Washington, DC
February 14, 1995
I am delighted to make a return visit. Much has happened in a year. When I spoke to you last February, Goals 2000, school to work, and student financial aid reform were being debated in the united states congress. Today they are law.
And for the first time, we have the tools at hand to make school improvement happen on a larger scale in communities and states throughout the country.
All this of course has not occurred without controversy. In fact, the very existence of the united states department of education is being questioned.
But we believe the American people want more, not less effort expended to improve the quality of education for their children and grandchildren.
We hear them saying, yes, make government more effective and efficient--but do not reduce support for education, either in dollars or in emphasis at the local, state and national level.
As the President said in his State of the Union address, the American people today know what you educators know--parents fully understand that their children's future will be largely determined by the quality and level of education they can obtain.
Therefore, the president is totally committed to making education a centerpiece of his domestic agenda. His 1996 budget reflects that.
Funding for Goals 2000 and school to work is substantially increased, and the overall budget for american education grows by 3.8 percent, just above inflation.
But this is not a status quo budget. There are decreases in many programs, consolidations and eliminations of others; new priorities are established, such as expanding access to higher education.
Today, in fact, the president is speaking in San Francisco about student financial aid, drawing a clear line between his agenda and the republican contract.
There are sharp contrasts. They would cap direct lending at 40% percent of loan volume, we would expand it to 80 and ?f loan volume, we would expand it to 80 athen 100%. It is an amazing success story of reinvention, praised for its efficiency by our own customers--the students, administrators, and parents, and it saves tons of money--12 billion dollars by the year 2002.
The contract calls for the elimination of the in-school subsidy for deserving students--a loss of 9 billion dollars over 5 years in financial aid; we oppose it. And they call for the elimination of campus based programs, like work study. And we oppose that.
One of the major new investments is one that you fully appreciate: teacher development. Funds available will increase to 735 million, double that of last year.
The linkage between our ability to improve our children's education and our capacity to educate teachers appropriately has become increasingly apparent. What is not yet crystal clear is how that is best achieved.
But before I expand on teacher development, let me point out that support for education is not limited to the president's agenda. It is reflected in the enthusiastic response to goals 2000. Since march 31, when the bill was signed, 44 states have applied for and received their grants.
The spirit of partnership between the federal government and the states is beginning to be redefined in this new law.
There are no regulations in goals 2000. There is much room for waivers and flexibility. Six states will be given the authority to do their own waivers. The promises we made last year are being kept this year.
And, after a long downward spiral which was first noted by the report, A Nation at Risk, a dozen years ago, we can begin to decipher progress in the trend lines of education. Student performance in reading, science and math is on the rise; the number of high school students taking the core academic courses is up 27 percentage points since 1983, and more students are participating in advanced placement courses. The dropout rate has declined and the american rate of going to college is higher than any other developed country. In fact more women are undergraduates today than men.
Yes, there is much more to do--but rather than focusing on failure, let us build on success.
The most important place to build for success is to do a better job of educating our teachers, both before and during their professional life.
The demand for such improvements is coming from many quarters, including your own organization, and I congratulate you for your leadership in this area and urge you to become key players in changing how we prepare for and sustain excellence in teaching--a most important reinvention process for this nation.
We, in the department of education, are directly engaged in finding new answers to this question. We have issued draft principles of professional development, led by a team which includes terry dozier, a national teacher of the year, and my office.
Our purpose is to assure that our own house is in order--that the many grants made for professional development consistently promote the best and most innovative practices. This team is collaborating with other organizations to identify and give national recognition to models of best professional practice.
Our principal in residence at the department, Adel Nadeau from San Diego, is undertaking a leadership project, to determine how leadership skills necessary for school improvement are taught, and sustained.
But as you so well know, there is action on teacher education on many fronts. The holmes group is pressing a teacher education reform agenda; and a national commission on teaching and America's future has been launched by Linda Darling Hammond at Teachers College, Columbia University.
In addition two groups are busy developing standards for teachers: the interstate new teacher assessment and support consortium, and the National Board for Professional Teaching Standards.
Most impressive is the board's major accomplishment---certifying the first 81 teachers in this country in the area of early adolescent generalists---in middle schools. The rigorous certification process adds stature to the profession, and indicates how excellence can be achieved.
The key for colleges and universities which educate our future teachers is to not only keep pace, but to lead the process of reinventing teacher education.
Many of the needs are now clear. They appear and reappear in every discussion, every report, every poll, every focus group.
-- more clinical experience;
-- more subject matter and less theory (or, give us the subject first, and then the theory);
-- more support for beginning teachers;
-- more alignment with content standards;
-- more emphasis on technology;
-- more experience with diversity;
-- more skills in special education;
-- more experience in working with social service providers;
-- more understanding about how to work with parents and the community.
And I would add, and perhaps it is implied throughout, more respect, status for the profession of teaching, both within academia and outside of it.
How to achieve that of course is not simple. Many colleges have shown their disinclination to support the teaching profession by dropping education majors and education courses. Possibly that is part of the transition from one form of teacher education to another.
But we must engage the entire academic community in this transition; otherwise, education will remain a poor relative in the academic family.
And we must find ways to reward those professors and students who chose practical participation in their schools and communities, over research.
None of these tasks is easy. We do not always practice what we preach in our society, nor do we send consistent messages. On one hand, we value education highly, acknowledge that it is the bedrock of our democracy as well as our economy, but then we simply provide a pat on the back or on the head, and say, go forth and do good, thinking to ourselves, "better him or her than me".
If we are to merge our high rhetoric about the importance of education, with our actions and priorities in our education institutions, we must make the investments, provide the stature, and the intellectual discipline, that the profession deserves.
We must acknowledge the complexity of the task to be certain, but we must also begin to take practical steps to dramatically change the status quo.
One example of how we can change is in the area of parental involvement. Most new teachers are shocked, and sometimes terrified, to find parents knocking at their classroom door. No one had told them about that. They just had their lesson plans to prepare, and their classroom was their universe, untouched by the world outside.
Yet, once they are engaged in teaching, they learn that parent involvement is key to a child's ability to succeed.
That was the department of education's finding in a recent well received report, called "strong families strong schools." The report gathers the research of the last 30 years, and concludes that the one common denominator which can spell either success or failure is, in fact, parent involvement.
How do we prepare teachers to welcome parents into the classroom? Only fifteen states require teachers to develop parent involvement abilities, and one state alone mentions parent involvement course work.
Parent involvement could be taught as part of other courses, and it could be a hands on component that becomes part of a teacher's practical experience. A small, but significant shift in emphasis. If, in the actual classroom, parents will play a significant role, let's prepare teachers in the virtual classroom to benefit from parents' involvement.
Your task to reshape teacher education is an exciting and difficult one. But the question is not whether such changes will occur, the question is whether they will be led or followed by the schools of teacher education.
The problems have been clearly defined, and there is growing consensus around them. The solutions, as always, are more elusive. And that is where the hard work is, particularly in the details.
But in the final analysis, an attraction for the teaching profession will always depend on more than course work, more than structure. It will depend on our ability to tap into idealism, and sustain it.
The desire to contribute to society in fundamental ways, such as teaching our children, remains strong. The overwhelming response, for example to americorps--20,000 young people working for very little, most with our nation's children--is but one indicator.
And interestingly enough, linda darling hammond's group found that the decision of whether or not to stay in teaching has very little to do with student behavior, absenteeism or drug abuse--only 14% of teachers felt these were serious problems in their schools.
However, large numbers of teachers--25 to 40% are dissatisfied with working conditions "having to do with how schools are structured and managed and with the control they have over their professional lives."
Therefore, teacher development must be linked to school reform. Without it, the best of teachers won't stay in the classroom.
We look forward to working with you, in whatever ways are most useful, in the months and years ahead to give teaching the status and skills we believe it must have.
As one teacher said at a recently convened forum at the department of education, between deans of schools of education and teachers, "none of us has the answers by ourselves." It involves new roles for teachers and simultaneous change in higher education.
Another observed: "Teacher education is the intersection of higher education and schools." A busy intersection, no doubt, and one that is critical for the future direction of this country. Thank you for helping to direct our course.
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