Legislation to Create Teachers Institutes Nationwide

Modeled after Yale-New Haven Approach

For Immediate Release
June 30, 2010


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

New Haven.... Senators Christopher Dodd and Joseph Lieberman and Representatives Rosa DeLauro and Joe Courtney have introduced legislation (S. 3498 and H.R. 5556) to create a 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®.

“Passage of this legislation would help implement the Obama Administration’s emphasis on increasing teacher effectiveness,” according to James R. Vivian, Director of the Yale National Initiative to strengthen teaching in public schools®. “At this promising moment for education reform,” he said, “we must establish across the country Institutes for college and university faculty members in the sciences and the humanities to assist teachers in high-need public schools to engage and educate their students in science, math, English, other languages, history, and the arts.”

Of the model program, New Haven Public Schools Superintendent Reginald R. Mayo said: “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.”

School officials from other states joined Mayo in praising their local Institutes that are patterned after the New Haven program.

“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.”

In New Castle County, Delaware, where a Teachers Institute will begin next year, State Secretary of Education Lillian M. Lowery said, “A successful Delaware Teachers Institute in New Castle County will provide a systemic, far-reaching way to engage numerous public school teachers with University of Delaware faculty members in developing high-quality curriculum units. The success of the Teachers Institute in New Castle County will ultimately impact public schools across all three counties in our state.”

“The Pittsburgh Teachers Institute (PTI) has demonstrated the same consistency of results as Yale in reaching and improving inner-city teacher practice,” said Pittsburgh Superintendent Mark Roosevelt. “PTI Fellows are nurtured and encouraged to deepen their practice, reflecting continuously on how to ensure urban public school students secure rigorous academic preparation and develop a lifelong love of learning and habits of critical thinking on all manner of topics. PTI encourages teachers to challenge their students to understand more, to do more, to be more. This is precisely what highly effective teachers do.”

Vivian said, “The success of the Teachers Institutes in these three cities – which are patterned after the 30-year-old Yale-New Haven program – demonstrates what many other school districts could accomplish with the modest funding this legislation would invest in teachers educating students from low-income families.”

The million the legislation would authorize to be expended over five years would provide for the establishment of as many as eight Teachers Institutes each year, so that by the fifth year there would be an exemplary Institute in as many as forty states. These Institutes 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.

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. The League of Teachers Institutes® is an alliance that advances their work locally and nationally. 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.