The National Commission on Teaching and America's Future is a nonprofit organization dedicated to providing every child with competent, caring, qualified teachers in schools organized for success.
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Create strong learning communities in schools.
Close the gap between teacher preparation and practice.
Support professionally rewarding teaching careers.
Develop authentic teaching standards and learning assesments.
From Teaching Organizations to Learning Organizations: How the Structure of School Must Change
This week, NCTAF Co-Chair Richard Riley and his longtime adviser, Terry Peterson published an editorial in Education Week, calling for a bipartisanship approach to fixing our nation’s education system. Twenty-five years since the release of A Nation at Risk, Riley and Peterson stress we must reflect on what we have learned and where we must go.
Riley and Peterson emphasize that the structure of schools must change in order to meet the needs of 21st century learners. NCTAF is currently working with education leaders in South Carolina to develop “Inside Out Learning Centers.” These 21st century schools will provide a new vision for learning by extending the school day/year; flexible schedules for students and teachers; cross-generational teaching teams; student achievement based on mastery; and virtual programs. These efforts will be combined with community services that address conditions that often prevent children from learning, such as inadequate medical, mental-health, and dental care.
In addition to the work being done in South Carolina, this week The Community Agenda for America’s Public Schools was launched. The Agenda stands upon the core belief that communities and schools are fundamentally and positively connected. It is important to realize that bridging school and community resources helps students broaden their skills, and addressing the needs of the whole child are critical for achievement.
Do schools have to have community partners to be effective? What role do community organizations play in your local schools?
Watch Richard Riley and South Carolina State Superintendent Jim Rex comment on 21st century education!
Over 1.7 million teachers – 53 % of our workforce – are Baby Boomers, rapidly approaching retirement. They will take decades of experience and expertise with them, leaving a growing number of inexperienced, highly mobile teachers to fend for themselves. This demographic shift has the potential to cause a school staffing collapse in some districts and states.
The stand-alone teaching model, which assumes a lifetime commitment to teaching, is no longer viable. We need to replace that model with cross-generational learning teams that create new roles for veterans and novices: coaches, mentors, lead teacher, and apprentices, interns or adjuncts for example. This new model would also create attractive opportunities for non-teaching Boomers who are eager to pursue an Encore career in education.
Imagine a project in which a team of teachers and students take on the challenge of designing a state-of-the-art high school for 2050. The students must create a site plan, design architectural drawings, construct a physical model, develop a plan for community approval, draw up a budget and write a narrative report. Think about the wealth of knowledge students could acquire if we engaged retired architects, engineers, accountants, lawyers and community leaders in learning teams with these students.
To meet the needs of today’s students and teachers we need to transform our schools from teaching organizations into learning organizations.
How will your manage the Baby Boom retirement. Is your school, district, or state ready to embrace cross-generational teaching and learning?
Backpacks are full, lunches are packed and classrooms have been newly decorated. All across the U.S. students are going back to school – their pencils are sharpened ready to take notes as they gear up for state mandated tests later in the year. Educators hope that this is once again the start of a year where their respective school makes AYP and sees significant increases in student achievement levels. Of great concern are the nation’s lowest performing schools. These schools typically have high concentrations of inexperienced teachers who are too often unprepared for the challenges they face. The teacher dropout rate is often higher than the student dropout rate. These struggling schools rarely close the teaching quality gap, let alone the student achievement gap, because they are constantly rebuilding their staff. As teachers head for the exits they cite poor preparation, insufficient classroom support, and inadequate opportunities for career advancement.
With huge numbers of young teachers leaving the profession, it’s obvious that we need to make some drastic changes – including how we attract and prepare candidates to the ways that we support and develop their strengths/skills. A good place to start is with teacher preparation. If our K-12 students are to develop 21st century skills necessary for success in a global economy, their teachers need 21st century teaching skills. We need world class teacher preparation programs—a good model to replicate are the teaching residencies found in places like Boston, Chicago, Montclair, N.J., Long Beach, CA and Washington, D.C. Teaching residency programs build effective teams of teacher candidates who observe and work alongside veteran teachers in specially selected training academies. The candidates integrate their daily classroom experiences with what they are learning from formal teacher education courses that are held on-site at their academy. By learning and working in teams, similar to the medical residency model, candidates come out prepared to “hit the ground running” when they take on their own classrooms.
The teaching residency model also allows teacher candidates to become familiar with the needs of the school community/district they will work in and gain invaluable insight from outstanding, veteran teachers on how to work through teaching challenges. This model is working in urban areas, and has great promise for rural districts where isolation can be a barrier to attracting , training, and retaining top-notch teachers.
Do you think the teaching residency model is the answer to teacher preparation programs?
Education may be low on the political radar screen this election season. But 1,000 public school students in Chicago decided to draw national attention to the city’s school funding inequities by boycotting classes on the first day of school.
The Christian Science Monitor reports that “Chicago’s mayor, school superintendent, and other officials condemned the boycott, saying skipping school sends the wrong message. But organizers say it's a desperate situation that calls for drastic action – and that the issue grabbed front-page headlines for the first time in years, due largely to the theatrics of the boycott.”
These students, their families, and the broader community seem to be saying loud and clear, “Enough”! Now that they have the attention of city officials, it will be interesting to see how these leaders respond.
