye. I want them to partner with districts and unions to mentor teachers in their first three years.” Higher education is so out of touch with the actual schools, sometimes “they don’t offer training that we know we need.”

No kidding.

State licensing is all we need. State certification is redundant. Having the colleges certify graduating teachers removes a layer of bureaucracy, shifts state energies to ensuring and supporting program quality, and makes the colleges accountable. It’s worth a try.

Julia Steiny is a former member of the Providence School Board; she now consults and writes for a number of education, government and private enterprises. She welcomes your questions and comments on education. She can be reached by e-mail at juliasteiny@cox.net or c/o EdWatch, Education and Employment, Providence Journal, 75 Fountain St., Providence, R.I. 02902.