2004 Summit on High Quality Teacher Preparation

Summit Update: High Quality Teacher Preparation

Our goal is to mobilize the leadership of college and university presidents, provosts, and deans of education and arts and sciences to accelerate and sustain the reform of teacher preparation programs on their campuses.

The National Commission on Teaching and America's Future (NCTAF) convened an invitational summit about quality teacher preparation on June 28-30, 2004. The summit was sponsored by Carnegie Corporation of New York. There were fifteen participating institutions that sent campus leadership teams composed of the President or Provost and the Deans of Education and Arts and Sciences to the summit. The objectives of the summit included:

• Forming a national leadership coalition for high quality teacher preparation
  Working with a small number of selected invitees - the chief executive or provost and the deans of education and arts and sciences from more than a dozen colleges and universities on:
  • implications for the preparation of teachers of the latest research on the science of learning and the impact that teaching has on K-12 student achievement
  • the vital role of campus leaders in preparing high quality teachers
  • specific strategies that you can use to support your own effort to prepare high quality teachers
• Crafting a national call to action for greater involvement in our nation's schools by the higher education community

Post-Summit Activities

• What's Happening at the Institutions

Summit Overview

• Summit Summary Report
• Summit Agenda
• Campus Annual Work Plan
• Summary of Remarks by Diana Natalicio, President, University of Texas at El Paso
• Summary of Remarks by Nancy Zimpher, President, University of Cincinnati
• Remarks by Daniel Fallon, Chair, Carnegie Corporation of New York were drawn from two papers; one on teacher education and the other focused on a case study of a paradigm shift in teaching and learning.
• Summary of Remarks by Nick Michelli, University Dean for Teacher Education, City University of New York
• Creating an Effective Coalition: The Policy Context for Preparing High Quality Teachers, by Nick Michelli
• Summit Participant Bios

Pre-Summit Reading Materials

• Teaching for the Future: Fostering the Twin Abilities of Knowing How to Learn and Think Critically, a commissioned paper written by Diane F. Halpern from the Berger Institute for Work, Family, and Children at Claremont McKenna College.
• Connecting the Assessment of New Teachers to Student Learning and to Teacher Preparation, a commissioned paper written by Patricia A. Wasley and G. William McDiarmid from the College of Education at the University of Washington.
• A self-assessment tool that was designed to help institutional teams reflect on their strengths and challenges, and to highlight targeted areas for improvement.
• A Call for Teacher Education Reform; a 1999 report of the AASCU Task Force on Teacher Education.
• To Touch the Future: Transforming the Way Teachers are Taught, a 1999 report prepared by the ACE Presidents' Task Force Report on Teacher Education. The report addresses what college and university presidents can do, in their roles as academic and institutional leaders, to transform the quality of teachers serving the nation's classrooms, and why presidential leadership is so crucial to the success of this venture.
  • (The report also includes a resolution on teacher education from the Association of American Universities in the appendix.)
• A 1987 letter from the then President of Stanford University, Donald Kennedy, on behalf of 37 colleges and universities. This letter was sent to underline the long history behind efforts to seek greater presidential support for institutional involvement in the teaching profession as an important tool to improve the nation's schools.
• Promising practices that were submitted by seven of the participating institutions that attended the National Summit.
• A suggested list of website resources.