Professional development schools: partnerships that work. (From the Executive Director).

Last October, I attended a press conference in Washington, D.C., at which the National Council for Accreditation of Teacher Education (NCATE) announced the release of new standards for professional development schools (PDSs). Professional development schools represent unique partnerships between colleges and universities and elementary, middle, and high schools. Arthur Wise, President of NCATE, in speaking on the importance of PDSs, explained that such partnerships represent a "fundamental reform" in the way that teachers are prepared for the classroom. He said that PDSs benefit teacher education much in the way that teaching hospitals do for the medical profession. Wise believes that PDSs are a growing national trend and predicts that they will be the norm in the next 20 years.

PDS partnerships serve a number of important functions. They help improve the quality of teacher preparation, boost teacher retention rates (thereby helping to address the growing need for more teachers), and increase P-12 (pre-kindergarten through grade 12) student achievement. PDSs also provide high-quality alternate routes to teaching for those who have completed college, offer more effective supervision and on-site training for teacher candidates, and present a promising new strategy for improving underperforming schools.

"The PDS standards greatly influenced NCATE's performance-based unit accreditation standards, now required at all of NCATE's 525 accredited institutions," said Wise. He further explained that

PDSs have real potential for providing aid to those districts experiencing teacher shortages. Instead of placing unprepared individuals in the classroom with little or no assistance, they can enroll in professional development school programs where they will have intensive supervision and mentoring--as well as courses and seminars--while teaching. School districts can staff classrooms with integrity when using the PDS model, because the novice in the classroom is enrolled in a clinical program with intensive mentoring, supervision, and instruction. Support for the new teacher/teacher candidate is built into the structure, because the entire school has pledged to help train new teachers.

Of the 525 NCATE-accredited institutions, 166 have PDSs, and many partner with multiple PDS sites. Maryland, North Carolina, and Louisiana recently mandated that all public teacher preparation institutions in their states initiate PDSs; several other states are considering similar policies. Virginia Pilato, of Maryland's State Department of Education, said that the state views PDSs as the "very best way to prepare teachers and help children learn."

Marsha Levine, NCATE's senior consultant for PDSs at NCATE and director of the PDS project, assembled a national advisory panel of prominent educators and policymakers who helped her to develop the standards over a two-year period. Levine also directed a three-year field test of the standards at 20 pilot test schools across the country. Unlike partnerships that traditionally have focused on preservice preparation, PDSs are unique in Levine's view because they represent "a true partnership between a college or university and P-12 schools."

In traditional clinical or school-based teacher preparation, information usually has flowed in one direction: from higher education to the P-12 school. In other words, university faculty provide instruction and "cooperating teachers" provide the student teachers with valuable field experience. Unfortunately, there is little further interaction between university faculty and cooperating teachers. In PDS partnerships, however, the roles of university faculty, school partners, and teacher candidates are very different. Meeting the needs of P-12 students is at the center of the curriculum for teacher preparation; those involved in the partnership share the responsibility for teacher candidate outcomes and P-12 student learning. College and university faculty, Levine said, "work at the P-12 site in instructional, supervisory, and research roles, and P-12 teachers serve as consultants, advisers, and faculty at the higher education institution." This partnership, Levine continues, "changes the nature of the roles each partner plays, and creates new roles and responsibilities for teachers and higher education faculty." The success of PDSs depends on strong collaboration.

ACEI is one of 33 national professional organizations that collectively work through NCATE to improve the quality of education for children in the United States. Since 1989, ACEI has served as the NCATE specialty area professional organization responsible for the program review process for colleges and universities seeking national accreditation in elementary education. The ACEI standards for elementary education can be viewed at our Web site (www.acei.org). Other useful documents include "A Guide to College Programs and Teacher Preparation" and "Institutional Orientation for Program Review," and two ACEI Position Papers, "Preparation of Early Childhood Teachers" and "Preparation of Elementary Teachers." Professional members of ACEI or members of other professional organizations who want to become ACEI/NCATE Program Reviewers for elementary education can download the appropriate application.

ACEI President Nancy Quisenberry represented the Association last spring as a member of NCATE's Unit Accreditation Board, which approved the new PDS standards. Persons who want to review the PDS standards can visit www.ncate.org and go to "Standards." NCATE also has published developmental guidelines to help those who are interested in starting a PDS or who want to revise their teacher preparation programs.

We are proud of the tremendous efforts of all ACEI members who work on behalf of the Association, in many capacities, to improve the quality of teaching and student learning. This will continue to be an important goal for ACEI, as it has been since the Association was founded over 100 years ago.

--Jerry Odland,
Executive Director