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At a time when the federal No Child Left Behind law is requiring a “highly qualified teacher” at the front of every public school classroom, there is more confusion than ever about what it takes to make a good teacher.

A report released in July claims that the research on teacher training done to date provides little guidance as to what methods produce the best teachers. The study–conducted by the Education Commission of the States, a nonprofit consortium founded in 1965 by governors, lawmakers, and education leaders from across the country–analyzed more than 500 research studies and found no better than “moderate” or “limited” evidence that any one of the prevailing preparation strategies is more effective than the others.

“The lack of research does not necessarily mean the proponents [of various preparation methods] are wrong,” the ECS report concludes, “but the available evidence simply does not justify the strength with which some advocates insist on the absolute and exclusive correctness of their point of view.”

In Eight Questions on Teacher Preparation, ECS reviewers looked at research queries on such propositions as whether the amount of subject matter study determined teacher quality, and whether traditional teacher-prep programs were more successful than “alternative” routes to certification. They found few definitive answers. For instance, the report found “moderate” support for the importance of a solid subject-matter background, but considered “inconclusive” the evidence that such preparation required an undergraduate major or a graduate degree in the discipline. In addition, the report found the research on student teaching, the backbone of many programs, to be “inconclusive” as to what constitutes effective pre-service field experience. The report also found limited support for other strategies, such as specialized training for teaching in urban, low-performing schools, but mostly sounded a call for more research to address such questions directly–and definitively.

The report’s equivocal findings strike a chord with some prominent teacher educators. “Right now we have a lot of convictions, and a lot of them are contradictory,” says Joseph Cronin, interim dean of Lesley University’s School of Education. “Do BC and BU and Lesley know exactly if what they did was effective three years down the line? The answer is no. Most schools don’t know.”

But others take issue with ECS’s conclusions, especially those concerning the approaches tentatively endorsed based on “limited evidence.”

“This report samples an extremely narrow level of research,” says Dennis Shirley, an associate professor at Boston College’s Lynch School of Education. “So much is screened out of a report like this, like focus groups with parents. . .or comments from other teachers about our graduates.”

Shirley, who founded the Massachusetts Coalition for Student Achievement and Teacher Quality four years ago, is an outspoken critic of alternative routes to certification, which allow professionals to join the teaching ranks through accelerated programs–one model the ECS report regarded with general approval.

“Overall, the research provides limited support for the conclusion that there are indeed alternative programs that produce cohorts of teachers who are ultimately as effective as traditionally trained teachers,” according to the report, which also finds the evidence that teachers trained through alternative programs drop out of the profession at a greater rate to be “inconclusive.”

But Shirley says the Lynch School will soon finish a report evaluating the Bay State’s alternative routes to certification showing that graduates of the Massachusetts Institute for New Teachers (MINT), a summer-long accelerated certification program, are less confident as teachers than are graduates of two-year and four-year programs. “Six-week programs are fine if you just have great schools [to teach in],” says Shirley, “but we know that’s [often] not the case.”

The report’s coolness toward student teaching troubles Peter Dittami, a retired high school principal who now coordinates field placement for the state’s largest teacher program, at Framingham State College. “It is perhaps the most important dimension of our program,” Dittami says. “Students are supervised throughout the process,” which can be tailored according to a student’s professional aspirations, such as teaching in an urban school, he adds.

Michael Allen, ECS program director and author of the report, denies that he looked at the data selectively. “We looked at the whole body of the research to make overall conclusions, so I’ll stand by the report,” says Allen. “We actually used more qualitative research than quantitative.”

The real problem, says Allen, is the quality of research on teacher training. Even among the 92 studies selected for careful scrutiny, from a review of 500, Allen’s team of researchers found few that could be deemed reliable. “Many evaluations are not independent because they are sponsored by the schools themselves, so there is some vested interest there,” says Allen. “Most are not peer-reviewed. And finally, they are just plain bad.”

Even education-school leaders acknowledge that more research on teacher training needs to be done–and put to better use.

“I’d welcome any available research, always,” says James Fraser, dean of the Northeastern University School of Education. “And there does need to be more done to encourage our faculty to make the research more accessible. Higher education has not done a good job of asking itself, ‘Has the research helped all the stakeholders involved?'”