Lieberman, Blumenthal and DeLauro Introduce Teachers Professional Development Institutes Act

For Immediate Release

June 21, 2011

CONTACT

James R. Vivian: 203-432-1080 or teachers@yale.edu

New Haven.... Senators Joseph Lieberman (I, CT) and Richard Blumenthal (D, CT) and Representatives Rosa DeLauro (D, CT-3) and Chaka Fattah (D, PA-2) have introduced legislation (S. 1240 and H.R. 2255) to create a competitive grants program to establish Teachers Institutes in states throughout the nation. The Senators’ and Representatives’ plan is modeled after the Yale-New Haven Teachers Institute®.

“This measure recognizes the national significance of the Teachers Institute approach,” according to James R. Vivian, Director of the Yale National Initiative to strengthen teaching in public schools®. “At a time when many teachers feel they are being pummeled by critics from all directions, it has never been more important to support the admirable women and men who teach in public schools, especially those schools that enroll a high proportion of students from low-income families.”

“The legislation would increase teacher effectiveness and retention in high-need school districts around the country by providing colleges and universities and school districts the resources necessary to establish Teachers Institutes in most states,” Vivian said.

Each Teachers Institute links one or more institutions of higher education with school districts that serve a significant proportion of students from low-income communities. Institutes enhance the content knowledge and teaching strategies of school teachers. Through Institutes, college and university faculty members in the sciences and the humanities assist teachers to engage and educate their students in science, math, English, other languages, history, and the arts. Through curriculum units they write, teachers create deeper learning environments for their students and increase the academic rigor of school courses that implement state and local standards. The newest Institute begins operation this year in Delaware.

Said Delaware Secretary of Education Lillian M. Lowery when she first heard teachers speaking about their experience in the Initiative: “I was absolutely amazed. I was a secondary school teacher for more than fourteen years, and as I saw these teachers engaging in higher-order thinking skills around this work, I walked away thinking, ‘I wish every teacher in every single classroom could have this opportunity.’”

“If we are to incite or compel our students to use their higher-order thinking skills,” Lowery said, “let’s model that for them. That’s what this Institute allows each of you to do.”

“We have built the Charlotte Teachers Institute based on Yale’s model because this program works,” said Peter C. Gorman, Superintendent of Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools. “Our teachers get what they need, because they have an active role in the Institute.”

According to Philadelphia Superintendent Arlene C. Ackerman, “The strong and innovative professional development offered by the Teachers Institute of Philadelphia and the Yale National Initiative plays a key role in our diverse efforts to increase overall teacher effectiveness.”

Vivian said, “The results of the existing Teachers Institutes — which are patterned after the 30-year-old Yale-New Haven program — show what many other school districts could accomplish with the strategic funding this legislation would invest in their communities. At a time of shrinking budgets, this bill would help demonstrate an innovative and cost-effective alternative for the $2.5 billion the Federal government now spends annually to improve teacher quality.”

Of the model program, New Haven Public Schools Superintendent Reginald R. Mayo said: “The Institute has been a significant factor in school improvement in the New Haven Public Schools 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.”

James Foltz, an English teacher at Middletown High School in Delaware, described how an Initiative seminar renewed his commitment to teaching. “Recently my wife asked me, ‘How long do you think you can keep teaching?’ If she asked me this one year ago, I don’t know what my answer would have been. It might have been a few more years, maybe five at the most. My answer is different now, and it extends from my experience at Yale. I rediscovered a passion and sensibility toward the content knowledge I teach. We talk all the time about how we need to inspire our students, and we do, but once in a while we forget that we need to inspire our teachers too.”

The legislation would authorize funds to be expended over five years to provide for the establishment of Teachers Institutes that would enable state and local education agencies to learn from their own experience about the efficacy of this tested approach for reforming their policies and practices for teacher professional development.

Teachers Institutes implement the characteristics of high-quality professional development identified in a recent report by the National Comprehensive Center for Teacher Quality, including a focus on core content and teaching strategies tied to content, opportunities for active learning and teacher collaboration, and extended duration.

The Yale National Initiative to strengthen teaching in public schools is a long-term endeavor to establish exemplary Teachers Institutes in under-served school districts in states throughout the country. Twenty-one school districts in ten states are participating in the Initiative in 2011. Teachers Institutes are educational partnerships between universities and school districts designed to strengthen teaching and learning in a community's public schools. Evaluations have shown that the Institute approach enhances teacher quality in the ways known to improve student achievement and encourages participants to remain in teaching in high-need schools.