Transcript
Also Available:
Welcome and Introduction
Remarks by Marshall Smith
Remarks by The Honorable Chaka Fattah (D-PA)
Panel on GEARUP
Panel on LAAP and Distance Learning
Luncheon
Panel on Title II Teacher Quality
Wrap Up Session
M. Timpane: We're going to proceed without break to the next panel session, which has to do with improving teacher quality, recruitment and preparation, all of which are encompassed by Title II of the Higher Education Act. My distinguished panel I will introduce very briefly and all at once, so that we can have an uninterrupted time together.
Terry Dozier, who also will speak first, and must I know leave at some stage, is a special adviser on teaching to the Secretary of Education Dick Riley, and has been so for six-plus years now. Before that, she was a high school teacher in South Carolina and the National Teacher of the Year while in that capacity. And while she began I think as someone to promote dialogue and communication among and between teachers and policy makers, she's become far more than that and sits at the heart of an extensive policy development process which has emerged in the department over the past several years around the questions of teachers and teacher education and of which Title II is just the latest part.
Next to her is David Imig, who has been — roughly speaking — has been the chief executive officer of the America Association of Colleges of Teacher Education — roughly forever. [Laughter.]
D. Imig: Thanks, Mike.
M. Timpane: [Laughs.] So long that it took the unfortunate happening of the gentleman's passing for anyone to remember who had this job before David did. And David is a highly regarded and much-loved figure in the Washington policy scene and obviously will represent the perspective of the schools of education and the people who train them.
On my immediate right is Barnett Berry, who is starting a regional center — an offshoot of the National Commission on Teaching and America's Future in North Carolina; has paid particular attention to the policies and capacities of the states in that region to respond to some of the opportunities that are present in this act and will speak about that. He is also, as has everyone I've mentioned so far, been a teacher himself earlier in his career.
Next on over is Ed Crowe, who is the director of the Title II Teacher Quality Programs in the Department of Education, who will be supervising the effort to award the considerable resources that will be going out for us to take advantage of this opportunity. Ed — a confluence of North Carolina influence. Ed had his doctorate from the university of North Carolina at Chapel Hill as well in political science.
And finally, on my far right, is Sally Clausen, who is the president of Southeastern Louisiana University. She has taught at both the K to 12 and higher education levels, been Louisiana's Commissioner of Higher Education and Secretary of Education, among other things, and has given a great deal of leadership to this and associated issues having to do with her university's relationship with the region she serves. So those are our five panelists. Each has a distinctive perspective.
And I will just say one more word about the opportunity that Title II presents. First of all, it's the rediscovery by the federal government of a mission that it used to think it had. And was wrong. David wasn't really head of AACT forever, because it was I think perhaps even longer ago that the federal government was interested actively in these issues: teacher corps, teacher centers, education professional development at, all disappeared from the repertory. And this is an issue that the federal government has been unhappily absent from for a very long time. And it's obviously a time of great need and opportunity, which I believe that Terry will cover and tell us about in more detail.
It's also a time in which people are deeply concerned about the relationship of higher education with the schools. And to a decade or more of skepticism about the performance of the schools has been added perhaps an even deeper skepticism about whether or not higher education is going to be able to be of any significant assistance to the schools. So in the larger realm of education policy, it's an extremely salient issue at this time.
So with that context in mind, let's just begin right away and ask Terry Dozier to begin to set the policy, history and framework for us, from her position in the Department of Education. Terry.
T. Dozier: Thanks, Mike. As Mike said, my role changed pretty dramatically in 1997. I was asked to leave the department's initiative to ensure a talented, dedicated and well-prepared teacher in every classroom, one of the goals that the president laid out in his 1997 State of the Union address. And in that capacity I'm responsible for coordinating everything that the department does around teacher development and to promote excellence in teaching.
We started by designing, developing a strategic plan. and you're going to be getting a copy. We have basically six objectives, the first of which is to strengthen the recruitment, preparation and support of new teachers. And clearly, when we looked out our six objectives — the other ones focusing on strengthening standards for the profession, improving professional development, strengthening school leadership kind of the traditional role — research, development, dissemination and increasing awareness and measuring our progress around teacher quality — it was very clear, as Mike said, that the federal government really had not done very much to address that first objective in a very long time.
Kind of coincidentally, we had an opportunity to begin to address this, with the reauthorization of the Higher Education Act that was scheduled before Congress in 1998. And so we began thinking about this.
While we had that as a policy vehicle, it was far from certain that in fact, we would be able to put some federal focus on the front end of teacher development, because, as Mike pointed out, although there has always been a piece in the Higher Ed Act that deals with teacher development, in 1992, when the Higher Ed Act was reauthorized, it was reauthorized with a multitude of small, disconnected programs that really represented kind of everybody's best ideas and then some, and had generated virtually no support.
Although authorized at $446 million, only one program in 1997 was actually funded, a very small minority teacher recruitment program at $2.2 million. So, as Congress began to think about and focus on the administration on the reauthorization of the Higher Ed Act, I need to set some context about why suddenly — because we had this lack of interest and involvement in supporting teacher quality, teacher education — suddenly did things turn around.
I think there were a number of factors. First was the fact that as a nation, we had committed — and every state, really — had committed to raising standards for students. This was an effort that was underway in all states. It had been sustained.
And very quickly, policy makers were beginning to understand — it took them a while, but at all levels — that if we were going to raise standards for students, we had to focus on the teachers who would be delivering those standards. If we were going to make sure that the students that potentially will attend UC Riverside have the background that they need, the knowledge and the skills, we have to make sure that the teachers can teach to these higher standards.
I think also in 1996, there was a very important report that was issued by the National Commission on Teaching and America's Future, chaired by Governor Hunt. The commission had spent two years studying the teaching profession and had uncovered some very disturbing facts, and identified basically five major barriers to successful education reform directly related to the quality of our teaching force. And again, you'll get copies of this.
But very quickly: painfully slipshod teacher recruitment; major flaws in teacher preparation — which, of course, would be our focus; unenforced standards for teachers; inadequate induction for beginning teachers; and finally, the lack of professional development and rewards for knowledge and skills for our teaching force. So that was another factor. This was a much-publicized report, disturbed many people as they looked at the findings.
The third factor was, quite honestly, the changing demographics of the American teaching force, and what appeared to be a looming crisis on the horizon. According to the National Center for Education Statistics, we will need to hire more than two million teachers in the next decade. We've got about a million teachers ready to retire in the next five years, we've got the largest student population in our schools in the history of our country.
Over half of the two million teachers needed will be first-time teachers — newly prepared teachers. So it was clear that the quality of our schools in the next century would rest, to a large degree, on the q