Stephen Sawchuck:

The National Council on Teacher Quality has unveiled Path to Teach, an online website billed as a consumer’s guide to colleges of education.

Teacher-candidates-to-be can look up college programs and alternative programs from across the nation, comparing them by tuition costs, enrollment numbers, location, and by a quality snapshot that looks at criteria like admissions selectivity, preparation to teach in different content areas, and student-teaching quality.

Path to Teach’s A-F grades are based on the NCTQ’s project to assess elementary, secondary, and special education programs in every education school. The rankings are often fairly unsparing (“This program will not prepare you to teach young children to read,” says the typical warning for an F grade for early reading.)