The projected need for two million new teachers within the next eight years has led to a concerted nationwide effort to increase the teaching workforce. K – 12 enrollments are expected to increase steadily in the next few years while, at the same time, many current teachers are reaching retirement age or leaving for more lucrative opportunities in other fields. Urban and rural school districts are already feeling the pinch.
In addition to the shortage, the teachers who do work in public schools are increasingly unlike the students they teach. While students of color now compromise one-third of school enrollments, the public school teaching force is only one-tenth minority.
An innovative teacher recruitment, training and retention program, called Pathways to Teaching Careers, offers a successful model for recruiting new teachers from non-traditional pools, including paraprofessionals, uncertified teachers, and returning Peace Corps
volunteers. A six-and-one-half year Urban Institute study of the Pathways program shows that this model promises a creative and cost-effective approach to solving the teacher shortage, while also increasing the diversity and retention of new teachers. When former paraprofessionals are recruited into the Pathways program, the results are especially encouraging. Our January First Tuesdays Forum explored the Pathways study findings and revealed the unique ways in which this program utilizes a "common sense" approach to finding, training, and mentoring a new, high-quality teaching workforce.
Panel Highlights | Questions from the Audience | Full Transcript
Selected Resources | Charts on Pathways Study Results
Highlights
Beatriz Chu (Toni) Clewell, Urban Institute, Pathways Study Co-author:
(View charts used in presentation)
"....certainly one of the things that the
study has shown us is that recruiting new teachers from nontraditional sources
is an effective way of increasing the national supply of teachers. It's not
going to solve the whole problem, but it will go a ways towards doing that.
It shows us that there's a pretty large pool of nontraditional individuals out
there who have both the desire and the ability to become effective teachers for
both urban and rural high-need areas. Federal, state, and local policies,
therefore, should support programs that recruit from nontraditional pools as a
way of increasing both the numbers of teachers for high-need areas, and the
diversity of the teaching pool.
A second implication from our findings is that paraprofessionals are a rich
source of potential teachers. This was a big surprise to us. We did not expect
to have them do that well, as well as they did. If they're selected carefully
and given appropriate support, as they were in Pathways, paraeducators are as
likely as other nontraditionals to complete a teacher education program and
become effective educators, and two additional benefits are accrued from
recruiting paraprofessionals. One, they're more likely to teach and to remain
in teaching in high-need areas, and second, they're also more likely to be
members of racial/ethnic minority groups. So federal, state, and local teacher
recruitment initiatives should make a serious effort to include
paraprofessionals in their efforts. [Paraprofessionals'] greater likelihood of
remaining in teaching in high-need areas more than offsets the higher cost of
preparing them for certification.
A third implication of our findings is that the Pathways model, which provides a
program of preparation and support specifically tailored to nontraditional
groups that are being served, is an effective and affordable way — and we haven't
talked too much about affordability — but it's an effective and affordable way to
increase the size and diversity of the teaching force. I would characterize it
as an alternate route to teacher preparation and certification, rather than an
alternative certification program. It's not an alternative certification
program, because participants really do have to go through and fulfill all the
requirements that all other teachers or teacher education students do.
This program, with outcome data to substantiate its effectiveness, merits wide
replication on national, state, and local levels. We've already seen the
federal government did provide funding to replicate Pathways in some areas. A
small amount of funding, not a lot.
Our last implication that we can draw from these findings is that recruiting more
candidates from racial/ethnic minorities into teaching can help stabilize the
teaching force in urban school districts. If selected carefully, enrolled in
teacher education programs that work in partnership with high-need districts,
and given appropriate preparation, candidates from these racial/ethnic minority
groups are likely to choose to teach in settings that are urban and high need,
and to stay in their jobs longer than the average teacher. So federal, state,
and local initiatives that are designed to improve the conditions of urban
schools should give serious thought to working with and recruiting teachers of
color...."
Christine DeVita, President of Wallace-Reader's Digest Funds (Pathways Program Funder)
"As you all know, shortages of high-quality teachers, particularly in high-need schools, is not a new issue. Many of our lowest-performing schools are plagued with high teacher turnover and a great number of noncertified teachers. So often the kids who need good teachers the
most don't get them. As we considered this problem in the late 1980s, we wondered if perhaps part of the answer was to look for teacher candidates from nontraditional sources. Was there another pipeline that could be found that would identify good teaching candidates who were already committed to the high-need schools and the kids that they served?
We found two such pipelines. One was returning Peace Corps volunteers, who had
already demonstrated by their choices a commitment to service, and whose work
abroad had already put them in situations of working in high need. The other
was the noncertified teachers and paraprofessionals already working in those
high-need schools.
The program was designed carefully, we thought, and eventually involved, as Toni
said, 40 sites in 23 states. At each site, certain things happened across the
board. First, there was a partnership that was created between the school
district that was actually employing these paraprofessionals and noncertified
teachers, and the university that was in the business of training them to
become good teaching candidates. The school district identified the areas where
they were experiencing teaching shortages so the new teachers could be prepared
in the subject areas the school districts needed most, thus increasing the
employment potential upon program completion.
Candidates went through a very rigorous selection process and received scholarships that
enabled them to complete their studies and gain certification. And finally, the
university itself provided an innovative but rigorous teacher education
curriculum, as well as other support services for these candidates as they
progressed through their studies.
Then the $64,000 question was, so what? Does this work? Will these folks become good
teachers? Are they going to remain in the teaching profession? And, most
importantly, will they stay in the schools that really need them? Is the model
affordable?
Those are the questions that we hope to learn from the Pathways study conducted by
the Urban Institute, and the answers to those questions are what we're here to
share today.
Evelyn Dandy, Project Director, Pathways Program at Armstrong Atlantic State University, Savannah, GA
"This Pathways to Teaching Careers Program has been a godsend to Armstrong Atlantic State University. It's just one of an example of 40 other programs around the nation that use the very same components, very much the same components. The program recruits, selects, screens, trains, supports, collaborates on placement, and then provides induction services for noncertified school district personnel — that is, paraprofessionals, paraeducators, teacher assistants, substitute teachers, secretaries, cafeteria managers — who have already demonstrated excellent work records in the school district, and they all maintain a commitment to return to that school community once they've completed their certification requirements.
The program is a partnership, a collaborative, that unites school district
personnel, and university personnel into an advisory committee that governs the
selection, the training, the subsequent placement of certified teachers; in our
case, it was primarily minorities, African Americans. We have a strategic
screening process that has selected only 1 in 10 — we've had over 1,000 inquiries,
but we've only brought in 108 scholars, we call them — in a three-tiered
application process....
The significant feature of the program, and one of the most significant features of
the program, is the support that it provides for the students as they go
through the traditional university teacher education program. We provide 80
percent tuition scholarships. We purchase textbooks....We provide advisement
tutorials, networking among the scholars, who really are like a family. We put
them into cohorts, so they can help one another and work with one another, as
one of the scholars is going to tell you in just a few minutes.
We provide workshops for them on how to move from being a paraprofessional to
being a professional. And in turn, they must contract — they sign a contract to
maintain a certain grade point average, to attend all the program activities,
and to teach in the local high-need schools for at least three years following
their earning a certification, or they have to pay us our money back.
As a result of the program and support, we've been able to document significant
gains, as you will see.... Forty-five percent of our graduates exit with a 3.0 or
higher, and that is indeed impressive for a group of scholars, African
Americans, who are going through a rigorous teacher education program at a
predominantly white institution....
....As teachers, the scholars clearly distinguished themselves as leaders. Of the 66
who were certified and placed in classes as of last December, 61 have remained
in teaching, and this represents a 92 percent retention rate. Sixteen have won
their school's nomination for teacher of the year, 11 have earned their
master's degree, and two are doctoral candidates....
The Pathways program has been a recipient of university system awards in teaching
excellence and in student retention. We've been featured on National Public
Radio, CBS Radio, and World News Tonight with Peter Jennings. The program has
been the subject of a 30-minute documentary done by NEA, and it has appeared on
the Learning Channel in their School Stories series. We've won Harvard
University's Innovations in American Government award. That has certainly
opened doors for us, and ....enabled me to help others, other institutions,
replicate our program."
Jannis Glover, Pathways Graduate and New Teacher, Savannah, GA
"I became involved in the Armstrong Pathways to
Teaching program because I wanted to make a difference in the lives of
children. This desire developed as I was a paraprofessional in the
Savannah-Chatham County public schools. I became keenly aware that teaching
really does touch the lives of children forever, and I wanted to be an agent of
change for these children.
I had the desire to go back to college, but not the means. Family and financial
responsibilities loomed as barriers to my returning to school and completing a
degree. The Pathways initiative at Armstrong came as an answer to my prayer.
While a scholar, I dared to dream dreams. I was challenged to dare to be
different, to be innovative and effective in meeting the needs of culturally
diverse urban students. Under the expert, and I would say divinely inspired,
guidance of Dr. Evelyn Dandy, I was nurtured academically, spiritually
motivated, and given the support to complete my degree. I graduated in 1997
with a 3.76 grade point average.
One of the most significant developments as a scholar was the evolution of close
bonds and camaraderie between myself and other scholars in the program. We
established a network of support while we labored with classwork and with
balancing our personal lives while attending classes. The network is still
functioning, as it is not uncommon for any of us to call upon each other for
assistance, whether it is advice for the classroom, or a shoulder to cry on
when the increasing difficulties of teaching children loom before us.
Since completing my degree, my life has changed drastically for the better. I want to
share with you just a few things that have happened to me. I was awarded the
Savannah-Chatham County Sally Mae First Class Teacher Award in my first year of
teaching. I, and many other scholars, have been nominated by our schools as
teacher of the year. I was nominated three years in a row. I presented at an
international conference on reading in Stavanger, Norway, and the paper I
presented was published in Literacy Challenges for the New Millennium, which is a publication of the 11th European Conference on Reading. I've co-chaired two national conferences of Pathways scholars. More recently, I've been asked to be a part of an advisory board for the national Pathways alumni group.
I guess, most significantly to me, is that I have been, since 1998, enrolled in
the Breadloaf School of English Graduates summer program, and have had an
opportunity to study primarily at Lincoln College, Oxford, England, where I
will receive my masters degree this August. Near and dear to me also is my
nomination to participate in the Disney American Teacher Award program last
year. And this nomination was most dear to me because a former student named me
to participate in this prestigious competition. And that indicated to me, as so
rarely happens to teachers, that I had indeed made a difference in this
student's life...."
David Imig, President, American Association of Colleges for Teacher Education
"First of all, I want to praise the Wallace Fund
for this initiative. I think that what the (Wallace Fund)had the courage to do
is to build a capacity in 40 institutions that now can be replicated across the
country to respond to an enduring need that this country experiences. It
enabled schools of education to strengthen preparation programs; it enabled
those programs to refocus on diversity aspects, and to build culturally
responsive programs; and it enabled those schools of education to track and
support recent graduates, and to support induction programs for people. It is a
significant investment, and it is one that needs to be highlighted. It needs to
be highlighted in the context of what is happening in the policy community in
this town.
I think there is a recognition now on the part of both the political right and
the political left that teachers do make the difference; they make the critical
difference in the learning of children. There is a consensus, from the Urban
Institute to the Education Trust to the Fordham Foundation, that we need to
invest in teaching and in teachers, and that we need to find ways to attract
more — and more able — teachers to the classrooms of America.
No Child Left Behind has a number of messages for us....The bill suggests that by
2005 we will have no emergency certificates in this country, we will have no
provisionally certified teachers, we will have no permanent substitutes — that
indeed we will have no paraprofessionals without at least an associate of arts
degree. The kinds of expectations that the Congress has written for us are
extraordinary, and the need to transform the way that we prepare teachers, the
way that we serve teachers, the way that we provide professional development,
is just enormous....
....What I think that this Pathways project holds for us is a set of models that school
superintendents and urban school boards can now replicate. And one of the
things that I am going to commend to my colleagues, both within the counsel of
chief state school officers and in the principals and superintendents group, is
that they begin to explore the Pathways model as a model to respond to the new
federal mandates, because indeed Pathways is a viable way, it is a viable
training model, and it needs to be looked at."
Questions from the Audience
Karl Russo, U.S. Treasury Department
"....It looks like you tried to address one of the
issues of supply into this market for teachers and trying to come up with
additional ways of pulling people in. It seems that one issue might be barriers
to entry, in the fact that the traditional certification process may keep
people out of the system who might otherwise go in, especially people who have
established careers perhaps, who would work 20 years doing something else, who
might have the content information to be able to teach a class in, say,
mathematics or something like that, but might not have the teaching courses.
....have you looked at any ways of trying to come up with an alternate to the
traditional certification process, or if you have looked at that, what made the
determining factor to decide to just pull people into the traditional system
through this alternative means?
Christine DeVita, Wallace-Reader's Digest Funds:
"A great portion of our applicants did already have a degree, they just didn't
have the money to go back to school. So we facilitated their entry into the
program. They went through the strategic screening process, and they did then
sort of take an alternative path, but within that alternative path was a
traditional program. There are certain courses that are required by the state
that they must take. And so, yes, I would say about 50 percent of our people
already had a degree of some kind. And they went through the program and they
did just fine. Obviously a person who has had more college experience will have
an easier time going through a teacher preparation program, because they're
familiar with the territory."
David Imig, AACTE
"As many in this room are aware, there's a mindset in town currently that suggests we can do away with teacher certification, that there are other means or there are other
vehicles that we should be supporting. That again comes from a variety of
sources, both on the right and on the left. In a compulsory school system, such
as we have in this country, the state has certain minimums that it has to
guarantee the public and the citizens of a state, and one of them, I believe,
is the quality of teachers in those compulsory public schools.
Now, what should be the criteria? Congress has said what those should be: You have to have an
academic degree. To teach in a secondary school, you have to pass a state test
and you have to be certified. For elementary teachers, you have to have a range
of subjects, and you have to have skill in teaching and in assessing. Those are
now state mandates that Armstrong and every other institution in this country
has to comply with.
What is happening in schools of education, as is happening in a variety of alternative routes to certification, is that there are all sorts of different configurations, or
different routes, or different ways of getting to that certification level. In
some places those programs have been condensed. The most outrageous one I've
heard is there is now a two-day program: "If you read you can teach" I think is
the message. But there is a balance, and what is that balance is something I
think states and state agencies and various people are seeking right now.
The National Association of State Boards of Education is seeking right now to put together a
panel that would try to come up with reasonable definitions of what, in fact, a
certification process might look like. Flexibility, getting more people in,
accommodating the needs of urban schools in particular, but also rural schools,
are goals that we have. I think this is an enormous challenge, and it's a
challenge that's going to continue to be there. But the one thing that I wanted
to make sure happens is that we provide a high-quality teacher for every kid in
every school in this country, starting on day one. No more high school
graduates teaching in our poorest schools in the name of substitutes or whatever
we call it. We have to have high-quality teachers, and we collectively have to
work to ensure that."
Toni Clewell, Urban Institute:
"Thank you. To answer the second part of your question, as I mentioned,
Jennifer Rice King did a cost study that was pretty detailed, and I'll just
quote from it. There's a low estimate and a high estimate for noncertified and
Peace Corps. For a public institution, the low estimate to produce a teacher is
$7,380; the high estimate is $21,713. For a paraprofessional, which naturally
is going to cost more because they usually just have two years of college and
they have to make up that additional two years, the low estimate for a public
institution is $14,814, and the high estimate is $22,855. Okay. Now, that's
available, you can get it on the Web, and the total study, cost study, is on
our Web site.
Jennifer is here, by the way, I don't know if she wants to add anything."
Robert Lerman, Urban Institute "It seems like there were, as I see it,
kind of three components: the selection, the funding of the tuition and the
school expenses, and then kind of the service components which involved all
this orientation and group support and so on. And I wondered if Evelyn and
maybe (Toni) could comment on which of those you saw as most critical. I mean,
isn't it the case that we do have some federal funds that provide grants and
loans for low-to-moderate income people? And then, finally, I wasn't quite
clear on exactly how much time the different people spent in the program to
reach the certification."
Evelyn Dandy, Pathways Program Director: The amount of time varies depending upon
how much educational experience that they've had, number one. For a B.A.,
probably a year and a half to two years, it would take for them to complete the
program. For an A.A. probably four, sometimes five years, depending on whether
they could go full-time or part-time. Now, for the population that we're
looking at, student loans are significant. A lot of times these are midcareer
people who already have their quota of loans in other areas. Many times they
can't afford another loan, or they don't have enough credit to get a loan. So
the financial part is significant.
But in addition to that is the support that's provided to help them get through the morass of
advisement, registration, finding the right professor to go to, finding the
right support resources on campus, going through financial aid, working with
the bookstore. And what we did was we oriented people all over campus in every
service area on campus, the library, everywhere. We brought them in, we told
them what our program was all about. Now this is a predominantly white campus
that is bringing in African Americans, so the first idea was, are they going to
lower our standards? And so I had to assure them at every throw that standards
would not be lowered, that this program required standards to it, and so forth.
So I think the support is significant, both financial and educational and
emotional. I think that's probably the most significant thing that we have in
our program.
Of course, the collaboration was important because you can prepare teachers, but they might
not be ready for the right subject area. So the close collaboration that we had
with the school district was significant because they could tell us "We need a
teacher in this school in this subject area," or "Here is a key person who has
a good background, just doesn't have the money to go to college" — the principal
would suggest a person. So we had members of the school district then sit on our
advisory committee, so that they then became a part of the program, so that
they would take ownership of the program. So that was key, too. I just couldn't
tell you which one is most significant. Every on of those features — I mean, this
model works. So every one of the features is essential."
Rachel Kelly, The Education Trust: "My question is kind of confusing I think, but what I'm wondering is, if you're going to adopt this model over the widespread educational system, in many different institutions, you would need
some sort of standardized curriculum for teacher preparation, would you not?
And, if so, how would you implement that nationally? Do you see what I'm
saying?"
David Imig "The opportunity to
build a standardized curriculum across the country, in fact, is under way.
We're doing it in a variety of ways: Accreditation helps to serve that purpose,
something called the Interstate New Teacher Assessment and Support Consortium
does that, in terms of setting certain expectations for every program in the
country, so we're well along in the process of building a common curriculum
that is, in fact, offered.
What Pathways does is, in some sense, take that rubric and then begin to suggest that within a particular school of education, you will have a track for former Peace Corps
volunteers, you'll have a track for paraprofessionals, and so that there are
various programs within.
In College Park, the last time I counted, there were something like 20 different ways that you could become a teacher, some with this amount of credits, some with that, some with
certain or particular durations of time, but all intended to facilitate the
maximum attainment of the state expectations at the lowest possible cost to the
student, toward the end of ensuring a high-quality teacher for every classroom.
And if you want to talk more about it, I'll be happy to do so."
Glenda Partee, American Youth Policy Forum "I appreciate your
issues to impact the pipeline piece. My question has to do with the conditions
of the teaching profession once you get in there, which is the other side of
the coin. What do you do in the Pathways Program to prepare the potential
teacher for those conditions, and what do you do in the follow-up piece to
either mentor them or convey information to the district or the school to help
them?"
Christine DeVita "Since we take our
people from noncertified school district personnel, they already know the
conditions that exist. They don't have any illusions about what teaching is all
about. And so what we do is, we develop a cohort, and we try to place at least
two scholars in each school. Whenever we place them, we try to put some of them
together so that they can provide support for one another. And then we train
our scholars who have graduated — Jannis can tell you we train our scholars.
Once you are in a Pathways program, you're in it for life. So we train our
scholars to mentor other teachers, so that those people who have gone through
the program then become mentors for the new people who are coming into the program.
The first three years of teaching are hard in many cases, I'll be honest, and
so we try to provide that different kind of support for the people to keep them
there. I think that's why our people stay, because they already know what
they're getting into."
Jannis Glover, Pathways Graduate and New Teacher: "Let me just add a little bit to that, if I may. Specifically, the Armstrong program provided so much support that even now after five years from graduating, I'm always a Pathway scholar. Assistance from anyone is only a
phone call away. We still have Armstrong professors who will come out and come
into your room and provide advice, or just provide any support that you
possibly need, and it is because of the reputation of the program within that
college that they afford those support models to us."
Glenda Partee: "I appreciate what you're saying. I guess my
question had as much to do with what you said as with about how you prepare
them to change the conditions of education. What you've said to me is you've
prepared them to put up with it and go forward. But it seems like you're a
change agent here, and you have an opportunity to build in some kind of change
agent through your relationship with the district, and through your
relationship with the new teacher."
Evelyn Dandy "One of the second
rounds of funding that we received from DeWitt Wallace was to be a leadership
institution, and in that leadership grant we received money to help our
scholars earn their master's degrees. And so we are taking them beyond the
bachelor's level. They are really becoming leaders now because they have earned
their master's degree, a lot of them are great group chairpersons. We have one
that's an assistant principal now. So we nurture them all the way through the
process, and just encourage them to go on and get higher degrees. And as they
get higher degrees, they're getting old but some of them are ready to move out
of the classroom and take administrative positions. And that's the way,
hopefully, we're going to really have them make a chance, when they become the
leaders."
Steve Silver, Public Education Network "I just want to ask
if you intend to or have collected data on the effect that Pathways teachers
have had on student achievement?"
Toni Clewell "No, we have not. We
considered that, but as all of you know it would have taken probably a much
longer time; it probably would have doubled the period of the evaluation
because we'd have to wait for several years after people had completed their
program. So we have not collected data.
We thought that looking at getting principals' ratings was a good substitute. That's certainly been done by some very reputable researchers. Dick Murnain, for example,
used that in his study of the New Haven teachers, and there's a high
correlation between principals' ratings of teachers and their students'
scores."
David Imig "I'm sure that if
Christine wants to give the Urban Institute some more money to do this, in
fact, it is possible. In the state of Georgia, you now have a mandate that
Armstrong, in fact, has to track their students, and show, in fact, the
performance gains by teachers or their graduates.
Now, as that gets played out in Georgia, that's going to be one of the first states that's
actually going to have that data. Whether you can disaggregate it back to
particular teachers and particular classrooms in its current form, I don't
know, but that's certainly where the state of Georgia is going. So it might be
interesting, if Christine would like to give you some more money to do it."
Christine DeVita: "Right. We're working for that. But we have,
early on, tried to look at the effect of attendance on the scholars, and we've
gotten some early data from a school district that says that our scholars, if
we compare them to regular teachers at that grade level, their children seem to
have a higher attendance rate."
Toni Clewell "Well, anecdotally, we actually went into each one of these programs and talked to principals who had Pathways scholars teaching in their schools. More than one principal said to me, 'I can prove to you that the achievement scores of these kids are
higher.' I didn't take them up on it."
Michele Titi, Peace Corps' Fellows USA Program
"By way of commentary about our program, I would just like to put in a plug and say that
when my colleague, Dr. Cary Ballou and I visit our sites and we talk with the
people in the school systems; as though they had been scripted, whether they're
in Prince George's County, Maryland, or in New York City, or out on the Hopi
Reservation in Arizona, their cry is, ‘Send us more, send us more Peace Corps
fellows as teachers.'
But I have a question that's not about Peace Corps fellows. I wondered, perhaps from Dr. Clewell or Dr. Dandy, from your research or your experience, have you any idea why the paraprofessionals stay in the high-need schools? What are some of the factors? Did you learn any of the factors that keep them there?"
Toni Clewell: "I think we probably have some."
Christine DeVita: "They have roots in
the community. They know most of the parents of the children they teach.
They're motivated by the salary because it's almost triple [their original]
salary. I mean, most paras make $10,000
to $12,000 a year. In their first year of teaching, they may $26,000,
$30,000 a year. So they have a motivation there because they're improving
themselves. And they've been to the mountaintop; they already know what this
thing is all about. You know, a lot of them do have families, family members
who have been teachers, so it's sort of in their blood. And they demonstrate a
commitment. They have what is called resiliency. As you heard from the poem
that Jannis wrote, this is not an easy task: to go to school if you're a
paraprofessional. It's not easy to have family, a full-time job, and children,
and go to school and still maintain above a 3.0 GPA. So these people have
demonstrated their commitment."
Michele Titi: "I would also like to add, our returning Peace
Corps volunteers have other options, they have more options than paraprofessionals
who are in a community already and committed to that community have. So that
probably accounts for part of the reason."
Katherine Kravetz, American University "Could you provide a
breakdown of how many of these teachers go to elementary primary schools and
how many go to secondary schools, because I would think at the secondary level
there might be other issues."
Toni Clewell "I think most of them are in elementary schools. I think we do have a breakdown. In the meantime, let's see, I will look for that. And also, for example, the great
majority of the Peace Corps fellows tend to go into high school, whereas the
people in the other two types of participants tend to go into elementary
school.
I will look for it in the meantime — oh, here it is. Okay, I have it by race: 3 percent are in pre-K, 73 percent are in elementary, and 21 percent are in secondary."
Dewayne Morgan, University System of Maryland "Actually, my
question piggybacks on the question that was just asked. I'm particularly
concerned about the issue of secondary education recruitment. Are there
strategies that you have noted in the report that institutions aren't doing?
Because I particularly know the situation in Maryland, it's the secondary
education that we really see the shortage, the need for teachers in those
shortage areas. So are there strategies that are found in the Pathways model
that we might address that particular sector?"
Toni Clewell "Well, I think probably by looking at the strategies that were used by the Peace Corps fellows component of the program would be the ones you would look for, because school districts that had shortages, for example, in math or science, actually worked
with programs that recruited Peace Corps fellows who had math or science
majors. So that is certainly something that is a model that could be looked at,
recruiting people and working with them, people who have bachelor's degrees, or
even higher degrees in those areas where you have a shortage."
Frank Sobel, U.S. Department of Education "The program I am in
is called Comprehensive School Reform, and it funds schools to adopt models.
Among the things that we've learned is that the adoption of models tends to be
a pick-and-choose among elements. Another thing that we've learned is one person's
model is another person's fiction, if you will. So this is advice.
Your booklet has categories of things to do. In pushing for larger trials of the
Pathways, it would be better to have, if you will, case studies that lay out
what the programs really are, because otherwise people will take them and say,
"I have a Pathways model," and Pathways people, who know it, will go in and
say, "But you're missing this, you're missing this, and you're missing this."
So, it's just a recommendation to maybe go to some of your sites and develop
case studies where they lay out in more particular detail what it is they do
and how it works."
Toni Clewell: "That's a very interesting observation. Actually, we do have case
studies of each of the programs. We have not published them, but we do have
in-depth case studies of each program."
Nicole Vartanian, U.S. Department of Education "I have a comment
and a question, and the comment is to just piggyback on the question about
student achievement data. I would just really encourage you to pursue that
funding for that piece, because I know in the strategic plan that the
department is about to finalize, their teacher quality piece has a lot to do
with student achievement and the programs that they're sort of excited about
have that connection made. So, I would encourage you to pursue that.
Secondly, as a graduate of a traditional four-year teacher education program — actually, Dr. Imig, at the University of Illinois — so I guess I'm very impressed with your program, and certainly, again, the administration is very interested in programs like this. I just happened to wonder if you, Dr. Imig, could speak to what you think the implications are for
colleges of education in trying to maintain the presence that they've had and
not sort of become marginalized in the future?"
David Imig: "Talk to the person in front of you; she can share Illinois stories
with you.
I think that the most exciting thing in my world is the fact that there are all sorts of experiments underway. Armstrong would be a classic case of a traditional institution that
now has a laudable set of programs that they're offering students: different
lengths, different durations, different clinical settings, different kinds of
professors, different emphases, different kinds of criteria. So that, as a
pattern, is everywhere very common.
People continue to characterize it as traditional versus alternative, but I always like to point
out that the first 250 FIPSI grants that were given to alternative preparation
programs; more than 200 of those were given to schools of education, so that the
largest source of alternative programs — and in fact there are some people in
this town who find this alarming — that most of the alternative programs are
currently housed within so-called traditional [programs].
I don't know what Illinois has — maybe Carolyn knows — but I know that at that institution there is a very aggressive positioning of that program across a range. I mean, there's a Peoria Program, there's a Chicago Program, there are different kinds of models
and variations of different duration. That's the way that schools of education
are responding. That's the only way we're going to stay in the market."
Toni Clewell "We only have time
for maybe one more question. Our time has run away from us. Does anyone have a
final question or comment?"
Maurice Williams, American Association of State Colleges and Universities:
"I just have one question to ask. I would like to know what is being done to
recruit more males in the teaching profession, particularly in low-performing
school districts? And I guess the second question is, why is this such a problem?"
Toni Clewell: Well, I'll tell you one program that's doing very well in
recruiting males, and that's Troops to Teachers, because they recruit military
personnel, retired or retiring military personnel. The Peace Corps program was
pretty good also in recruiting males. But the reasons for that — teaching is
traditionally a woman's occupation. I don't know if Evelyn wants to comment on
that.
Evelyn Dandy ".... the salary is prohibitive, you know. I mean, it's difficult to raise a family and do all the things that a man has to do, I guess, on a teacher's salary. And we've recruited — 25 percent of our people are males, and we started out focusing on African-American males. When we had African-American males apply to our program, regardless of
what their GPA was, we tried to bring them in. We tried to make every effort to bring them in and keep them in because we know that that was the essential focus. And we have a strong cohort of men who are in our program and who are
leaders.
But, after a while, I mean, they are working as coaches, and they have to find a way to supplement the salary, the deplorable salary that teachers have."
Toni Clewell: "Well, thank you very much for coming, and let's have a round of applause for the participants."
Selected Resources
Absence Unexcused: Ending Teacher Shortages in High-Need Areas
Authors: Beatriz Chu Clewell and Ana Maria Villegas
The projected need for 2 million new teachers within the next eight years has spawned a number of efforts to increase the teaching pool. With K-12 enrollments expected to mushroom well into the new century, and the current crop of teachers either retiring or leaving the teaching profession for other jobs, states and local school districts are scrambling to ensure a steady supply of high-quality teachers. For many of these school districts - especially those in urban areas, where it hurts the most - the teacher shortage has already arrived. And these shortages are intensified in selected fields, such as bilingual education and special education, and in subjects such as mathematics and science.
Published: December 1, 2001 Availability HTML | PDF
New Teachers From New Sources
Author: Beatriz Chu Clewell (Washington Times, 5/31/01)
As the Senate inches toward closure on the education overhaul bill set in motion by President Bush's proposals, Republicans and Democrats have sidestepped a critical issue - getting more and better teachers into the classroom. The debates over testing, vouchers and state vs. federal control have overshadowed the need to remedy the national teacher shortage and to improve teacher quality. Unless both sides of this dilemma get immediate attention, the likely payoff for other educational reforms in the bill will be greatly diminished.
Published: May 31, 2001 Availability HTML
Ahead of the Class
Author: Beatriz Chu Clewell
Poor, high-minority urban schools, in particular, currently suffer critical shortages of teachers as a result of high turnover and the reluctance of teachers to take jobs in such schools. Aggravating the complexity of this problem, students of color are expected to constitute a majority of all K-12 students in the United States by 2035. Yet almost 90 percent of the current teaching force is white, a proportion not expected to diminish significantly in the near future.
Published: February 1, 2000 Availability HTML | PDF
Diversifying the Urban Teaching Force
Author: The Urban Institute
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. 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.
Published: November 3, 1998 Availability HTML
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