Deans for Impact: Who we are and what we stand for 

This initiative wants to change the dialogue about what it takes to prepare effective teachers and to help transform the country’s educator preparation system to position the U.S. as an international leader. 

 

In 2015, 24 leaders of educator preparation programs came together to answer a question: How might we transform educator preparation so the U.S. might one day be an international leader in preparing effective educators? 

The resulting organization, Deans for Impact, represents a diverse set of institutions — private research universities, former land grant colleges, historically black and Hispanic-serving institutions, and innovative, practice-focused programs. But what all members — including the authors of this piece — have in common is our commitment to principles that will elevate our own performance and that of our field. We have formed a network of educators who accept responsibility for the quality of our graduates: We want to use data to improve our programs and to change the dialogue about what it takes to prepare effective teachers. Educator preparation programs can do better. 

This set of beliefs form the guiding principles for Deans for Impact. But guiding principles alone are insufficient to transform a system.  

“The assembly of like-minded leaders willing to commit to this goal is a great start,” said David Andrews, one of Deans for Impact’s founding members. “Now, we need to stand behind the commitment with action.” 

Here are some specific actions needed to spur meaningful change in educator preparation: 

#1. Develop a consensus around a professional knowledge base for teachers. Teaching, unlike professions such as medicine and law, lacks a commonly accepted knowledge base for what professionals in the field should know and be able to do.  

Developing this professional knowledge base will lead to more consistent language and expectations for practice, which are critical for developing consistent and coherent expectations for the profession as a whole and for educator preparation programs in particular. Ultimately, this coherence will help elevate the teaching profession, rightfully, into place as one of society’s most respected professions. 

Deans for Impact offered a small contribution to this body of knowledge by releasing The Science of Learning in September 2015 (http://deansforimpact.org/pdfs/The_Science_of_Learning.pdf). This short report, which summarizes existing cognitive science research about how students learn and connects that research to practical implications for teaching and learning, aims to support effective teacher learning. We hope it will help empower teachers and build confidence placed in them by parents, policy makers and school district leaders and principals.  

Building on the report, member deans are testing designs that embed the principles from The Science of Learning into their programs. As we gather findings from those efforts, we hope to scale the work and to inform the field about the most effective ways to enhance teacher candidates’ understanding of cognitive science principles. 

#2. Create a tighter connection between K-12 systems and educator preparation programs.  

Effective educator preparation requires action from both educator preparation programs and the schools they serve. Working together, we can improve preservice and in-service experiences of teachers, and the sharing of data on our candidates and graduates is one important method for doing this.  

At the University of Arkansas, for example, faculty meet twice each year with school partners to review their program’s performance. Often these conversations lead to changes in curriculum or internship experience. In Oregon, the Salem-Keizer School District shares aggregate observation data on program graduates with faculty and staff at Western Oregon University, where Mark Girod serves as dean. This information allows Girod and his faculty to evaluate the strengths and weaknesses of their graduates. Not long ago, this data helped Western Oregon faculty and staff identify and address issues with their candidates’ classroom management and engagement skills, which were weaker than those of candidates from other programs in the area.  

#3. Require states to make data available to programs and the public about the teachers prepared by each institution.  

Information about the career paths and performance of graduates is critical to inform our own continuous improvement efforts and to increase transparency and accountability. Aspiring teachers, school districts, educator preparation programs, and the public would benefit from knowing where graduates teach, for how long, and how they affect student learning and other outcomes. 

Programs led by Deans for Impact members are so eager for data on their graduates they actively seek them out even in the absence of state data systems. In California, for example, the University of Southern California and Loyola Marymount University are signatories to the L.A. Compact. Created in 2009, the compact is a commitment from leaders across Los Angeles’ education, business, government, labor, and nonprofit sectors to transform education outcomes for the city’s youth. One part of the overall effort is an agreement by institutions of higher education and the L.A. Unified School District to develop and improve data-sharing agreements that can inform program design and help prepare high-quality teachers and administrators.  

While we admire the spirit of collaboration and ingenuity exhibited by the L.A. Compact, such workarounds shouldn’t be necessary. Programs should have access to data on how their graduates perform in the classroom, and states have an important role to play in providing access to this information at scale. 

#4. Aim the research lens inward to evaluate and identify the most effective elements of educator preparation programs.  

Research is critical for driving system change, but research also should focus on the problem we’re trying to solve. Jack Gillette, dean of the Graduate School of Education at Lesley University in Cambridge, Mass., said the siloed nature of higher education discourages faculty members from looking at the overarching design of educator preparation programs. Too few faculty, he said, want to know how much priority to give various competencies or how to sequence courses.  

Many programs capture anecdotal evidence about program changes. Recently, the University of Missouri-St. Louis College of Education changed its early field experiences by creating a Community Agency Program. Under the new program, candidates spend time in nonschool academic settings (e.g., after-school programming at the YMCA or other community agency) and teach students through one-on-one or small group work. Faculty are starting to see positive effects from this initiative and are thinking about how to measure its effect. This sort of empirical research should help us better understand whether such a programmatic change is worth replicating.  

#5. Rethink structures and incentives in higher education institutions to create entities that are more nimble and receptive to change.  

We should examine how to make educator preparation programs more responsive to change. We should create incentives that support the goal of producing highly effective teachers and drive programs toward more coherent design. 

Gillette argued that, if starting from scratch, no one would design a professional program within academic silos. “We are not organized to do the work,” he said. “I don’t bemoan it, but, if we don’t face that, we’re just crazy.” 

In the late 1990s, the University of Southern California’s Rossier School of Education typified the structural problems that Gillette described. The school was highly fragmented and had developed a culture in which the way to succeed was by acting individually, not collectively. An academic program review in 2000 and a subsequent all-school strategic planning process resulted in a significant reorganization that did away with typical discipline-based divisions in favor of a program-based approach that organized the school into four degree programs. This streamlined approach eliminated silos and encouraged more collaboration among faculty. New schoolwide infrastructure was created, including an office of recruiting and admissions and an office of accreditation and program quality, which created a more cohesive experience and has helped Rossier operate as one school instead of as a collection of different divisions. The structural changes paid off in improved results: By June 2003, less than three years after conversations about the reorganization began, Rossier was seeing improved student test scores and a larger applicant pool.   

Sometimes entirely new initiatives can spur innovation. The University of Arkansas’ College of Education and Health Professions developed the Arkansas Teacher Corps, which provides an alternative path to teacher licensure by recruiting talented noneducation graduates and giving them intensive training, school placement, and intensive mentorship, similar to the model used by Teach For America. 

#6. Develop a strong professional network for educator preparation program leaders that connects them to peers and helps them lead change in their institutions.  

Deans often feel isolated in their roles and as a result may feel deterred from pursuing transformational changes. 

At Deans for Impact, we are committed to helping each other shift the culture, systems, and structures of educator preparation. As part of that, we have initiated a series of learning tours where Deans for Impact staff and member deans go on multiday site visits to programs led by our members. These are different from review or accreditation visits. Instead, they are opportunities for transparent discussion about the triumphs and the challenges involved in implementing the guiding principles of Deans for Impact. Together, we learn how to get better.  

This has been tried before. What makes it different this time? Four reasons: 

• Our understanding of how children learn continues to improve. Emerging insights from cognitive science, research of high-leverage practices, and other new efforts suggest that coherence around a body of knowledge and skills is possible.
• We have more information about teachers and teacher candidates. With this information, we can build a better understanding of how our graduates perform once they enter their own classrooms and use that to ensure we’re doing more of what works. Identifying which elements of educator preparation programs are the most effective will inform a collective vision of excellent educator preparation and create a more coherent and consistent experience for teacher candidates.
• Many students continue to struggle; too many schools continue to fail. The teacher shortages experienced by many districts are  exerting dramatic pressure on educator preparation programs. There is a growing realization among faculty and leaders in educator preparation programs that time is running out; we need to change now.  
• The combination of external pressure — changes in state standards, pending federal teacher preparation regulations, critiques from other organizations in the field — and the internal leadership of Deans for Impact members has created a fertile climate for change. By leveraging external pressure, deans and other leaders of educator preparation programs can create new opportunities for change within their programs.

Given the aforementioned conditions for change, can Deans for Impact be more effective at harnessing those conditions than previous reform efforts? We think so. Here’s why: 

• We’ve created a small, nimble network that will allow us to drive change from within. One of the best-known reform efforts was the Holmes Group, a collection of leaders of educator preparation programs led by Judith Lanier, dean of Michigan State University’s College of Education, in the 1980s. The Holmes Group was impressive in its scale (with more than100 member institutions), but its size may have undermined its ability to affect change. According to Francesca Forzani, who has studied the Holmes Group’s history, the large number of members made it difficult to reach consensus on an agenda. (Forzani sits on the board of Deans for Impact.) 

By contrast, all members of Deans for Impact are committed to the organization’s overarching mission and guiding principles for transformation. We plan to stay small so we can adapt as necessary. Additionally, the diversity of our membership ensures our work is relevant to the teacher preparation field as a whole, not just to our member institutions. 

• We’re marrying a broad and ambitious goal to a focus on building capacity within our programs. We also have an ambitious mission: to transform the field of educator preparation and to elevate the teaching profession. But we’ve coupled that goal with a specific and focused effort on building capacity — at both the institutional and individual level — across our member-led programs. In this way, we can ensure that our institutions are equipped to actually carry out the work. 

We are encouraged by the groundswell of activity springing up around teaching and teacher preparation, and Deans for Impact aims to be at its center. 

We are encouraged by the groundswell of activity springing up around teaching and teacher preparation, and Deans for Impact aims to be at its center. Two of our member-led programs — Texas Tech University and the Relay Graduate School of Education — are part of coalitions awarded grants by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation in late 2015; two other member-led programs — Lesley University’s Graduate School of Education and Boston Teacher Residency — will be involved in Gates-funded work on teacher preparation via the Massachusetts Department of Elementary and Secondary Education. Deans for Impact also is partnering with organizations such as the Center for American Progress, Council of Chief State School Officers, and the Transforming Teaching project at Harvard University’s Graduate School of Education on efforts to improve teacher preparation and to elevate the teaching profession. 

We are excited to be part of these efforts. If there is to be a sea change in how this country educates teachers and in the perception of the teaching profession, it will take a broad and coordinated coalition. We know it won’t be quick or easy. But it can and must be done. 

“Schools of education have enormous potential for good, and right now, we just aren’t delivering on that promise as much as we need to,” said Robert Pianta, dean of the Curry School of Education at the University of Virginia and a member of Deans for Impact. “It’s important that we take responsibility for realizing that promise rather than complaining or always reacting to what external forces are in play. If we don’t get this right, we will see much bigger changes downstream that will greatly reduce our footprint in the sector.”

 

Citation: Gallagher, K.S., Smith, T.E.C., & Anderson, C. (2016). Deans for Impact: Who we are and what we stand for. Phi Delta Kappan, 97 (7), 39-42.