Arguments for Enactment of the Teachers Institutes Bill

June 2011

When contacting Members of Congress to support the Teachers Professional Development Institutes Act, S. 1240 and H.R. 2255, introduced in the 112th Congress by Senators Joseph Lieberman (I, CT) and Richard Blumenthal (D, CT) and Representatives Rosa DeLauro (D, CT-3) and Chaka Fattah (D, PA-2), consider the following arguments in favor of the legislation.

This measure would increase teacher effectiveness and retention in high-need school districts by providing colleges and universities and school districts the resources necessary to establish Teachers Institutes in most states.

What the Bill Provides

The legislation would authorize funds to be expended over five years to provide for the planning and establishment of new Teachers Institutes and to sustain existing ones. Each Teachers Institute is operated by a college or university, acting as fiscal agent, and a local education agency that serves significant low-income populations; they are committed to a long-term partnership for continuing the Institute.

In Teachers Institute seminars, faculty members in the arts and sciences work in an intensive, systematic, and sustained way to deepen teachers' knowledge of their subjects and to assist them in developing strategies to teach their own students what they have learned. Through curriculum units they write, teachers create engaging learning environments for their students and increase the academic rigor of school courses that implement state and local standards.

Why the Teachers Institutes Approach Is Nationally Significant

Teachers Institutes attract, develop, and retain teachers in the schools that need them most. More specifically, evaluations have established that:

• Teachers Institutes enhance those teacher qualities known to increase student achievement.
• Teachers Institutes that follow the approach developed in New Haven and implemented in Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, Charlotte, and New Castle County, Delaware, exemplify the crucial elements of high-quality teacher professional development.
• Participation in Teachers Institutes of this type is strongly correlated with teacher retention in high-poverty schools.
• Teachers Institutes are a proven way of engaging universities' sciences and humanities faculty in enhancing teachers' subject-matter knowledge and critical-thinking, problem-solving, and communication skills.
• The Institute approach differs both from the types of continuing education or outreach universities usually offer and of staff development school districts typically provide.
• Funds to spread the Teachers Institute approach nationwide are therefore an investment in innovation and reform, not a continuation of ineffectual conventional professional development practices.
• This approach is based on evidence from more than 30 years of operation in New Haven and successful implementation in larger cities.

Why the Legislation Is Timely

A Teachers Institute implements the recent recommendations made by the National Comprehensive Center for Teacher Quality, which call for school districts to allocate their limited funds for high-quality professional development that

• Is aligned with school goals and state and district standards,
• Focuses “on core content and modeling of teaching strategies for the content,”
• Offers “opportunities for active learning of new teaching strategies,”
• Provides “opportunities for collaboration among teachers,”
• Is of extended duration, and
• Features significant “teacher buy-in.”

These are precisely the type of professional development that Teachers Institutes promote. In the current economic climate, this legislation would enable many more state and local education agencies to learn from Institute experience about the efficacy and cost effectiveness of this tested approach for reforming their teacher professional development.

For background, review the recognition the Teachers Institute approach has received over the past 30 years, as well as the earlier calls that have been made to enact similar legislation.

Communicate with Members of Congress and their legislative assistants for education by e-mail, which the Yale National Initiative can help you identify, or by fax, which you may find by entering your ZIP code at https://www.congressmerge.com/. Please send copies of any communications to the Initiative by e-mail at teachers@yale.edu by fax at 203-432-1084.