Education & the New Administration

After last week’s historic election, Washington is switching gears to focus on President-elect Obama’s transition to power and his plans once he is sworn in as the 44th president. The major issue on everyone’s minds these days is, of course, the economy. In this morning’s New York Times, Nicholas Kristof writes about the importance of focusing on education, even in these tough economic times. While we at NCTAF and Mr. Kristof may quibble about what exactly should be done to improve education, we could not agree more that education must be a high priority in the Obama administration. Improving the education of our nation’s youth will create adults who are college- and work-ready and able to compete in the global economy.

We hope that President Obama will focus on education as the way to bring sustainable, systemic change and to strengthen our nation’s workforce. Here are a few initiatives that Senator Obama has mentioned during his presidential campaign that we hope he will make a priority as president:

• Improving math and science education: Recruiting more college graduates with math and science degrees to teaching will strengthen the teaching force and deepen the content knowledge of our secondary teachers. In addition, we must strengthen our K-12 math and science curricula to ensure that students graduate from high school with the 21st century skills they will need in a rapidly changing workforce.
• Recruiting teachers: Creating incentives for teachers to teach in high-need schools and subjects will broaden the pool of teachers. Innovative compensation systems will also attract more people to the field and encourage them to grow as teachers. This is especially important in high-need urban and rural schools that struggle to attract the best teachers and whose students need the most support.
• Supporting Teacher Residency Programs: Teacher Residency programs in places like Boston and Chicago have shown strong promise as a way to prepare teachers. With retention rates in the 90% range (while the average 5-year teacher retention rate hovers around 50%), these programs provide teacher candidates with deep clinical experiences that allow them to become successful teachers.
• Supporting mentoring and collaboration: Expanding mentoring time and offering incentives to schools and districts to give common planning time to teachers will create stronger professional learning communities that are able to collaborate to improve education outcomes for students.
• Expanding the role of service and service learning: Creating a way for retirees to engage in service projects will create a cadre of experienced individuals who will bring expertise in their respective fields to improving their communities. An increased emphasis on service learning will allow K-12 students to apply their classroom knowledge in practical applications that also benefit their communities.

As NCTAF blog readers, do you agree that these are the most pressing education issues for President Obama in January? If not, what issues do you think should be his primary focus?

The Future of Teaching

For the past three years, NCTAF and MetLife Foundation have been traveling around the country taking a close look at 21st Century teaching and learning, highlighting best practices and sharing lessons learned. Next week, NCTAF travels to Boston to take a close look at “The Future of Teaching in Massachusetts,” in a forum discussion, featuring education policymakers and practitioners.

Massachusetts Secretary of Education Paul Reville will set the stage for the forum discussion, highlighting Massachusetts’ need to transform teaching in ways that better prepare students to be active participants in a 21st century world. In a column last month, Reville addressed the need for the state’s schools to move forward, stating that most school systems are better suited to the 19th century.

“We must build a stronger, more robust education system, building on the success of the past 15 years of education reform, but addressing the immediate and long-term needs of students with greater urgency,” Reville said. It’s what we need to prepare every child in Massachusetts for success in the global 21st Century economy.”

The forum will also feature some of the best practices from around the Commonwealth, including the Boston Teacher Residency program and Clark University’s partnership with University Park Campus School. For a complete list of panelists and more information, click here.

Earlier this year, we visited Georgia and Colorado where we highlighted some of the promising policies and practices in each state and discussed ways to move the teaching profession into the 21st century. You can watch the forums through the NCTAF web site.

NCTAF will continue to shine a spotlight on best practices and urge the nation to rally around 21st century teaching. How are you transforming teaching in your state?

Going Back to School: For Students and Teachers!

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?

Reinventing Teacher Preparation & HEA

Last week Congress approved the reauthorization of the Higher Education Act. What exactly does that mean for teacher preparation programs and new teachers? How can the combined grant programs improve teacher quality? One Education Week article suggests:

“It could be used to develop teacher residency programs, which would allow students pursuing master’s degrees in education to work alongside mentor teachers…teacher education programs could also use the grants to bolster field experiences for undergraduates and provide support to new teachers during their first years in the classroom, including helping them develop relationships with mentor-educators.”

NCTAF supports teacher residency programs and new teacher induction as a way to prepare, retain, and support effective teachers and keep the best and brightest in the classroom. While new teachers cite many reasons for leaving the profession, the top of that list continues to be school culture and professional working conditions. New teachers feel unsupported and isolated. While the rest of the world operates in teamwork-type model, our schools have yet to make that transition.

States like Ohio, Indiana, New Jersey and South Carolina require and finance mentoring for new teachers, while Boston, D.C. and Chicago have developed teaching residency models to better prepare new teachers for classroom challenges.

Do the provisions of HEA provide an effective answer to teacher preparation problems? What kind of teacher prep initiatives are going on in your state? What do you think the key components are to successful residency and mentoring models?