Education Week - July 10, 2013 - 32

32 EDUCATION WEEK
n
JULY 10, 2013 www.edweek.org
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COMMENTARY
www.edweek.org/go/commentary
Memo From the Front Lines
By Jack Gillette
“ L
While the
conventional
wisdom is that
teacher-preparation
programs have
failed to improve,
the real truth is quite
different.”
ike many deans at schools of education,
I have been following the
media coverage of the release of U.S.
News & World Report’s first-ever
ranking of institutions that prepare
teachers. The research behind these
rankings was done by the National Council on
Teacher Quality, a research and policy group
based in Washington. The American Association
of Colleges for Teacher Education had urged its
members to boycott participation in the study,
arguing that its analysis of selected syllabi is an
inadequate vehicle for determining quality. As
anticipated, the publication of the rankings has,
in fact, polarized positions further, while doing
absolutely nothing to strengthen policy and
practice in regard to the improvement of teachers
and teaching.
The NCTQ’s effort is a classic case of “reform”
overhype and overreach. It has the benefit of a
well-funded media campaign and a partnership
with U.S News. But AACTE, while right about the
NCTQ, falls short as well. The association takes
issue with those education schools—including
my own—that work with alternate routes, and
is too easily portrayed as defending the status
quo. AACTE has shown an inability to frame the
debate in ways that help teacher-preparation
programs move forward.
The resulting charge and countercharge between
these two titans is a Beltway battle that
would be a mere distraction for those of us
working to meet the needs of schools, were it not
sucking so much oxygen out of our environment.
All this moves us no closer to solving the challenges
of education in the 21st century. Thirty
years after the release of A Nation at Risk, policy
elites continue to run from one small-bore focus
to another. They exaggerate small differences
in policy stances and overgeneralize claims, believing
that success in one small area will make
better teachers everywhere, all the while imagining
that if providers only did what the loudest
among them wanted, education for children
would improve. This is a false perception.
While the conventional wisdom is that teacher-
preparation programs have failed to improve,
the real truth is quite different. Although differences
in quality certainly exist, a number
of forces have driven significant upgrades over
the last decade. Most important is the work of
national accreditation institutions that moved
from assessing inputs to demanding evidence of
outcomes. When I was dean at the teacher-preparation
and education studies program at Yale
University, colleagues and I at all 16 Connecticut
teacher-preparation institutions responded by
building robust data-driven systems to collect
and document that our graduates could both
know and do what we claimed. Every institution
got better.
At Lesley University, where I am the dean of
the graduate school of education, I found myself
in a very different environment. As a private,
tuition-driven institution, in a crowded field, we
have to prove our value every day. We are constantly
disciplined by the market. It, more than
any other force, requires us to track changes in
the environment, listen to district stakeholders,
and innovate to meet their needs and the
needs of our students. Our success depends on
our graduates’ getting a job and being effective
in the classroom.
None of these dynamics fits the narrative
spun by the National Council on Teacher Quality,
which portrays teacher-preparation institutions
as “an industry of mediocrity” and conjures
up images of uniformly organized, bureaucratic
institutions that are impervious to change. The
NCTQ’s insistence on one best way depends on
this false image of uniformity. It justifies eitheror
debates that, while politically useful to garner
public attention, are neither effective nor
enlightening.
Take the issue of what should constitute the
criteria for entry into a teacher-preparation
program, which the NCTQ considers to be a
strong indicator of school effectiveness. There
is general agreement within the field that a
candidate should be “highly qualified,” though
what that constitutes is open to interpretation.
One version of “qualified” for a graduate school
preparation program is a minimum score in
either the candidate’s incoming grade point
average or on the Graduate Record Exam.
In our program design with the Urban
Teacher Center, for instance, we supported an
entry standard for admission. That is why we
were able to list our name as a supporter of
the federal GREAT Act legislation, which promotes
alternate routes with high academic
entry requirements across the nation.
However, for traditional certification programs
at Lesley, we use wider, more nuanced
entry criteria. We believe great teachers come
from a variety of academic backgrounds; thus,
we design programs with high support and
high standards that generate both opportunity
and quality in our graduates. We use our
discernment to assess other assets for graduate
school candidates with lower scores, by,
for example, considering their postcollege
We Need a State-Based R&D System for Education
By Arthur D. Sheekey
I
n recent surveys, state education officials have indicated that they recognize that
better decisions require better information, but few said they have the capacity to
analyze the education-related data they are required to collect. This year, research
from the Government Accountability Office and the American Institutes for Research
corroborated the state surveys, revealing that states rarely use research and analysis
in their decisions to reform and improve schools. Although this problem is unlikely
to be resolved soon, and certainly not by every state, a makeover of the federally supported
regional research-and-technical-assistance infrastructure into a state-based arrangement
could make a big difference in fostering the adoption of research- and evidence-based programs
and practices.
Education officials have long acknowledged a research and relevance gap. More recently,
state officials have admitted to suffering from an analysis gap: collecting huge quantities of
school- and student-performance data with insufficient time and expertise to analyze and
interpret the data.
A $600 million federal investment in state longitudinal-data systems in recent years
has undoubtedly helped state and local agencies build databases for tracking school
and student progress. However, there has been little evidence, to date, that the vast
accumulation of data on school and student performance is being used to choose more
effective state education policies and programs.
Surveys over the past decade have found that state education agencies do not have
direct access to the expert talent and technical assistance that are needed to analyze
the complex body of school- and student-performance data. Few examples can be found
where evidence-based data has supported statewide decisions for allocating scarce
resources to failing schools, for selecting curricula, or for making judgments about tolerable
risks and trade-offs between targeting too many and too few schools or students.
Rethinking the regional research infrastructure. As serious discussions on reauthorizing
the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (currently the No Child Left
Behind Act) and the Education Sciences Reform Act, or ESRA, get underway, lawmakers
should ponder the arrangement of the national educational R&D infrastructure. In
particular, the effectiveness of the current national network of regional research laboratories
and technical-assistance centers should be reviewed based on what has been
learned over the past decade.
Since the ESRA was first adopted in 2002, Congress has appropriated more than $1 billion
to support regional educational research laboratories and comprehensive technicalassistance
centers.
The regional-lab program (run by the Institute of Education Sciences, or IES, within
the U.S. Department of Education) has, the IES website says, “advanced the quality
and reliability of available evidence through its focus on producing and disseminating
high-quality, rigorous research.” Ten such labs serve the education needs of designated
regions of four to six states each, using applied research, development, dissemination,
training, and technical assistance.
Twenty-two comprehensive centers, funded by the Education Department’s office of
elementary and secondary education, provide technical assistance to states, school districts,
and schools, especially those in need of improvement. The comprehensive-center
program supports 15 regional technical-assistance centers and seven content centers,
which the department says provide “research-based information and products in their
specific [geographic] area” for regional centers working with states.
After nearly five decades of federal support for this infrastructure of regional lab and
centers, there is considerable evidence about how to make research relevant to practice.
Notably, the W.T. Grant Foundation has conducted studies that offer insights about
how research can be transferred into policy and practice. And recent GAO interviews of
regional-lab directors shed additional light on more effective ways to engage state and
local educators to understand and interpret research, and to act on evidence about what
works and under what conditions.
Research generated by the regional labs and the network of national research centers
continues to improve. Grants and contracts to these federally funded entities exerted
pressure to beef up the quality of their research and program evaluations. The ESRA also
encourages state and local officials to “apply rigorous, systematic, and objective meth-
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Education Week - July 10, 2013

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