Yale Initiative Releases New Report on Teachers Institutes

A new report, released by the Yale National Initiative to strengthen teaching in public schools, concludes:

"Teachers Institutes significantly strengthen teachers in all five of the major dimensions of teacher quality. They also include all seven elements now recognized to be crucial in successful professional development programs....

"The study also shows that Institute participants had nearly twice the retention rate of non-participants in local teaching. Because research suggests that experience within a district is more strongly associated with teaching effectiveness than earlier experiences elsewhere, this finding is especially notable."

The report, To Strengthen Teaching: An Evaluation of Teachers Institute Experiences, presents results of a study of participants in Teachers Institutes in Houston, New Haven, Philadelphia, and Pittsburgh from 2003-2008 and in National Initiative seminars at Yale from 2005-2008. Each Institute offers seminars on topics teachers request to deepen their content knowledge and to motivate and educate their students about the topic. The seminars are led by faculty members in the universities that are the Institute partners of their local public school districts: Chatham and Carnegie Mellon Universities in Pittsburgh, the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia, the University of Houston in Houston, and Yale University in New Haven.

Rogers M. Smith, Christopher H. Browne Distinguished Professor of Political Science at the University of Pennsylvania, who conducted the evaluation and wrote the report, found:

"In Institute seminars teachers gain more sophisticated content knowledge and also enhance their skills as they prepare curriculum units adapting the themes of their seminars for their students. Most teachers are enthusiastic about the seminars and the opportunity to teach the units they have written. They expect more of the students taking them. And they succeed in motivating their students to learn at higher levels."

Each participating teacher, named an Institute Fellow, writes a curriculum unit to teach aspects of the seminar topic to his or her students and to share with other teachers in the school district. The units are also published on the Internet and are available online at teachers.yale.edu. Smith concludes:

"The data on unit use also show that after teaching their Institute units two-thirds of all participants rated them superior to all other curriculum they had used. Roughly 60% of all participants rated student motivation and attention as higher during these units, producing substantially greater content mastery....

"These data strongly support the conclusions that virtually all teachers who complete Institute seminars feel substantially strengthened in their mastery of content knowledge and their professional skills more generally, while they also develop higher standards for what their students can achieve."

The study also examined retrospectively the results of Institute participation for New Haven teachers between 2000 and 2005. According to Smith:

"The New Haven quantitative study indicates that Institute seminars attract a broad range of teachers from every observable demographic category and that those who choose to be Fellows are much more likely to continue teaching in the district than those who are not."

Reginald Mayo, who since 1992 has been Superintendent of the New Haven Public Schools, Yale's partner in its Teachers Institute, said this report underscores the benefits he has long observed the district receives from the Institute:

"The Institute has made an enormous contribution to strengthening teaching and learning in the New Haven Public Schools. It has been a significant factor in school improvement by exciting teachers and sparking student interest in learning. I have seen how powerful Institute participation can be for creating a very fruitful collaboration among teachers within a school, and in stimulating them to learn more about the subjects they teach and to develop new classroom materials that excite and engage students in learning. Maintaining this kind of teacher quality in our schools has never been more important, so the report's finding about the retention of Institute participants is especially encouraging."

Teachers Institutes are educational partnerships between universities and school districts designed to strengthen teaching and learning in a community's public schools. The Yale National Initiative to strengthen teaching in public schools is a long-term endeavor to establish exemplary Teachers Institutes in underserved school districts in states throughout the country. It builds upon the success of a four-year National Demonstration Project. The Yale-New Haven Teachers Institute, a permanently endowed unit of Yale University, is in its thirty-second year of operation.

Following the approach pioneered in New Haven and demonstrated in other cities, new Teachers Institutes are currently being planned for San Francisco CA, Charlotte NC, and New Castle County DE. Other communities participating in the National Initiative include Chicago IL, DeKalb County GA, Richmond VA, and Santa Fe NM.