|
 |
The
Teachers We Need and How to Get More of Them
Have you
decided to sign this manifesto? Please click here.
For a
list of signers as of November 2001 click here.
Overview
U.S. schools aren't producing satisfactory results, and this
problem is not likely to be solved until U.S. classrooms are filled with
excellent teachers. About this, there seems to be a national consensus.
How to get from here to there, however, is the subject of far less
agreement. Our purpose is to suggest a more promising path than many
policymakers and education reformers are presently following.
The
good news is that America is beginning to adopt a powerful, commonsensical
strategy for school reform. It is the same approach that almost every
successful modern enterprise has adopted to boost performance and
productivity: set high standards for results to be achieved, identify
clear indicators to measure progress towards those results, and be
flexible and pluralistic about the means for reaching those results. This
strategy in education is sometimes called "standards-and-accountability."
It is a fundamental aspect of the charter school movement, and it
undergirds many versions of "systemic reform" as well.
The bad news
is that states and policymakers have turned away from this commonsensical
approach when trying to increase the pool of well-qualified teachers.
Instead of encouraging a results-oriented approach, many states and
policymakers are demanding ever more regulation of inputs and processes.
Other modern organizations have recognized that regulation of inputs and
processes is ineffectual and often destructive. There is no reason to
believe that it will be anything other than ineffectual as a strategy for
addressing the teacher quality problem.
We conclude that the
regulatory strategy being pursued today to boost teacher quality is
seriously flawed. Every additional requirement for prospective teachers --
every additional pedagogical course, every new hoop or hurdle -- will have
a predictable and inexorable effect: it will limit the potential supply of
teachers by narrowing the pipeline while having no bearing whatever on the
quality or effectiveness of those in the pipeline. The regulatory approach
is also bound, over time, to undermine the standards-and-accountability
strategy for improving schools and raising student achievement.
A
better solution to the teacher quality problem is to simplify the entry
and hiring process. Get rid of most hoops and hurdles. Instead of
requiring a long list of courses and degrees, test future teachers for
their knowledge and skills. Allow principals to hire the teachers they
need. Focus relentlessly on results, on whether students are learning.
This strategy, we are confident, will produce a larger supply of able
teachers and will tie judgments about their fitness and performance to
success in the classroom, not to process or impression.
The Problem
We know that better quality teachers make a big difference. We
know this from decades of research and from the experience of millions of
families. Recent studies in Tennessee, Boston, and Dallas, inter alia,
find dramatic differences between the performance of youngsters who are
assigned the best teachers and those assigned the worst teachers.1
No matter how well-intentioned it is, school reform will likely
falter unless more teachers have the knowledge and skills to help all
their students meet high academic standards.
Poor
Preparation
Yet many teachers are unready to meet these challenges.
According to a recent survey, only one in five teachers feels well
prepared to teach to high standards.2 The head of Teachers
College acknowledges that "The nation has too many weak education schools,
with teachers, students and curriculums that are not up to the task at
hand."3 Children who face high-stakes tests for promotion and
graduation will need instructors with more knowledge and skill than ever
before. As many as two million new teachers will need to be hired in the
next decade. Yet our present system for recruiting, preparing and
deploying them is not up to the dual challenge of quality and quantity. We
are not attracting enough of the best and the brightest to teaching, and
not retaining enough of the best of those we attract.4 A third of
U.S. teachers -- two thirds in inner cities -- report that their schools
have difficulty keeping good teachers.5
Lack
of Subject Matter Knowledge
Perhaps the gravest failing of our present arrangement is the
many teachers who lack preparation in the subjects that they teach. While
most public school teachers are certified by their states, extensive
college-level study in the teaching field is not always a prerequisite for
subject area certification.6 Moreover, teachers are often
assigned to courses outside their main teaching field as a cost-saving
measure or administrative convenience, because of shortages in advanced
subjects such as math and science, or because some schools -- such as
those in the inner-city -- have a high turnover of teachers. "Foreign
education ministers who visit me are just stumped when I try to explain
this practice," notes Education Secretary Richard Riley. "Their
translators simply have no words to describe it."7
It
appears, for example, that more than half of history teachers have neither
majors nor minors in history itself.8 More than half of the
youngsters studying physics have a teacher who has neither a major nor
minor in physics. (Is it any wonder that U.S. high seniors trail the world
when it comes to their knowledge of physics?) More troubling still,
children attending school in poor and urban areas are least likely to find
themselves studying with teachers who did engage in deep study of their
subjects.
Today's regulatory approach to entry into teaching
compounds these problems. Because it places low priority on deep subject
matter mastery and heavy emphasis on the things that colleges of education
specialize in, many teachers get certified without having mastered the
content that they are expected to impart to their students.
The Romance of Regulation
For decades, the dominant approach to "quality control" for
U.S. teachers has been state regulation of entry into the profession.
Requirements vary, but almost everywhere a state license is needed to
teach in public schools. To obtain such a license, one must complete a
teacher education program approved by the state, which typically imposes a
host of requirements on these programs.9 Their students are
commonly required to take specific courses (or a set number of courses) in
pedagogy, child development, the "foundations of education", "classroom
diversity", etc.10 Some states require a minimum college
grade point average for entry into the program and many require
prospective teachers to pass standardized tests of reading, writing and
math skills. It is also common, at some point in the process, to test for
knowledge of pedagogy and, sometimes, for knowledge of the subject in
which they will be certified (which, as we have seen, may or may not be
the subject they end up teaching). In addition, these programs typically
require supervised student teaching, which teachers often term the most
valuable part of their preparation for the classroom. This approach
predictably creates a teacher force that is heavily credentialed in
pedagogy, but not in the subject matter they are expected to teach. The
regulatory strategy will intensify these trends.
More of the Same
Today, in response to widening concern about teacher quality,
most states are tightening the regulatory vise, making it harder to enter
teaching by piling on new requirements for certification. On the advice of
some highly visible education groups such as the National Commission on
Teaching and America's Future, these states are also attempting to
"professionalize" teacher preparation by raising admissions criteria for
training programs and ensuring that these programs are all accredited by
the National Council for the Accreditation of Teacher Education (NCATE).
That organization is currently toughening its own standards to make
accredited programs longer, more demanding, and more focused on
avant-garde education ideas and social and political concerns.
Such measures will centralize and standardize the licensure
process even more, curbing diversity in the sources and entry paths
followed by teachers and shifting authority from local school boards and
state agencies to professional education organizations and standards
committees. These groups base their standards and procedures for judging
teacher fitness on the principle of peer review, not on proven
effectiveness with respect to student learning.
It is no surprise
that all this is happening. The regulatory route is public education's
traditional solution. Even business groups proposing to improve the
quality of teaching offer suggestions that partake of the regulatory
mindset. Many vested interests are served and established routines are
enhanced by more regulation.
Shortcomings of the Regulatory Strategy
The regulatory strategy that states have followed for at least
the past generation has failed. The unfortunate results are obvious: able
liberal arts graduates avoid teaching, those who endure the process of
acquiring pedagogical degrees refer to them as "Mickey Mouse" programs,
and over time the problems of supply and quality have been exacerbated.
When a strategy fails, it does not make much sense to do the same thing
with redoubled effort. Yet that is what many states are now
doing.
The present system does not even do a good job of screening
out ill-prepared candidates. While some states have exit exams that
appraise the skills, knowledge and competence of fledgling teachers, in
many others, "quality control" occurs only at the point of entry into a
training program, and entry requirements are low. In a state with no exit
exam, completing the list of prescribed courses and earning the requisite
degree are all that's needed to get one's teaching certificate. Though
many jurisdictions now require future high school instructors to have
majored (or minored) in the subjects that they plan to teach, the content
and rigor of their course work are left entirely to the
colleges.
Where there are exit exams, these often represent a
modest intellectual threshold. Tests given to teaching candidates are
commonly pitched at so undemanding a level -- and their passing scores are
so low -- that they do little to deter individuals with limited
intellectual prowess and scant subject matter knowledge. In Pennsylvania,
for instance, passing scores were for many years set so that about 95
percent of everyone taking the tests passed them.11 Local
school boards can then hire whomever they prefer, often for reasons other
than their academic qualifications.
Standards Askew
What really makes state regulation of entry into teaching so
dysfunctional is not that its standards are low but that it emphasizes the
wrong things. The regulatory strategy invariably focuses on "inputs" --
courses taken, requirements met, time spent and activities engaged in --
rather than results, meaning actual evidence of a teacher's classroom
prowess, particularly as gauged by student learning. It judges one's
"performance" by the subjective opinions of other teachers and professors.
This is the wrong sort of regulation.
Teachers should be evaluated
based on the only measure that really matters: whether their pupils are
learning. This is not pie in the sky. William Sanders of the University of
Tennessee has developed a technique that uses careful statistical analysis
to identify the gains that students make during a school year and then
estimate the effects of individual teachers on student progress. This
"value-added" technique is extremely precise and its results are
statistically robust. Originally used only in Tennessee but now spreading
to other locales, it allows policymakers, taxpayers, and parents to see
for themselves how much teachers are helping students to
learn.12
The technique has proven to be a powerful tool for
evaluating teachers. Sanders finds, for example, that the top 20 percent
of teachers boost the scores of low-achieving pupils by 53 percentile
points on average, while the bottom 20 percent of teachers produce gains
of only 14 percentile points. Researchers in Dallas and Boston have found
the same commonsensical link: good teachers significantly boost student
achievement, even for the weakest pupils.13
Yet few
states focus their teacher quality strategies on results. The instruments
that states are far likelier to use to assess teaching candidates -- input
measures, that is -- are seriously flawed approximations of how good a
teacher one will be. We are struck by the paucity of evidence linking
those inputs with actual teacher effectiveness. In a meta-analysis of
close to four hundred studies of the effect of various school resources on
pupil achievement, very little connection was found between the degrees
teachers had earned or the experience they possessed and how much their
students learned.14 Nor is there any evidence that teachers
who graduate from NCATE-accredited teacher education programs are more
effective than those who do not.15 Today's regulations, and
the additional regulations urged by reformers within the profession, focus
on inputs that display little or no relationship to classroom success.
This is not education reform. This is the illusion of reform.
Shaky Knowledge Base
The regulatory strategy assumes that good teaching rests on a
solid foundation of specialized professional knowledge about pedagogy (and
related matters) that is scientifically buttressed by solid research. In
reality, however, much of that knowledge base is shaky and conflicted. We
should not be surprised that there is no reliable link between pedagogical
training and classroom success.
To be sure, the foundation has
some sturdy spots. There is a scientific consensus today, for example,
about the most effective methods of teaching primary reading to young
children.16 There is strong evidence about the efficacy of
such pedagogies as Direct Instruction.17 Yet much of the
surest and best-documented knowledge about education is ignored, even
denounced, by many approved teacher education programs, while the lore
that they instead impart to new teachers (about favored methods and
self-esteem enhancement, for example) has little or no basis in
research.18 Is it any wonder that people mistrust teacher
education -- or that to rely on it as the exclusive path into U.S.
classrooms is to place the next generation of Americans at educational
risk? The regulatory approach buttresses an orthodoxy that doesn't work.
The regulatory strategy's reliance on peer review assumes, of
course, that good teaching can only be detected via observation by other
practitioners. Thus the National Board for Professional Teaching Standards
has designed an elaborate method for appraising teacher performance and
certifying outstanding teachers. The process is costly and time-intensive.
Yet today we have no idea whether the teachers identified as superior by
the NBPTS are in fact the best teachers as judged by how much and how well
their pupils learn.19 Here as elsewhere, peer review consists
mainly of judging quality by observing inputs and processes, i.e.
appraising a teacher's skill in using conventional (and popular) teacher
practices.
Discouraging the Best and Brightest
Insofar as there are links between teacher characteristics and
classroom effectiveness, the strongest of these involve verbal ability and
subject matter knowledge. This has been known since the famed Coleman
Report of 1966, when teacher scores on a verbal test were the only school
"input" found to have a positive relationship to student
achievement.20 In a recent study conducted in Texas, teacher
literacy levels were more closely associated with student performance than
other inputs.21 In an appraisal of Alabama schools, the ACT
scores of future teachers were the strongest determinant of student
gains.22 These all suggest that recruiting smarter, abler
teachers will do more to improve teaching than requiring more or different
pre-service training.
Yet outstanding candidates are often
discouraged by the hurdles that the regulatory strategy loves to erect.
Burdensome certification requirements deter well-educated and eager
individuals who might make fine teachers but are put off by the cost (in
time and money) of completing a conventional preparation program. One
college senior writes, "What discourages us most are the restrictive paths
to the classroom and the poor reputation of schools of education -- and as
a result, of teaching itself. ...It is the certification process, then,
and not a lack of interest, that steers us away from
teaching."23 The best and the brightest of young Americans
have other career options and will pursue them if the costs of becoming a
teacher are too high. In his February 1999 State of American Education
speech, U.S. Secretary of Education Richard Riley urged state policymakers
to rethink teacher licensing requirements. "Too many potential teachers",
he observed, "are turned away because of the cumbersome process that
requires them to jump through hoops and lots of
them."24
Getting Hired: What You Know vs. Who You Know
What little we know about how those who have been certified
actually land a teaching job is troubling. There is accumulating evidence
that local school boards show little interest in hiring the most
academically qualified applicants.25 Districts often eschew
professional recruiting and screening practices. Instead, they frequently
prefer to hire their own high school graduates after they have become
certified in a local education program, a practice which has been found to
contribute to lower students scores on competency and achievement
tests.26
Few incentives for great teaching
Once teachers have entered the classroom, the regulatory
strategy -- like all such regimens -- prizes uniformity and conformity.
Personnel decisions for public schools are made by central office
bureaucrats according to strict rules. Assignments are often based on
seniority. Rigid salary schedules mean that teacher pay reflects years of
experience and degrees earned rather than any measure of performance, and
salaries bear no relationship to marketplace conditions in the teaching
field. There are few tangible rewards for good teaching. And, because
quality control focuses on the point of entry, and on-the-job teachers are
protected by powerful political interests, there are fewer sanctions for
bad teaching. As the N.C.T.A.F. itself pointed out in What Matters Most:
Teaching for America's Future, "hiring and tenure decisions are often
disconnected from any clear vision of quality
teaching."27
A
Common Sense Proposal: Freedom in Return for Results
As Secretary Riley said in February, "We can no longer fiddle
around the edges of how we recruit, prepare, retain, and reward America's
teachers."28 The time has come to consider radically
different policies to boost the quality of teaching in U.S. schools. In
the remainder of this paper, we advance a fresh view of how America can
acquire more and better teachers in the years ahead.
Holding Schools Accountable
The teaching profession should be deregulated, entry into it
should be widened, and personnel decisions should be decentralized to the
school level, the teacher's actual workplace. Freeing up those decisions
only makes sense, however, when schools are held accountable for their
performance -- truly accountable, with real consequences for success and
failure. The proper incentives are created by results-based accountability
systems in which states independently measure pupil achievement, issue
public report cards on schools, reward successful schools, and intervene
in or use sanctions against failing schools. In private schools today --
and in most charter school programs -- schools are held accountable by the
marketplace while hiring decisions are made at the building level. Public
schools, too, should be accountable in this manner.
Power to the Principals
For principals (or other education leaders) to manage their
personnel in such a way as to shoulder accountability for school results,
they must not only be free to select from a wide range of candidates, they
must also have the flexibility to compensate those they hire according to
marketplace conditions (and individual performance), and they must be able
to remove those who do not produce satisfactory results. Everyone who has
studied effective schools attests to the central importance of a cohesive
"school team" that shares a common vision, and almost everyone who has
studied current teacher personnel systems has witnessed the danger of
tying that school team's hands when it comes to deciding who will join (or
remain in) it.29
Common sense also argues that teachers of
subjects in short supply should be paid more than those in fields that are
amply supplied, that teachers working in hard-to-staff schools should be
paid more than those working in schools with hundreds of applicants for
teaching slots, and that outstanding teachers should be paid more than
mediocre ones. Yet today, the typical public school salary schedule (and
teachers' union contract) allows for none of these commonsensical
practices.
We look forward to the day when great teachers, teachers
in scarce fields, and teachers who shoulder difficult challenges, are paid
six-figure salaries. But this is not apt to happen so long as mediocre
practitioners and superb instructors are harnessed to the same pay scale.
As for the occasional incompetent teacher, the more freedom a
school has in initial hiring, the more flexibility it needs with respect
to retention. That's common sense, too. Yet today's school systems
typically award tenure after a few years of service; thereafter, teachers
are almost never dismissed for ineffectiveness. While teachers should be
protected from abusive and capricious treatment at the hands of
principals, they cannot be protected from losing their jobs for cause.
Union contracts often allow veteran teachers to transfer into a school
regardless of their instructional prowess, the school's actual needs, or
their impact on the school team. Such policies will need to be changed so
that principals can be empowered and made accountable.
School-level managers are in the best position to know who teaches
well and who teaches badly. They have access to far more significant
information than state licensing boards and government agencies. They
should be empowered (and if need be trained) to appraise each teacher's
singular package of strengths and weaknesses rather than having distant
bureaucracies decide who should be on their team. Once hired, teachers
should be evaluated based on the only measure that really matters: whether
their pupils are learning.
A
Market Test
The common sense view acknowledges that there is no "one best
system" for preparing and licensing quality teachers. A review of the
research on the teacher qualities that affect student outcomes is
humbling; lamentably little is known for sure about what makes an
effective teacher, when gauged by pupil achievement. This argues against
mandating any single path into the profession; education schools certainly
ought not monopolize the training of teachers. In any case, teachers
regularly report that the best place to learn about good teaching
practices is on the job and in the company of other good
teachers.
Rather than buttressing an orthodoxy that does not work,
the common sense approach embraces pluralism. In a deregulated
environment, good teacher education programs will thrive and prosper.
Those that do a poor job will not, once they lose the protection that the
regulatory monopoly confers on them. Principals should be able to decide
for themselves whether to hire teachers who have been trained in certain
pedagogical methods and theories.
The popularity of such programs
as Teach for America, which places liberal arts graduates without formal
education course work in public school classrooms in poor rural
communities and inner cities, indicates that the prospect of teaching
without first being obliged to spend years in pedagogical study appeals to
some of our brightest college graduates. Over 3,000 people apply for 500
Teach for America slots each year. Since 1994, more than 3,000 veterans of
the armed forces have also made the transition from military to classrooms
through the Troops to Teachers program.
Alternative certification
programs streamline the classroom entry of more prospective teachers. Such
programs normally require a bachelor's degree, passage of a competency
test, and an intensive (but compressed) regimen of specialized
preparation, often undertaken while on the job. They attract talented and
enthusiastic individuals into teaching who might otherwise be lost to this
calling. Teachers with alternative certification are more likely to have
bachelor's degrees in math and science, two fields with chronic shortages
of qualified teachers. They are also more likely to be members of minority
groups.30 Yet the regulatory strategy would shut down such
programs or force them to imitate conventional education programs.
Where personnel decisions have been deregulated, schools rush to
hire well-educated persons whether or not they possess standard
certification. Private schools routinely employ unlicensed instructors,
which tends to increase the proportion of their teachers who graduated
from selective colleges and gained academic training.31 In
New Jersey, the first state to implement a serious alternative
certification program, from 23 to 40 percent of teachers now enter the
profession through that route.32 The few studies of
alternative certification that have been done find that students of such
teachers perform at least as well as students of conventionally licensed
teachers.33 In New Jersey, alternative-certification teachers
also have lower attrition than traditionally certified teachers during
their first year and are as likely to stay in the field over
time.34
Not All Regulations Are Bad
Trading accountability for autonomy does not mean sloughing off
all regulation. Every child should be able to count on having a teacher
who has a solid general education, who possesses deep subject area
knowledge, and who has no record of misbehavior. The state has an
obligation to ensure that all prospective teachers meet this minimal
standard. Thus states should perform background checks on candidates for
teaching positions. To boost the likelihood that those who teach our
children are themselves well educated, states should require that teaching
candidates have at least a bachelor's degree in some academic
subject.
States should also ensure subject matter competence. There
are two ways to do this: requiring teachers to major in the subjects they
teach or requiring them to pass challenging tests of subject matter
knowledge. Neither method is perfect. Obliging all teachers to major in
the subject they will teach may -- regrettably -- set the bar too low. At
some universities, one can graduate as a history major without learning
much of the history we'd expect a high school history teacher to have
mastered. The same is true of other academic majors. And a minor is
unlikely to reflect any subject mastery. On the other hand, a prospective
teacher who graduates in, say, American studies may have learned ample
history or literature to be an outstanding history or English teacher,
even though his diploma doesn't actually say "history" or "English".
Such variation in college majors tempts us to embrace testing as a
more reliable measure of preparedness to teach. The value of any test,
however, hinges on its content, rigor and passing score. Our instinct is
to set those cut-offs as high as possible. But since tests are an
imperfect gauge of teaching ability, some applicants will fail the test
yet possess superior teaching potential. We all know individuals whose
other qualities would cause them to be effective with children even if
they do poorly on a paper-and-pencil test of knowledge. That is why we are
wary of putting all the education eggs in the testing basket or making a
certain fixed score an absolute prerequisite to being
hired.
Neither academic majors nor subject test scores is a
faultless means of assuring that teachers possess the requisite knowledge
and will be good at delivering it. But either strategy is superior to
today's widespread disregard of subject-matter mastery.
Putting principles into practice
The common sense strategy for improving teacher quality is
surprisingly straightforward: states should empower principals to employ
teachers as they see fit, and then hold those principals to account for
their schools' results. Since every regulation that restricts entry to the
profession excludes some potentially good teachers from public education,
regulation should be reduced to the bare minimum.
What would state
policies look like if based on these assumptions? Four are key.
1) States should develop results-based accountability systems
for schools and teachers as well as students.
States should
have accountability systems operating at the student, classroom, and
building levels. School-level accountability involves measuring pupil
achievement and issuing report cards for schools. Such information should
be disseminated to students, parents and the public. States should reward
successful schools and should have -- and use -- the authority to
reconstitute or otherwise intervene in failing schools. They may also
institute market-based accountability via various forms of school
choice.35 States must also define the role that school districts
will play in these accountability systems.
Principals need
accountability, too. Their jobs and salaries ought to be tied to their
schools' performance. But they need the information by which to hold their
faculty and staff accountable. The state can help by providing student
achievement data, disaggregated by teacher, like those generated by the
value-added system that Sanders developed for Tennessee.
2)
States should empower school-level administrators with the authority to
make personnel decisions.
Authority must accompany
accountability. All key personnel decisions (including hiring, promotion,
retention, and compensation) should be devolved to schools. Quality
control should be the responsibility of school leaders, who have freedom
to hire from a wide pool of teaching candidates and pay teachers based on
marketplace conditions or individual performance. States should pass
whatever legislation is needed to assign all these decisions to the school
level.
Teacher tenure ought not be allowed to interfere. Multi-year
contracts are far preferable. It must be possible to remove incompetent
teachers at reasonable cost and within a reasonable period of time,
without sacrificing their right to due process protection against
capricious and ad hominem treatment.
States should encourage
differential pay so that schools can pay outstanding teachers more. It
should also be possible to adjust teacher pay for labor market conditions,
subject specialty, and the challenge of working in tough schools. A
flexible salary structure would allow paychecks to respond to marketplace
signals while creating financial incentives for excellent teaching and
practical sanctions for poor teaching.
To work well, this system
obviously requires capable principals, education leaders who know how to
judge good teaching and are prepared to act on the basis of such
evaluations. We're not naïve about the supply of such people in management
positions in public education today. But they exist in large numbers in
U.S. society and can be drawn into the schools if the incentives are
right. Executive training for some current principals will also help them
handle this difficult evolution of their role.36
3)
States should enforce minimal regulations to ensure that teachers do no
harm.
States should perform background checks for all teaching
candidates and require prospective teachers to have a bachelor's degree in
an academic field. They should also ensure that new teachers are
adequately grounded in the subject matter they are expected to teach,
either by requiring that they major in the subject(s) that they will teach
or by mandating rigorous subject matter examinations. (They may be wise to
use both mechanisms and also let principals make exceptions when other
compelling evidence is at hand.)
4) States should open more
paths into the classroom, encourage diversity and choice among forms of
preparation for teaching, and welcome into the profession a larger pool of
talented and well-educated people who would like to
teach.
Policymakers should take forceful action to eliminate
monopoly control and challenge "one best system" attitudes toward teacher
preparation. Traditional training programs should be closely scrutinized
for their length, cost, burden and value. Is a two year time commitment
really necessary, for example? States should publish detailed factual
information about individual programs and their graduates, data that
outsiders can use to evaluate their effectiveness. Information about the
effectiveness of recent graduates (as measured by the value-added
achievement scores of their pupils) should be made public; until this is
available, institution-specific data should include the placement rate of
graduates and the percentage of graduates passing state teacher tests.
(Some of this information was mandated by the Higher Education Amendments
of 1998.)
States should expand the pool of talented teaching
candidates by allowing individuals who have not attended schools of
education to teach, provided that they meet the minimum standards outlined
above. States should encourage programs that provide compressed basic
training for prospective teachers. States should also attract outstanding
college graduates to the profession by using financial incentives such as
scholarships, loan forgiveness programs and signing bonuses.
Conclusion
For too long, policymakers have focused overmuch on training
teachers and not enough on recruiting them. They have tackled the quality
problem by increasing regulation and expanding pedagogical requirements,
even though this approach shrinks the pool of candidates while having
scant effect on their quality. Forty years of experience suggests that
this strategy is a failure. It cannot work. Indeed, it has compounded
today's dual crisis of teacher quality and quantity.
We offer
something different. States that reduce barriers to entry will find not
only that their applicant pool is larger but also that it includes many
more talented candidates. Turning our back on excessive and ill-conceived
regulations and focussing instead on student outcomes is the key. To
attract and keep the best teachers, states must also be willing to pay
strong teachers well -- and to muster the necessary resources to do this.
Raising the quality of the U.S. teaching force is an urgent
priority today and some policymakers have begun to signal their
receptivity to change. In his February 1999 State of American Education
speech, for example, Secretary Riley proclaimed, "We must make sweeping
efforts to make teaching a first-class profession. And, then, we must hold
schools accountable for results."37 He later added, "What
else can we do? We can create rigorous alternative paths to give many more
Americans the opportunity to become a teacher."38 We
agree.
Have you decided to sign this manifesto? Please click here.
Thank you! . |
Notes
1
Sanders, William L. and Rivers, Joan C., "Cumulative and Residual Effects
of Teachers on Future Student Academic Achievement," 1996; Heather Jordan,
Robert Mendro, & Dash Weerasinghe, "Teacher Effects on Longitudinal
Student Achievement," 1997; and Boston Public Schools, "High School
Restructuring," March 9, 1998. These research studies were all cited in
Kati Haycock, "Good Teaching Matters a Lot," Thinking K-16, A Publication
of The Education Trust, 3 No. 2 (1998).
2 National Center for
Education Statistics, Teacher Quality: A Report on the Preparation and
Qualifications of Public School Teachers, (Washington, DC: U.S. Department
of Education, January 1999),iii.
3 Arthur Levine, "Dueling Goals
for Education", The New York Times, April 7, 1999, A23.
4
Although teacher "literacy" levels mirror those of other college
graduates, that's not actually saying much; more than forty percent of
teachers scored below "level 4" on the 1992 National Adult Literacy Survey
(NALS), a national assessment of prose literacy, document literacy and
quantitative literacy among adult Americans. For the study, a random
sample of U.S. adults were surveyed and based on their performance on a
set of literacy tasks, were graded as level one through level five.
Individuals scoring at level 4, for example, display the ability to state
in writing an argument made in a lengthy newspaper article (prose
literacy), use a schedule to determine which bus to take in a given
situation (document literacy) and use an eligibility pamphlet to calculate
how much money a couple would receive as supplemental security income
(quantitative literacy). More than forty percent of teachers (and of the
general population) scored below this level on the national assessment.
Barbra A. Bruschi and Richard J. Coley, How Teachers Compare: The Prose,
Document, and Quantitative Skills of America's Teachers, (Princeton, N.J.:
Educational Testing Service, 1999).
5 Carol A. Langdon, "The Fifth
Phi Delta Kappa Poll of Teachers' Attitudes Toward The Public Schools",
Phi Delta Kappan, Vol. 80, No. 8, April 1999, p. 615.
6 Teacher
certification and teacher licensure are used interchangeably throughout
this essay.
7 Richard W. Riley, U.S. Secretary of Education, "New
Challenges, A New Resolve: Moving American Education Into the 21st
Century," Sixth Annual State of American Education Speech, Long Beach,
California, February 16, 1999.
8 Diane Ravitch, "Lesson Plan for
Teachers," Washington Post, August 10, 1998. These numbers can be
difficult to pin down since the NCES sometimes includes teachers who major
in history education as having majored in history.
9 To be sure,
not all teachers pass through conventional teacher training programs. Some
obtain temporary or emergency licenses that allow them to teach before
they have completed all of the normal requirements for certification.
These are normally issued when districts have urgent needs for teachers
that they say they cannot meet with conventional candidates. Some states
also offer alternative certification routes which allow liberal arts
graduates, military retirees and others to teach without having to
complete a full-length teacher education program. Often, however, the
"alternative" programs simply defer the conventional requirements; the
individual may begin teaching but may not continue without taking the
standard courses, etc. In any case, the intensified regulatory approach
outlined in the text would curb the use of alternative programs unless
they conform closely to the model of conventional programs.
10 The
number of required units varies from 6 semester units in Texas to 36 in
some states. C. Emily Feistritzer and David T. Chester, Alternative
Teacher Certification: A State-by-State Analysis 1998-99, (Washington, DC:
National Center for Education Information, 1998).
11 Teaching
candidates needed to answer correctly only a quarter of the questions in
the reading section of the National Teacher Exam in order to pass it. For
a decade, the state set no minimum scores at all in chemistry and physics;
every applicant who took one of these tests passed. Robert P. Strauss,
"Teacher Preparation and Selection: A Case Study of Pennsylvania," Thomas
B. Fordham Foundation Volume on Teacher Quality (forthcoming).
12
Organizing an education system on the basis of student achievement
requires better measures of student achievement than most states have
today (in particular, annual assessments of students in every grade),
though a number of jurisdictions are moving in that direction.
Implementing the principles of this "manifesto" will mean more such
movement. We also recognize, of course, that student test scores can never
be a full or perfect measure of teacher effectiveness; teachers add many
valuable things to students that cannot be captured by any test.
13
Kati Haycock, "Good Teaching Matters a Lot," Thinking K-16, A Publication
of The Education Trust, 3 No. 2 (1998).
14 Eric A. Hanushek,
"Assessing the Effects of School Resources on Student Performance: An
Update," Educational Evaluation and Policy Analysis, Summer 1997, vol. 19
no. 2, 141-164.
15 Dale Ballou and Michael Podgursky, "The Case
Against Teacher Certification," The Public Interest, Summer 1998,
17-29.
16 Louisa Cook Moats and G. Reid Lyon, "Wanted: Teachers
with Knowledge of Language," Topics in Language Disorders, February
1996.
17 Some teachers object to "D.I." methods, but the evidence
indicates that they're effective. See American Institutes for Research, An
Educators' Guide to Schoolwide Reform (Washington, DC: Educational
Research Service, 1999) 4, C12-C18 and and Debra Viadero, "A Direct
Challenge," Education Week, March 17, 1999 pp. 41-43.
18
William Damon, Greater Expectations (New York: Free Press,
1995).
19 The NBPTS reports that a study examining the
effectiveness of its standards is underway.
20 Christopher S.
Jencks, "The Coleman Report and the Conventional Wisdom," in On Equality
of Educational Opportunity, Frederick Mosteller and Daniel P. Moynihan,
editors (New York: Random House, 1972) 101.
21 Ronald F. Ferguson,
"Can Schools Narrow the Black-White Test Score Gap?" in The Black-White
Test Score Gap, Christopher Jencks and Meredith Phillips, editors
(Washington, DC: Brookings Institution,1998).
22 Ronald F. Ferguson
and Helen F. Ladd, "How and Why Money Matters: An Analysis of Alabama
Schools," in Holding Schools Accountable: Performance Based Reform in
Education (Brookings Institution: Washington, DC, 1996).
23
Elizabeth Greenspan, "No Thanks," Teacher Magazine, April 1999.
24
Richard W. Riley, U.S. Secretary of Education, "New Challenges, A New
Resolve: Moving American Education Into the 21st Century," Sixth Annual
State of American Education Speech, Long Beach, California, February 16,
1999.
25 See Dale Ballou, "Do Public Schools Hire the Best
Applicants," Quarterly Review of Economics, February 1996, 97-134 and Dale
Ballou and Michael Podgursky, "Recruiting Smarter Teachers," Journal of
Human Resources, Winter 1995, 326-338.
26 See Robert P. Strauss,
Lori Bowes, Mindy Marks, and Mark Plesko, "Improving Teacher Preparation
and Selection: Lessons from the Pennsylvania Experience," Economics of
Education Review, forthcoming.
27 National Commission on Teaching
and America's Future, What Matters Most: Teaching for America's Future,
New York: National Commission on Teaching and America's Future, September
1996) 14.
28 Richard W. Riley, U.S. Secretary of Education, "New
Challenges, A New Resolve: Moving American Education Into the 21st
Century," Sixth Annual State of American Education Speech, Long Beach,
California, February 16, 1999.
29
The importance of the power to remove teachers is emphasized by the most
mainstream research in the field. Gordon Cawelti, former Executive
Director of the Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development,
concludes in a recent study of what makes schools effective: "A school
seeking a turnaround in student performance must seek out teachers who
want to work in such an environment. A school must also be able to remove
teachers who are unwilling to commit the energy and dedication needed to
make sure that a productive and challenging education is provided to all
children who attend. This policy issue must not be overlooked. Without
committed teachers, you are unlikely to raise student achievement
significantly." Gordon Cawelti, Portraits of Six Benchmark Schools:
Diverse Approaches to Improving Student Achievement, (Arlington, Va.:
Educational Research Service, 1999), 64-65.
30 Jianping Shen, "Has
the Alternative Certification Policy Materialized Its Promise? A
Comparison Between Traditionally and Alternatively Certified Teachers in
Public Schools," Educational Evaluation and Policy Analysis, 19 (3) 1997,
276-283.
31 Dale Ballou and Michael Podgursky, "Teacher Training
and Licensure" Thomas B. Fordham Foundation volume on Teacher Quality
(forthcoming), 13.
32 Dale Ballou and Michael Podgursky, Thomas B.
Fordham Foundation volume on Teacher Quality (forthcoming), 13.
33
Stephen D. Goebel, Karl Ronacher, and Kathryn S. Sanchez, An Evaluation of
HISD's Alternative Certification Program of the Academic Year: 1988-1989.
Houston: Houston Independent School District Department of Research and
Evaluation, 1989. ERIC Document No. 322103. Susan Barnes, James Salmon,
and William Wale, "Alternative Teacher Certification in Texas," presented
at the annual meeting of the American Educational Research Association,
March 1989. ERIC Document No. 307316.
34 Ellen Schech, director,
alternate route program, New Jersey Board of Education, in "No Thanks,"
Teacher Magazine, April 1999.
35 How
extensive a school choice policy will be is determined primarily by state
laws and constitutions -- and of course by politics. The more choice the
better -- including, where possible, private schools -- is the view of
most signers of this manifesto. Some signers, however, believe that
publicly-funded choice should extend only to publicly-accountable
schools.
36 Many
signers of this manifesto are concerned that today's school administrators
-- at the building and central office levels alike -- often lack the
necessary skills and experience to make sensitive personnel decisions
based on student performance and other indicators of effectiveness. A
state moving in the direction mapped by this manifesto would probably be
wise to include this type of in-service training for its current
principals, superintendents, etc.
37 Richard W. Riley, U.S.
Secretary of Education, "New Challenges, A New Resolve: Moving American
Education Into the 21st Century," Sixth Annual State of American Education
Speech, Long Beach, California, February 16, 1999.
38 Richard W.
Riley, U.S. Secretary of Education, "New Challenges, A New Resolve: Moving
American Education Into the 21st Century," Sixth Annual State of American
Education Speech, Long Beach, California, February 16,
1999.
Original Signers
(Organizational affiliations are shown for purposes of
identification only.)
Jeanne
Allen President Center for Education Reform
Leslye
Arsht President StandardsWork
Stephen
H. Balch President National Association of Scholars
Gary
Beckner Executive Director Association of American Educators
William
J. Bennett Former U.S. Secretary of Education Co-Director Empower
America
Wayne
Bishop Professor of Mathematics California State University, Los
Angeles
Polly
Broussard Executive Director Associated Professional Educators of
Louisiana
M.R.
(Mel) Buckley Executive Director Mississippi Professional
Educators
Sheila
Byrd Education Consultant
Tom
Carroll President Empire Foundation for Policy Research
Robert
M. Costrell Professor of Economics University of Massachusetts at
Amherst
Candace
de Russy Trustee State University of New York
Denis P.
Doyle Senior Fellow Hudson Institute
Arthur
E. Ellis Michigan Superintendent of Public Instruction
Hon.
John Engler Governor of Michigan
Bill
Evers Research Fellow Hoover Institution Former
Commissioner California State Academic Standards Commission
Chester
E. Finn, Jr. Senior Fellow, Manhattan Institute President, Thomas B.
Fordham Foundation Former Assistant U.S. Secretary of Education
Howard
Fuller Distinguished Professor of Education Founder and Director,
Institute for the Transformation of Learning Marquette
University Former Superintendent Milwaukee Public Schools
Tom
Gallagher Florida Commissioner of Education
Mary
Gifford Director Center for Market-Based Education Goldwater
Institute
Peter R.
Greer Former U.S. Deputy Undersecretary of Education Headmaster,
Montclair Kimberley Academy
Paul
Gross University Professor of Life Sciences, Emeritus University of
Virginia
Eric
Hanushek Professor of Economics University of Rochester
Eugene
Hickok Pennyslvania Secretary of Education
E. D.
Hirsch University Professor of Education and Humanities University
of Virginia
Joseph
Horn Professor of Psychology University of Texas at
Austin President, The Foundation Endowment
Jerry
Hume Founder William J. and Patricia B. Hume Foundation Former
Member, California State Board of Education
Leo
Klagholz Former New Jersey Commissioner of Education Distinguished
Scholar in Educational Policy Studies Richard Stockton College of New
Jersey
Martin
A. Kozloff Watson Distinguished Professor of Education University of
North Carolina at Wilmington
Lisa
Graham Keegan Arizona Superintendent of Public Instruction
Rita
Kramer Author Ed School Follies
Yvonne
W. Larsen Member and Past President California State Board of
Education
Tom
Loveless Associate Professor of Public Policy John F. Kennedy School
of Government Harvard University
Frank
Macchiarola President, St. Francis College Former Chancellor New
York City Public Schools
Bruno
Manno Senior Fellow Annie E. Casey Foundation Former Assistant
U.S. Secretary of Education
Donald
R. McAdams Trustee Houston Independent School District
Elaine
K. McEwan Retired School Principal The McEwan-Adkins Group
Deborah
McGriff Executive Vice President of Charter Development The Edison
Project Former Superintendent Detroit Public Schools
William
Moloney Colorado Commissioner of Education
James
Peyser Chairman Massachusetts Board of Education Executive
Director Pioneer Institute
Michael
Podgursky Professor of Economics University of Missouri
Michael
Poliakoff Deputy Secretary Postsecondary and Higher
Education Pennsylvania Department of Education
Diane
Ravitch Senior Fellow Brookings Institution Manhattan
Institute Progressive Policy Institute Former Assistant U.S.
Secretary of Education
Nina
Shokraii Rees Education Policy Analyst The Heritage
Foundation
Hon. Tom
Ridge Governor of Pennsylvania
David
Warren Saxe Member Pennsylvania State Board of
Education Professor of Education Pennsylvania State
University
Lew
Solmon Former Dean Graduate School of Education, UCLA Senior Vice
President and Senior Scholar Milken Family Foundation
Robert
S. Spengler Professor (retired), Human Development and Learning East
Tennessee State University
John
Stone Professor of Education East Tennessee State University
Sandra
Stotsky Research Associate Harvard Graduate School of
Education
Robert
Strauss Professor of Economics and Public Policy Carnegie-Mellon
University
Abigail
Thernstrom Member Massachusetts Board of Education
Herbert
Walberg Research Professor of Education and Psychology University of
Illinois at Chicago
Bradford
P. Wilson Executive Director National Association of Scholars
Additional Signers
(Organizational affiliations are shown for purposes of
identification only.)
Julie A.
Anderson Teacher
Bill
Armstrong Teacher, Stillwater Public Schools
William
L. Asbell III English Language and Literature Educator Brattleboro,
Vermont
Sean D. Barnes Engineer/Physics Teacher
Virginia
P. Baxt President Educational Agenda
Gary W.
Beall President Nanocomposite Specialist
Frank W.
Beckendorf Jr. Jefferson Parish Public Schools / Delgado Community
College
Vida L.
Fonseca Belanouane Teacher of English as a Second Language Orleans
(LA) Parish Public Schools
Chandrakant
Bhogayata Department of Education Bhavnagar
University Bhavnagar-364 002 India
Stanley
Bruce Bibbs Parent Former PTO President Former School Board
Member Indianapolis Public Schools
David C.
Bloomfield Co-Chair, National Collaborative of Public and Nonpublic
Schools The City University of New York Graduate School
Mary
Bodtke First Year College Student
William
Bondurant Executive Director Texas Association of Non-Public
Schools Coordinator Texas Private School Accreditation
Commission
John C.
Bowman Director of Research, Texas Public Policy
Foundation Vice-President, National Association of Professional
Educators
Jerry S.
Boyd Assistant Principal
Kevin T.
Brady Social Studies Teacher Consultant New Jersey Core Content
Social Studies Standards Framework
Ann Luise and
William J. Breslin Parents
Matthew J.
Brouillette Director of Education Policy, Mackinac Center for Public
Policy Former Middle and High School History Teacher
Robert
Bruce Victim of Open Area Concept and New Math Canadian parent of
three
William
R. Bryant Director of Development Houghton Academy
Beaman
Bryson Underwood, Iowa
Richard
Bush High School History Teacher
Greg
Cain President, Bradley County Association of Professional
Educators
Winnie
Callahan University of Nebraska Foundation
James M.
Cargal Math Department Troy State
University-Montgomery Montgomery, Alabama
Dan
Carpenter CEO, Priority Search ConsultantsJim Castagna Secondary
Mathematics Education Major University of North Florida
Juanita
Lynn Carpenter Turtletown, TN
Jon
Christensen University of Nebraska-Omaha College of Education
Darrell
C. Cleveland Doctoral Student UNC Chapel Hill-School of
Education
Lisa S.
Cohen Parent
Mark
Cohen Fifth Grade Teacher
Don
Crawford, Ph.D. Western Washington University Dept. of Special
Education Bellingham, WA
Christine
Crooks Educator Alaska Consultants in Education
George M.
Crumpler Social Studies Department Chairman Jack Britt High
School Fayetteville, NC
Dave
DeSchryver Senior Policy Analyst Center for Education Reform
Edwin J.
Delattre Dean School of Education Boston University
Brenda
Demic
Leon
Dixon Member, Munci (IN) School Board of Trustees
Jeanne
Donovan Coordinator Texas Education Consumers Association
Cindy
Duckett President, Project Educate Wichita, KS
Joe
Eichberger Parent
Lucien
Ellington Editor, Education About Asia College of Education
and Applied Professional Services University of Tennessee at
Chattanooga
Karen
Engel Teacher
Fred J.
Ferrazzano Chief Executive Officer Conservative Order of Good
Guys
Julie I.
Fichtner
Carl A.
Fichtner Retired Attorney
Alison Ledger Fraser M. Ed.
Candidate, Harvard Graduate School of Education English Teacher,
Assabet Valley Regional Voc. Tech. High School Marlborough,
MA
Margaret B. Fraser Principal Griffin School Oakville,
CT
Gladys
Frohne Grandmother
Patricia
Gerdes
Henry
Gillow-Wiles Teacher-in-Training
Daniel
Gitzen Future Educator Sterling, VA
John Gould
II Former Teacher
Barbara J.
Green Cobb County Schools
Jeffrey D.
Greiwe Parent, Teacher and Coach Milan Elementary School Milan,
Indiana
Michael
J. Guerra Executive Director Secondary Schools
Department National Catholic Educational Association
Rob
Hamel Freelance Writer
Havelin
Hamilton
Erich
Heidenreich, D.D.S. Charter School in Progress
Maureen
A. Heiss
William T.
Hennessy Author, The Conservative Manifesto (Groton, CT:
Right Press, Inc., 1993)
Christina
Herrara Teacher
Patricia Hassey Hleihel Parent Abu Dhabi
United Arab Emirates
Howard
E. Hobbs Editor & Publisher Daily Republican Newspaper
Viken
"Vik" Hovsepian Mathematics Educator California State Mathematics
Framework Committee Member (1997) California State Curriculum
Commissioner
Jennie
Elizabeth Humphreys Valencia Community College
Evangelos Intzidis Educational Linguist Athens, Greece
Andrew
Jackson, Sr. Instructor of Education College of Education,
Pennsylvania State University
Dorene
A. Johnson U.S. Navy Instructor and Parent
Mr. Gary
M. Johnson Mathematical Statistician
Mark
Johnson, M.A. University of Texas
E. Jay Jones Music
Educator
Marci
Kanstoroom Research Director Thomas B. Fordham Foundation
Jim
Keefe Parent
Jimmy
Kilpatrick Editor EducationNews.org
Sharon
Kinsey Fourth Grade Teacher Fort Worth, Texas
Dawn A.
Kioseff Parent and Research Analyst
David S.
Kioseff Parent and Carpenter Chicago, IL
Bradley
A. Koinis Student Vermillion (OH) High School
Daniel
S. Konieczko Teacher
Sister
Marie A. Kopin Clinical Supervisor and Liaison with Student
Teaching Department of Communication Disorders Central Michigan
University
Rob
Kremer President Oregon Education Coalition
Phyllis
M. Krutsch Regent Emeritus University of Wisconsin System
Jeffrey
A. LaBarre Network Applications Manager Cox, Castle & Nicholson
LLP
Roy A.
Lawrence Ph. D. Candidate in Education Adjunct - University of North
Florida
Christopher Leppin Parent
Lisa A.
Leppin Teacher
Douglas
B. Levene Attorney-at-law
Rhonda
S. Lewis Doctoral Candidate Educational
Administration Pennsylvania State University
Theresa
LiVolsi Parent
James
Lott Consultant Mathematics Education
Doug
Lozen High School Mathematics Teacher
Ed
Lyell Professor of Business and Economics Adams State College
(Colorado)
Robert
H. MacDonald Director, Virginia Center for Career Transition College
of Education, Old Dominion University
David
MacNeill
Ann
Mactier Member Nebraska State Board of Education
Michele
Marotta Secondary Teacher of English
Jeffrey J.
Matula Future Teacher
Mary
McGarr Former Texas Teacher Former Trustee Katy ISD (Katy, TX)
School Board
Chip
McMillan Assistant Professor of Education
Patrick
McWilliams Coordinator for Gifted and Talented Education Summit
County, Colorado Volunteer Evaluator Intrastate New Teachers
Assessment and Support Consortium
Jorge
Mesa-Tejada Vice President Citizens Education Association
Frank J.
Mininni Professor of Philosophy and Humanities, emeritus Marshall
University
Michael
Moe Director of Global Growth Stock Research Merrill Lynch
T. Glenn
Moody Member, Board of Education Kingsport, TN
Deborah A.
Nicotra Parent
Dr. Barbara
S. Nielsen Senior Fellow, Strom Thurmond Institute Former South
Carolina State Superintendent of Education
Lori
Noonan Concerned Parent
Gerard
E. O'Donnell Science Department Chair Eagles Middle School, Boca
Raton, Florida
Diego
Ojeda JC McKenna MS Evansville, Wisconsin
Eric A.
Orn Parent
Chad C.
Osborne Professor of Education Worcester State College
(MA)
James A. Osborne Assistant Principal Paint Valley High
School Bainbridge, OH
Kimberly
Pawling High School Teacher Seminole County. FL
William
W. Pendleton Professor Emeritus Department of Sociology Emory
University
George
F. Pereda Director, Dr. Antonio C. Yamashita Educator
Corps Guam
Christine J. Perry Assistant Principal
Michael
J. Petrilli Former Program Director Thomas B. Fordham
Foundation
Bryan
Price Director, Institutional Research & Evaluation West Liberty
State College
Stanley
M. Pruss Illinois District 53 School Board
Lynne M.
Reder Professor of Psychology Carnegie Mellon University
Georgene
Redmann Mother
Karen
Ribble Parent
Brandon
Rigby High School Senior
Michael
E. Roesch Parent
David R.
Roth Parent
Dr. Joel
P. Rutkowski President The American Voice Institute of Public
Policy
Erwin
Rysz Parent
Yoram
Sagher Professor of Mathematics University of Illinois at
Chicago
Joaquin
Samayoa Director de Investigacion y Desarrollo Educativo Fundacion
Empresarial para el Desarollo Educativo San Salvador, El
Salvador
Beth
Lewis Samuelson Doctoral Student UC-Berkeley Graduate School of
Education
Roberta
R. Schaefer Vice Chairman Massachusetts Board of
Education Executive Director Worcester Municipal Research
Bureau
Mark C.
Schug Professor of Curriculum & Instruction Director Center
for Economic Education University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee
Bret
Schundler Mayor Jersey City, New Jersey
Kelly
Scott Thomas B. Fordham Foundation
C.V.
Compton Shaw Dallas, Texas
Fern H.
Shubert, CPA Former Representative North Carolina House of
Representatives Former Co-Chair North Carolina House Education
Committee
Rodney
L. Shrawder Parent, Teacher-in-Waiting Bucknell University
Amelia
Silver Director for Foundation and Community Relations Bennington
College
Nathanael
Smith Notre Dame University
Brigitte Smith-Hall Future
Teacher
Deborah
Solinas Parent
Julie
Spears Student, Applied Technology and Training
Department University of North Texas
Jason
Spindle 9th Grade Student Washington High School Cedar Rapids,
Iowa
Dan
Stefanich Senior Vice President Boys & Girls Clubs of Greater
Milwaukee
Dennis
L. Stevens University of Nevada-Las Vegas
William
B. Stevens Parent
Richard
A. Stimson Member, Leadership Council for School Reform Warren
County Schools (North Carolina)
Jo-Ann
Thomas Educator
Ginger
Tinney Executive Director Association of Professional Oklahoma
Educators
Marjorie
Toivola NEA/OEA Member Ashtabula, Ohio
Irvent
Rolando Torres Educational and Management Consultant
John
Tuepker History Teacher Long Beach, MS
Lil
Tuttle Policy Analyst The Family Foundation Former
Member Virginia State Board of Education
Mike Van
Ryn Associate Commissioner of Education (Retired) New York
Department of Education
Gerry
Vazquez President New York Charter School Resource Center
Corey D.
Vorthmann Secondary Education Major Central College, Pella,
IA
Donnetha S.
Walker Student University of Detroit Mercy
Chris
Watson College Senior
Richard
C. Webb Parent
Paul G. Weisberg 5th Grade Teacher Cabot
School Newtonville, MA
Richard
D. Western Associate Professor of Curriculum & Instruction
(retired) University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee
Jim
White Member, State Board of Education South Carolina (Ninth
Circuit)
Suzanne
Dale Wilcox Wilcox Consulting
George
Willet Troops to Teachers
Eugene
Williams, Sr. Cofounder The Washington Math Science Technology
Public Charter High School Executive Vice President Comptex
Associates, Inc.
James M.
Windham Chairman Rodeo Insitute for Teacher Excellence Houston,
TX
John T.
Wyeth MS Chemist
Lori
Yaklin Executive Director, Michigan School Board Leaders
Association
Evie
Ybarra-Grosfield
Amanda
N. Zufall 9th Grade Student
Tim
Zukas Parent
Have you decided to sign this manifesto? Please click here.
Thank you!
|
HOME | MAIL | FORDHAM
|
 |