Teacher Preparation Innovation and Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs) Dr. Leslie Fenwick Howard University School of Education TeachingWorks working papers are unpublished manuscripts that focus on the professional training of teachers. They involve analysis of data or literature and reflect “good thinking” – clear, systematic interrogation of issues critical in the field of teacher training. These working papers are circulated to promote discussion. As such they are freely available to a broad audience interested in the study and improvement of ideas and practices in teacher education. TeachingWorks working papers are subject to a blind review process that focuses on the relevance of the proposed work to pressing problems in teacher education, the transparency and relevance of the methods to the questions asked, as well as the quality of the writing. All submissions should be original. The views expressed herein are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the University of Michigan and/or TeachingWorks. TeachingWorks working papers 2 Fenwick, January 2016 Teacher Preparation Innovation and Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs) Dr. Leslie Fenwick Howard University School of Education Leslie T. Fenwick, PhD is Dean of the Howard University School of Education and a professor of education policy who held consecutive terms as a presidentially-appointed visiting fellow and visiting scholar in education at Harvard University. For more than 20 years, Dr. Fenwick has served in administrative and tenured faculty posts at historically Black colleges/universities (HBCUs). As a noted education policy scholar, Fenwick has been an appointed member of the National Academy of Sciences committee on the study of the impact of mayoral control on school districts and is regularly called upon to testify about educational equity and teacher quality to the U.S. Senate, National Conference of State Legislatures, and the Congressional Black Caucus. Presently, she serves on the national advisory council for the George Lucas Education Foundation (GLEF) and is an immediate past member of the board of directors for the American Association of Colleges for Teacher Education (AACTE). Recently, Dr. Fenwick was appointed to the Scholarly Advisory Council for the Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture (NMAAHC) which will open in 2015. Dr. Fenwick is a contributor to the best-selling book, The Last Word: Controversy and Commentary in American Education, which boasts essays by former President Bill Clinton and noted historian Dr. John Hope Franklin among others. She is also author of the widely-cited policy monograph, The Principal Shortage: Who Will Lead (Harvard College of Fellows, 2001) and numerous published research articles and book chapters about the superintendency, principalship and urban school reform. Selected as the WEB DuBois Distinguished Lecturer for the American Educational Research Association (AERA) and as recipient of the WEB DuBois Award for Higher Education Leadership from the National Alliance of Black School Educators (NABSE), Dr. Fenwick has been honored for her advocacy of educational equity and access for minority and poor children. Her opinion-editorial (OP-ED) articles have appeared in the Washington Post, The Boston Globe and Education Week. A former urban school teacher, school administrator and legislative aid to the State of Ohio Senate, Dr. Fenwick earned the PhD in educational policy at The Ohio State University where she was a Flesher Fellow and a bachelor’s degree in education at the University of Virginia’s Curry School of Education. TeachingWorks working papers 3 Fenwick, January 2016 Abstract: This paper presents a framework for a discussion of the role of Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs) that focuses on teachers and teaching for the new millennium. HBCUs are making a significant difference in solving one of the most intractable problems in K-12 education: how to recruit, retain, and develop teachers for high-need schools. TeachingWorks working papers 4 Fenwick, January 2016 INTRODUCTION Dean Ball, thank you for inviting me to share my reflections and detail the work being accomplished by the Howard University School of Education as we seek to improve teacher preparation and performance. Your vision to use practice-based research as the foundation for re-crafting teacher preparation is timely and important to the nation’s goal of providing its neediest students with high quality teachers. We at Howard University are deeply concerned about the quality of the nation’s schools, particularly those serving the urban poor. For this reason, the University and the School of Education have taken the following recent actions, each of which I will discuss in my presentation: (1) the University established and operates a high-performing public Charter School of Mathematics and Science which serves 312 students from DC’s most impoverished southeast neighborhoods; (2) the University’s Board of Trustees approved in 2012 a new and innovative bachelor’s degree program in elementary education which is math, science and literacy rich; and (3) given our concern that the voices of HBCU scholars and African American K-12 practitioners were not sufficiently being called upon to inform the teacher preparation innovation and urban school reform dialogue, the School’s seminal resource organ, The Journal of Negro Education, published a special issue (Preparing Teachers to Teach Black Students; Preparing Black Students to Become Teachers) devoted to highlighting these perspectives. My presentation is divided into three sections: inputs make a difference, the teacher quality and diversity link, and the Howard University teacher preparation model. INPUTS MAKE A DIFFERENCE There are some who would have us believe that the core accountability issue of the day is summarized in statistics about which students or subgroups of students are scoring higher on standardized tests. But the real issue before us is which states, districts, and schools are enabling student achievement. Some states, districts, and schools are enabling student achievement and some are not. There is a consistent pattern of inputs among those districts and schools which have high student outcomes and those that do not. Empirical evidence is beginning to show that the fundamental assumption—that achievement-focused education systems incentivize improvement—is flawed. The slate of opportunity to learn (OTL) studies have found that test-driven systems don’t incentivize improvement and that they hurt minority and high-poverty schools—often leaving these schools dramatically worse off. We sit here knowing that in high-poverty schools (where 50 percent or more of the students are on free/reduced lunch), students are 70 percent more likely (than their more affluent peers) to have a teacher teaching them 4 subjects (math, science, English and social studies) who is not certified to teach these subjects (or does not have a college major or minor in these subjects). In addition to the large concentration of noncertified and untrained teachers, students in high-poverty schools experience: • High turnover rates among teachers; • High percentages of teachers with less than 3 years of classroom experience; and • A revolving door of novice principals and short-tenured superintendents. These realities make it near impossible for students to experience a cohesive and competitive academic program. Even still, 84% of African American students are in states that require a high stakes high school graduation test compared to 66% of White students (Center for Educational Progress, 2006). How can students pass these tests (and more importantly achieve levels of academic proficiency) without teachers who are adequately prepared and certified? TeachingWorks working papers 5 Fenwick, January 2016 To clarify this question, let me invoke a comparison. We’ve all had the experience of shopping at a chain grocery store. Go in the store in the affluent community…at the meat counter you will likely find meat marked “fresh ground daily.” Now, go to that same chain grocery store in a poor community. Here, when you approach the meat counter, you will likely find gray meat, wrapped in pink paper under an orange light. In a similar vein, too many of the nation’s black, brown and poor students are getting a “gray meat, wrapped in pink paper, under an orange light” kind of education. Continuing to educationally malnourish students and then test them will not yield much progress. Not surprisingly, until the inputs change, we will continue to find that students trapped in these schools will come up short. I believe there are seven policy positions that policymakers can take to advance educational equity for the nation’s schoolchildren. The first two directly reflect TeachingWorks mission: 1. Affirm that teacher quality is one of the most importance factors (that we can control) influencing student achievement. 2. Support the research findings indicating that teacher preparation, certification and tenure each dramatically impact student achievement. 3. Directly confront the injustice of having untrained teachers clustered in schools serving minority and poor students. 4. Say, “No, a teacher-in-training is not a highly qualified teacher.” 5. And just say “No, Teach for America (TFA), you cannot microwave teachers in 6 week preparation programs and plop them in schools serving the nation’s neediest students.” 6. Support