Bush Foundation launches 10-year effort to close student achievement gap

The numbers are stark, if not alarming.

According to the Minnesota Department of Education, 38 percent of the K-12 instructors who started their teaching careers in Minnesota in 2001 were no longer teaching in the state by 2009.

To restate that: More than one-third of people who started teaching in Minnesota in 2001 had left either the profession or the state by this year.

“The cost of that turnover is unbelievable,” says Peter Hutchinson, the former Minneapolis school superintendent who for the past two years has been president of the St. Paul-based Bush Foundation. “That’s just the financial cost, not to mention all of the disruption and screwing up kids, and everything else that goes with too much teacher turnover.”

After a weak economy swallowed up $230 million of the foundation’s nearly $1 billion in 2008 assets-2009 financial figures are not yet available-the Bush Foundation is taking a new tack in its longtime mission of bettering the region’s K-12 schools.

Rather than focus on grants to individual education initiatives or school districts, the foundation is announcing today (Dec. 3) a 10-year, $40 million collaboration with 14 colleges and universities in Minnesota, North Dakota and South Dakota.

That $40 million figure represents about 10 percent of the grants Bush expects to give out during the next 10 years.

This collaboration aims to change the way colleges recruit and train novice teachers so they’ll be more effective instructors, stay on the job longer, and do more to close the student achievement gap.

“We have spent the last nine months or so working with these teacher-preparation programs,” Hutchinson says. “We’ve been challenging them to redesign themselves in such a way that they would be willing to guarantee how well their graduates can teach.”

What is to be “guaranteed” is still subject to some negotiation, according to Hutchinson, but certain benchmarks will have to be met to receive funding. “We are open to a lot of things,” he says. “But in addition to anything else, a guarantee has to mean that teachers will be able to advance all children a year’s worth academically in one year.

“Obviously, we would love for the kids that are furthest behind to move more than a year’s worth.”

Roadblocks

to learning

Several roadblocks stand in the way of such goals, Hutchinson says. First, unlike business schools, many teacher-training institutions don’t recruit top-flight students, instead accepting almost all comers.

“If you don’t get the right people into the teacher-preparation program to begin with, you are going to have a hard time producing effective teachers,” Hutchinson says.

Secondly, teacher-training institutions usually do not work closely with the K-12 system to track the progress of their students after graduation. “If you don’t support them after they graduate, the data are clear,” Hutchinson says. “Almost half of them are going to be gone within five years. And you just can’t afford that level of turnover.”

One approach favored by several colleges in the initiative is to launch teaching residency programs, patterned after medical residencies. In the Twin Cities, for instance, six private colleges are working as a consortium with Bush to form a joint residency program. They include the University of St. Thomas, Augsburg College, Bethel University, St. Catherine University, Concordia University and Hamline University.

Louise Wilson, chair of Bethel University’s education department, says that residencies are the heart of the six-college partnership. They would differ significantly from the usual K-12 classroom training now undertaken by novice teacher candidates.

Rather than requiring novice teachers to spend a single semester shuttling back and forth between the K-12 classroom and the college lecture hall, student residents would spend a full year working full-time in the K-12 environment, Wilson says. They would work collaboratively with staff instructors-who themselves will be trained under the program as mentors.

During their residencies, novice teachers would work with their K-12 mentor instructors to plan classroom instruction, analyze and assess achievement-test data and figure out the best way to teach young students. In addition, college faculty would periodically visit the students at the K-12 schools to continue instructing them about such things as teaching theory.

“The best way to learn how to teach,” Hutchinson says, “is to be in front of the students and gain increasing responsibility for what goes on in that classroom, mentored by someone who is really good-a professional.”

Follow-up

A third element of reform under the Bush Foundation initiative would be a three-to-five-year follow-up program that tracks novices after they graduate and take jobs in the K-12 system, Hutchinson says.

That could involve continued on-site mentoring, as well as creating social networks to prevent young teachers from becoming isolated during the formative early part of their careers-a point at which many young teachers get discouraged and abandon the field.

“The rule [for colleges] has always been, ‘We’ll train them and push them out the door - but then, K-12, they are your problem,’” Hutchinson says. “Which is, by the way, how the K-12s experience it. But it shouldn’t be their problem-it should be their joy to have these fabulous teachers coming into their buildings.”

If they meet Bush Foundation standards and guidelines that are still being developed, participating teacher-training colleges stand to receive $4 million to

$6 million during the next 10 years to transform teacher training. Participating schools are now putting together memoranda of understanding that are due in January, according to Hutchinson.

Susan Heegaard, the Bush Foundation vice president who leads the initiative, says that colleges cannot use Bush money to finance operating budgets. “I think the money allows them the time and the opportunity to think differently and then put this reform plan in place-and then get it to stick so that it will be there over a period of time,” she says.

Some, like the University of Minnesota, will work alone with the Bush Foundation. Others, like the six Twin Cities private colleges mentioned previously, will pool resources and form consortiums. In all, the 14 schools will combine into seven partnerships, according to Hutchinson.

He has optimistic goals for the program, which he says is ultimately aimed at recruiting and training effective teachers to close the K-12 student achievement gap.

“In the next decade Minnesota will increase by 50 percent the number of kids from preschool through high school that are on track to get a degree after high school,” Hutchinson says. “There will be a 50 percent increase in the number of kids who are reading at Grade 3 level; a 50 percent increase in the number of kids who graduate; and a 50 percent increase in the number of kids who enroll [in college].”

Bethel’s Wilson shares Hutchinson’s enthusiasm. “I think that we and the Bush Foundation are excited about the fact that we are working together,” she says. “Already it has been a stimulating opportunity for all of us who are involved in it.”

2 Responses to “Bush Foundation launches 10-year effort to close student achievement gap”

1. Colin Lee Says:
   December 3rd, 2009 at 12:39 pm

   If we’re concerned about teachers staying in the profession, then it doesn’t help to have a teacher cut every single year that only takes the newest and youngest, even if they’re top-notch. I wouldn’t blame a teacher for leaving the state or profession to avoid a state full of districts taking on multi-million dollar short term loans due to Tim Pawlenty’s budget gimmicks that are not expected to be paid back anytime soon.

2. Joe Lane Says:
   February 9th, 2010 at 4:20 pm

   Can you imagine any initiative more important to the future of the state, the region, or the country than one that ensures that our children are taught and guided by accomplished professionals?