Interim Report

The Honorable Edward G. Rendell
Governor
225 Main Capitol Building
Harrisburg, PA 17120

Dear Governor Rendell:

Pursuant to Section 6 of your Executive Order Number 5 of 2005, I am pleased to transmit this interim report of the Governor’s Commission on Training America’s Teachers. The purpose of this report is to apprise you of our activities to date and some themes that are emerging in the early stages of that work.

You have appointed an excellent Commission, and I am pleased to have the opportunity to work with this group of committed Pennsylvanians. Our meetings have been marked by good attendance and active, collegial participation by Commissioners. I am optimistic that our final report, which we now intend to deliver to you June 5, will include a set of actionable recommendations based upon a review of research on best practices in Pennsylvania, the nation, and other countries.

Should you or your staff have any questions about this report, our Executive Director, Dr. Robert Feir, and I would be happy to address them.

Sincerely,

Richard Kneedler
Chairman

cc: Secretary Cooper
Secretary Zahorchak

Organization

Governor Rendell issued Executive Order Number 5 of 2005 and appointed the Commission on Training America’s Teachers on August 10, 2005. The Commission is chaired by Dr. Richard Kneedler, President Emeritus of Franklin and Marshall College. With the exception of the four legislative members, the Commission was fully constituted by the end of August, and all four legislators were named by their respective caucus leaders by mid-September. A current list of Commissioners is attached as Appendix A.

The Commission engaged three staff members. The Executive Director is Dr. Robert E. Feir, President of EdStrat21 (a Harrisburg-based education strategies and project management consulting firm) and former Executive Director of the State Board of Education and Policy Director of the Pennsylvania Department of Education. The Research Coordinator is Sara E. Coon, a graduate student in public policy at Carnegie Mellon University and a former Coro Fellow with the Coro Center for Civic Leadership, a prestigious national program focused on effective and ethical leadership. She has been an elementary school teacher in San Jose and San Francisco and a case manager for a Big Brothers Big Sisters program in San Francisco. The Administrative Assistant is Michelle Tarlecki, a recent graduate of The Pennsylvania State University, who has been an intern for both the Pennsylvania Department of Transportation and the Australian Federal Parliament. She also has had experience as an administrative research assistant for Penn State’s School of Information Sciences and Technology.

The Commission is funded by the Pennsylvania Department of Education, using federal No Child Left Behind funds administered by the Pennsylvania Academy for the Profession of Teaching and Learning. The Commission has offices at the Academy (2986 North Second Street in Harrisburg).

During September 2005, the Commission launched a website – http://www.pateach.org – which is used to apprise interested parties of our work, to receive comments from them, and to connect Commissioners.

In consultation with the Governor’s Office, we adopted a work plan and schedule to guide the Commission’s work (see Appendices B and C).

The Chairman and Executive Director have met on two occasions with the leadership of the Governor’s Commission on College and Career Success and the higher education study being conducted by Dr. Robert Zemsky under the auspices of the Education Policy and Leadership Center (EPLC).

Work to Date

The Commission has held two meetings – on October 21 and November 11, 2005. (Our meeting scheduled for December 16 was cancelled due to snow and ice in Harrisburg and many other areas of the Commonwealth. The first meeting was devoted to providing all Commissioners with an overview of the current system of teacher education and certification and a significant amount of data about Pennsylvania teacher education programs, certificates issued, and current teachers. The second meeting was aimed at eliciting a general consensus about the practical meaning of our first goal: All teacher education programs achieve world class excellence for their students, providing them with the academic knowledge and pedagogical skills to be effective in the classroom. This was the first of two meetings to focus on Goal 1; subsequent meetings will focus on the remaining four goals of the Commission’s work plan.

In addition, the Commission has conducted three of four regional meetings it has scheduled – At Temple University in Philadelphia on November 8, at the University of Pittsburgh on November 18, and at the Carbon Lehigh Intermediate Unit in Schnecksville on December 14. A total of 71 people attended the three regional meetings, and those discussions were very helpful in allowing Commissioners to explore some significant issues and emerging themes with a variety of higher education and K-12 practitioners.

We are working with staff at PDE to arrange a late afternoon teleconference to be hosted by intermediate units early in 2006 to allow classroom teachers to provide input to the Commission.

We have surveyed deans and department chairs of the state’s 94 teacher education programs, along with the 500 school district superintendents and their human resources directors to gather additional information about the views of teacher educators and the needs of employers. There was a relatively high response rate – 53 percent of deans and 35 percent of superintendents. Our Research Coordinator is currently analyzing survey results and will have a report for the Commission early in 2006. Based upon the very low response rates of other teacher surveys, we decided to survey only a few selected groups of teachers, including the state’s Teacher of the Year organization and Pennsylvania teachers who have been certified by the National Board for Professional Teaching Standards. We understand these results will not be representative of Pennsylvania’s classroom teachers, but we are hoping they will be instructive.

The Chairman and/or the Executive Director have met with a number of individuals and organizations to gather information about what is happening elsewhere and to begin to understand the recruitment of Pennsylvania certified teachers by school districts in other states. To date, we have met with:

1. American Association of Colleges for Teacher Education (AACTE)
2. Mid Atlantic Regional Teachers Project (MARTP)
3. Interstate New Teacher Assessment and Support Consortium (INTASC)
4. Dr. Arthur Levine, Retiring President of Teachers College
5. Comission on Independent Colleges
6. National Association of Independent Colleges and Universities
7. Ohio Department of Education
8. Ohio Board of Regents
9. Ohio Educational Standards Board
10. Savannah-Chatham County School District

Emerging Themes

Several themes have begun to emerge from our work to date. It is important to see these as the result of Commission conversations about only part of our agenda, and while all are likely to be represented in the final report in June, it is equally likely that there will be other themes and recommendations and that they may influence the way the Commission ultimately treats the themes that have emerged to date.

1. Preservice teacher education as an undergraduate (or fifth year collegiate) experience is disconnected from the initial teaching experience of K-12 teachers.
   1. Preservice needs to reflect the realities of today’s classrooms as well as providing teachers with academic content and pedagogical content knowledge. Induction needs to be strengthened (and perhaps lengthened).
   2. Colleges and universities must play a stronger role in induction.
   3. The 24 credits needed to convert an Instructional I to an Instructional II certificate should be transformed from random learning experiences to a conscious and continuous part of a new teacher’s preparation.
   4. New teachers need a lot more support, and perhaps less demanding assignments, than they receive currently. This will reduce turnover which is costly financially and in terms of student achievement.
2. We need to foster strong partnerships between teacher education institutions and K-12 schools.
   1. Faculty could be required to observe and/or teach in K-12 schools. We need to examine the impact on higher education reward systems.
   2. Joint appointments of highly effective K-12 teachers would provide preservice teacher candidates with a greater awareness of the realities of today’s classrooms.
   3. There need to be improved clinical placements for preservice teacher candidates.
3. We need to better distinguish between our expectations of novice and experienced teachers, better use the latter to help the former, and structure a teacher education system that is a harmonious whole – connecting preservice education with ongoing development in the first few years of teaching and throughout the career cycle.
4. A number of urban districts have perennial problems filling all teaching positions with certified teachers. We have only begun to look at this issue, and clearly there are numerous causes and potential solutions. Current law (in the form of the statutorily required standard teacher contract) requires teachers to give 60 days’ notice before leaving a job. This requirement is rarely recognized by teachers in some urban districts, contributing to the start-of-school teacher shortages in those districts. We should consider a state enforcement mechanism, as other states have done.

For more information contact info@pateach.org