Reforming Teacher Education

A week ago I participated in a conference at the University of Texas at Austin. There were about a hundred participants. The goal was to begin a conversation about what teacher education should look like for digital age learners and share that with policy makers, and leaders in teacher preparation.

You can see the materials and presentations on the conference website.

It was interesting and frustrating. It became clear to me that without a clear picture of K-12 education in the digital age; without the vision for restructured public education, it's almost impossible to develop a new model of teacher education. There was consensus that the notion of the teacher as expert on everything needs to be changed, but that was about as far as we got. If we don't know what education should look like, how can we say what the teacher education programs should look like?

There were very interesting discussions. There's a lot of data, and I believe there's actually a great deal of interest in reforming teacher education, but that can't be done without reform of what is now referred to as K-12 education.

Teacher education programs are in part measured on their ability to place graduates into teaching roles. That means the graduates have to fit in to the current culture and design of education in our schools. Today many teacher education programs want to prepare their graduates to teach in technology-rich environments, but that's not often the reality they experience. So, if that was the focus of a teacher education program there might not be a good fit with a teaching job. Then fewer graduates would be hired and the program wouldn't be as well regarded. What would happen if teacher education programs started preparing their graduates for a really restructured eduction system?

I'm back to the proposal I've made before. I want to pull together a group to create a new vision for education in the 21st Century. Once that is developed, then bring together another group to create the infrastructure to enable that vision. Developing the infrastructure involves more than just a redesigned teacher education program, there are policy implications, facility design, and more. I just need to find the funding.

When Innovation Isn't Innovative (or WI3)

October 6 Secretary of Education Duncan announced ED's priorities for grants under the $650 million Investing In Innovation Fund (I3). I'd recommend you read the regulations yourself to see what strikes you about the proposed regulations and associated grant making. The regulations were posted on October 9 for a 30 day public comment period.

I was excited by the title Investing In Innovation. There has been little educational innovation funded over the past 8 years. I was looking forward to seeing new ideas for teaching and learning being encouraged.

the Investing in Innovation Fund focuses on four key assurances, or education reform areas, that will help achieve this goal: (1) Improvements in teacher effectiveness and ensuring that all schools have effective teachers, (2) gathering information to improve student learning, teacher performance, and college and career readiness through enhanced data systems, (3) progress toward college- and career- ready standards and rigorous assessments, and (4) improving achievement in low-performing schools through intensive support and effective interventions.

Then I read the proposed regulations. Two of the categories, Scale Up, and Validation require that a proposal focus on programs that have already been shown to be successful. The third, the Development Grants section does provide limited funding for ideas that have not been tested.

There's no definition of Innovation, nor is there a sense that ED is really interested in innovation since most of the funding will go to activities that have a proven record of success.

In order to be eligible to submit a proposal, either by an LEA (local educational agency a.k.a. school district) or non-profit, the entity must have a proven record of "significantly closing the achievement gaps between groups of students." There is also a required 20% in-kind contribution from non-federal funds.

The regulations, as proposed, make it very difficult to generate any innovative ideas that could significantly improve the way we educate our youth. Basically ED is asking for a retooling of existing ideas. That doesn't fit my expectation for investing in innovation.

The 20% in-kind funding makes it impossible for many school districts or non-profit research and development organizations to submit a proposal.

As of today, 10 days into the comment period, there were 20 comments posted prior to mine. Though when I submitted my comments the system said it could take weeks before the submission appears online. I hope and encourage you to add your voice to the public comments.

There are many elements of the proposed rules and grants that could benefit from comment.

If we don't comment now, we have no right to complain about the final regulations.

The docket ID for making comments is ED-2009-011-0012

But who's funding innovation?

I was interested in this quote in an announcement I recently received...

"Resources should only be devoted to innovations supported by scientifically-based research." said Scott Elliot, President of SEG Research. "The Department of Education and schools should be funding proven innovations."

The requirements for the I3 Fund that will fund educational innovation in the schools were announced by by James H. Shelton, the Assistant Deputy Secretary for Innovation and Improvement in a speech given last week in Washington, D.C. Shelton called for the educational community to "get beyond the anecdotes" and indicated that innovation grant proposals should be supported by "rock hard evidence".

I know that there have been educational programs that have been touted with nothing more than anecdotal information to support their success, but I wonder where new innovative approaches to education will come from, if the only programs to be funded are those that already exist.

I know innovation is defined locally, and programs that are old-hat in one location can be innovative in another. but, there are new technologies and new applications being developed continually. How do those get to become proven successful programs if no one is willing to take a risk?

In a book

I'm one of the subjects of this book... you can read about me pages 24 - 31

More Than Title IX

How Equity Education has Shaped the Nation

By Katherine Hanson, Vivian H. Guilfoy & Sarita Nair-Pillai

Women in America have come a long way in the last one hundred years, from lacking the right to vote to holding some of the highest profile positions in the country. This change, however, did not come without struggle. More Than Title IX highlights the impact one of the most powerful instruments of change—education. The book takes readers behind the scenes of some of the most influential moments for gender equity in education and tells the dramatic stories of the women and men who made these changes possible. The narrative blends historical analysis with dynamic interview excerpts of people whose actions made a difference in both educational equity and in the country as a whole. By showing how hard-won changes in education have improved life for women in America over the past century, the authors remind readers not to take these freedoms for granted.

More Than Title IX explores the history of well-known educational initiatives such as Title IX and affirmative action, as well as lesser-known movements such as the Women's Educational Equity Act. This accessible overview of the women's movement in the U.S. includes a glossary of key terms and initiatives from the past one hundred years, as well as a Gender Equity Timeline charting turning points in gender relations from the 1500s to the present.

ROWMAN & LITTLEFIELD PUBLISHERS, INC.

www.rlpgbooks.com