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Arne Duncan said that schools should focus more on hands-on classroom work, similar to medical residencies that aspiring doctors must complete.

“Upwards of 90 percent of teachers pass the test for certification, they go on to course work and very, very few don’t make it through,” Dr. Steiner said. “I don’t think anybody thinks that’s the right model. It’s very focused on course work and the quality is varied.” The idea, he said, is to focus the core of preparation on practice teaching.

“It enables us to have a complete paradigm shift, where we go from passive learned knowledge that is received from a university to active absorbed knowledge that is seen and experienced in the classroom,” he said.

William J. Baldwin, the vice provost at Teachers College, said that in expanding the certification process, the state would be treating teaching as something to be trained for, rather than a sophisticated profession.

The commissioner is also proposing to develop a new assessment for professional certification, which teachers receive after at least three years in the classroom. The new assessment could also include a way to measure teacher effectiveness based on student test scores.

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