As dean of the Graduate School of Education at Hunter College, he sought to elevate the practical aspects of teaching: when to make eye contact, when to call on a student by name, when to wait for a fuller answer. He now urges the use of video, a tool he pioneered at Hunter, to help student teachers see what works and what doesn’t in the classroom (“Like taking apart a serve in tennis,” he says).

In New York, teachers can begin working without a master’s degree as long as they have had some education courses as undergraduates, but they must earn a professional certification within five years by receiving a master’s degree from a teaching school. New York is one of a dozen states that requires teachers to get a master’s degree. Alternative certification programs like Teach for America offer a quicker path for graduates who did not study education in college, allowing them to begin teaching from the outset while pursuing a master’s degree after hours.

Under the Regents’ proposal, which the board is expected to approve on Tuesday and does not need the approval of the State Legislature, Teach for America and similar groups could create their own master’s programs, and the Regents would award the master’s degree, two powers that are now the sole domain of academia.

The Regents are looking for academic programs that would be grounded in practical teaching skills and would require teachers to commit to working in a high-needs school for four years.

Image Dan Cosgrove, in his second year with Teach for America, in his classroom at Leadership Prep in Bedford-Stuyvesant. Credit... Fred R. Conrad/The New York Times

“Ten years ago, this would have been an incredibly tough sell,” Dr. Steiner said.

Education school deans say they are grateful that groups like Teach for America, which recruits heavily among recent college graduates, and N.Y.C. Teaching Fellows, which attracts young professionals seeking to change careers, have managed to rebrand teaching as both sexy and noble. Some in New York have formed partnerships with these programs.

But the deans also say that the charge that they are mired in theory is outdated. Geoffrey L. Brackett, provost of Pace University in Manhattan, pointed to Pace High School in Chinatown, which the university created in 2003 and functions as something of a laboratory for the university’s education school. “You have our students at the graduate level being placed in that high school, but you also have current teachers working with our faculty on best practices and innovation,” he said.