Diversifying the Urban Teaching Force

In response to a growing nationwide teacher shortage, amid concern that not enough minorities were joining urban teaching staffs, the DeWitt-Wallace Reader's Digest Fund launched the Pathways to Teaching Careers Program in 1989. Since then, Pathways has trained more than 2,200 teachers from backgrounds not traditionally tapped by schools of education.

The Pathways program seeks to promote culturally relevant education. It trains paraprofessionals and non-certified teachers already living and working in schools systems in inner-city communities. This group largely consists of African American and Latino women, mostly married and working full-time jobs at relatively low wages. The program also trains Returned Peace Corp Volunteers (RPCV), who tend to be whites in their thirties with college degrees.

Is Pathways succeeding? Could it serve as a model for larger training programs? Does it offer lessons for a broad revamping of education for teachers in urban areas?

At our First Tuesdays Forum in November, three experts conducting a comprehensive evaluation of the Pathways program sought to answer these questions.

Questions from the Audience

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Beatriz Chu Clewell, principal research associate and Director of Evaluation Studies in the Education Policy at the Urban Institute. "The evaluation has focused on three main questions. First: is the program meeting its overall recruitment goals? Are fellows staying in the program and making steady progress towards their degrees and certification? And third, and probably most important: do Pathways graduates make good teachers? The quick answer to these questions is yes." Ms. Clewell provides details.

Ana Maria Villegas, professor of education at Montclair State University. "What we are learning from the Pathways program is helping to redefine traditional notions of effective teaching. By drawing on the knowledge of minority communities, Pathways scholars are successfully engaging students of color in learning. From Pathways participants, we are finding out a great deal about what culturally relevant teaching entails."

Nancy Sharkey, research associate at the Urban Institute. "Let's take a look at the Pathways scholars and their retention rates and progression through the program. Again, we have good news to report."

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Beatriz Chu Clewell, principal research associate and Director of Evaluation Studies in the Education Policy Center at the Urban Institute, has had more than 20 years experience in program evaluation. Previously a senior research scientist at the Educational Testing Service, she says Pathways has been successful in a number of areas.

"The initiative grew from a handful of pilot sites in 1989 to 40 sites around the country. The DeWitt Wallace Fund's investment grew from $250,000 to $50 million by 1997. There are now Pathways programs in 25 states."

"The programs are successful in recruiting teaching candidates, most of whom are making progress toward certification and persisting in the program. And of those who have begun teaching we have evidence that they are well prepared for the classroom."

"As the nation continues to grapple with educating a rapidly changing school-age population, we should look to what has worked and use the knowledge that has been acquired to inform our efforts. The Higher Education Act recently passed by Congress, for example, recognized Pathways as a model for teacher recruitment."

"One of the lessons learned from Pathways is that there are nontraditional pools that can be tapped successfully as a source of teachers of color and other teachers. But efforts to do this cannot rely solely on the old model of pre-service teacher education. New models such as Pathways and other programs out there must be developed to meet the specific needs for non-traditional teachers."

"The Pathways evaluation is ongoing. We have two more years of data collection. In addition, at the request of the DeWitt-Wallace Fund, the evaluation team will be producing materials to help with the replication of the Pathways model."

Ana María Villegas, professor of education at Montclair State University, is a former researcher at the Educational Testing Service. She has conducted studies on culturally responsive teaching and written widely on assessing teacher performance in a diverse society. She says Pathways is expanding the knowledge base for teacher educators to prepare future teachers of all backgrounds to teach in a multi-cultural society.

"The Pathways initiative was intended to provide us with models that, with careful documentation, we can now make available for replication elsewhere. So, the potential for a much bigger impact is certainly there. As we move toward the end of the funding cycle, much of the focus is on institutionalizing these programs. From there, we hope to learn a lot about what can be done elsewhere to implement Pathways-like programs."

"Pathways is beginning to motivate traditional teacher-education programs to change their curricula. Individuals who have been in schools, like the paraprofessionals...many of whom who have been there for 15 to 20 years...and emergency certified teachers, who are experienced in their own ways after a couple of years of dealing with classrooms of children, bring questions that the tradtional teacher-education student does not raise. The kinds of questions that they raise and, the scenarios that they present for discussion have elevated the conversation, have grounded it in reality that previously was missing. I guess what we're seeing is a change that is having a spillover effect on the teacher-education curriculum as a whole."

"It's really focusing teacher education much more on what one sees in urban schools. The participants are bringing up very serious questions that were previously avoided or ignored in much of the preparation of the teachers."

Nancy Sharkey, research associate at the Urban Institute, is a former teacher in the Long Beach United School District who is working on a number of educational assessment projects at the Institute. She points out that the project has been particularly successful in attracting and training male teachers and notes that the retention rates for Pathways teachers are far higher than in traditional training programs:

"The Pathways program serving paraprofessionals and non-certified teachers had a very strong retention rate of 81% through May of 1998. The retention rate for the Peace Corps Scholars is 87%. This is notable given the fact that the retention rate for students in traditional teacher education programs is only 60%."

"In addition, you have to remember that almost all the Pathways scholars are working full-time and have many family responsibilities. Obviously, they are motivated and commited to the idea of becoming teachers."

"This is an impressive set of findings. It gives us confidence that programs like these can effectively recruit and prepare non-traditional candidates for teaching positions."

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Who They Are: Peace Corps Fellows

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Who They Are: Paraprofessionals/Noncertified Teachers

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Questions from the Audience

Michael Usdan, Institute for Educational leadership

"We have to pay much more attention to the questions of mainstreaming initiatives like Pathways into the institutions that are going to be around long after the model program projects have vanished."

Beatriz Clewell: "I totally agree with you. One of the things that the DeWitt-Wallace Reader's Digest Fund has done is to provide funds to institutionalize Pathways. It's very rare to see a foundation do something like this. They are very committed to the mainstreaming of Pathways."

Nancy Sharkey "Pathways acts as a catalyst for increased collaboration between school districts and teacher education schools so that the schools can work with the school districts to identify the districts' needs and that is something that hasn't happened very much before."

Sam Cargile, DeWitt-Wallace Fund

"There is a challenge to sustain the programs once the Fund's support is no longer available. I have just spent the past two weeks visiting some of these sites and I'm really encouraged about their taking on the challenge of now institutionalizing the program. For some of them, that has meant shifting from developing the program which they have done for the past few years now, to turning those same energies towards institutionalizing. But they are working very hard with us to meet that challenge."

Delabian Rice-Thurston, Parents United for D.C. Public Schools

"How long do these teachers stay, if salaries are not competitive with other occupations?"

Beatriz Clewell: "We are collecting retention data once they are in the classroom. There's not a critical mass of them out there yet. Anecdotal data show they seem to be staying."

Penelope Engel, Educational Testing Service

"How does the Pathways program help provide these new teachers with academic bacgrounds for teaching?"
Ana Maria Villegas: "We're hearing more about the importance of having colleges of education work in partnerships with liberal arts and science programs so they can provide some of the content expertise needed."

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