Testimony Submitted to the 


New York State Senate Standing Committee on Higher Education and Senate Standing Committee on Education


�Educating Educators: Teacher Preparedness in the 21st Century�



By: Chancellor Nancy L. Zimpher
May 12, 2010

Legislative Office Building
Van Buren Hearing Room A




Testimony of Chancellor Nancy L. Zimpher
Joint Hearing of the Senate Standing Committees 
on Education and Higher Education 
�Educating Educators: Teacher Preparedness for the 21st Century�
Wednesday, May 12, 2010

Introduction

Good afternoon. I am Nancy Zimpher, Chancellor of the State University of New York. I want to thank Senator Stavisky and Senator Oppenheimer and the other committee members here today, for convening a hearing around the subject of teacher education, which I believe to be one of the critical issues of our time.  I appreciate your giving me the opportunity to speak before you today. 

I am a teacher and a teacher educator by training, and have spent a great deal of time as a higher education administrator advocating for reforms to teacher education. I am also deeply engaged in a robust national conversation on teacher preparation, and have been for more than three decades. I come to my leadership role at SUNY with an absolute and personal commitment to improving education for all learners. You might say quality teaching and learning is my lifelong mission.

I currently co-chair a Blue-Ribbon panel on Clinical Preparation, Partnerships and Improved Student Learning, convened by NCATE � the National Council for Accreditation of Teacher Education. This panel of nationally-recognized experts on teacher education is in the process of developing recommendations to restructure the preparation of teachers to reflect teaching as a practice-based profession similar to medicine or nursing.  The goal of these reforms is to bring educator preparation into alignment with the urgent needs of P-12 schools.  So I get the urgency of the issues we are discussing today, and SUNY�s very clear role in meeting the challenges of preparing highly effective teachers.

A New Paradigm for Teacher Preparation

After experiencing over 20,000 hours in a classroom, the general public, and frankly, far too many in the profession, view teaching as common practice or pedestrian in nature. Regrettably, some of our best teachers teach with such ease that we assume good teaching is either a genetic trait or is easily mimicked just by watching others do it.  No other profession we can name is either simple or easy.  I think educator Marilyn Cochran Smith nailed it: �Teaching is unforgivingly complex. It is not simply good or bad, right or wrong, working or failing.�  So I want to frame my remarks around three propositions:

First, learning to teach is highly developmental. It is comprised of a set of skills and knowledge acquired over years of education and experience.  The notion that you can throw a novice teacher into a classroom to see if she or he will sink or swim with only a few weeks of orientation � especially in the most challenging schools � is a ridiculous concept. No other profession, be it law or medicine or even aviation, fashions its preparation after such an irresponsible and, some might say, unethical training model.

Second, teaching is both an intellectual pursuit and an artistic and personal passion for learning and learners. Surgically separating the process of learning to teach from the academy, from the disciplines where teachers acquire deep knowledge, or limiting a novice teacher�s clinical exposure to the classroom, also defies the practice base of other professions. 

If today is our Flexner moment (recalling the reforms in medical education of the past), then realize that that report was a clarion call to better connect knowledge and research to the desired practice of what today we call �evidence-based medicine.� If you�re a patient, you could only hope that doctors are using evidence in your treatment. Don�t our children and youth deserve to expect the same?

And third, embedding the practice of teaching in the real live classroom follows the paradigm of other professions to some degree. But current conceptions of �practice� dangerously violate professional practice if they are not characterized by thousands of hours of simulated practice and technologically enabled observation, coupled with the studied oversight of a highly qualified resident physician, senior law partner or expert mentor teacher. But here�s where the context for educating teachers comes up short:

* Unlike the relationship of medical schools to teaching hospitals, our ability to rely on selected schools over sustained periods of time to receive our beginning teachers is a �catch as catch can� proposition. To close the loop, we need dedicated practice schools for teachers. 

* University faculty don�t have regular access to school practice, and expert veteran teachers have little time and few incentives to supervise the emerging experience base of new teachers. We need a shared commitment between our faculty and our expert teachers to span the boundaries that now significantly separate schools and universities.

* And we need enlightened public policy that assumes joint responsibility between K-12 and higher education and makes us mutually responsible for each others� success. As I have said on many very public occasions, we at SUNY prepare the teachers who teach the students who ultimately come to our colleges and universities. Thus we share responsibility for their success across the education pipeline from �cradle to career.�

SUNY�s Resources and Potential

Let me take a moment to provide some background on the State University�s involvement in teacher preparation.

* As a system, SUNY prepares more teachers than any other institution in New York � about 5000 each year. 
* We have 200 teacher education degree programs at 16 campuses.
* In 2009, more than 12,000 undergraduate and 5,000 graduate students were enrolled in SUNY teacher education programs.

With this heavy involvement in teacher education, SUNY has the capacity to transform the way in which teacher preparation is provided and to significantly impact learning through a systemic, sustainable and evidence-based structure for our most challenged schools, which includes an emphasis on teacher shortage areas. SUNY recognizes its special responsibility and capacity to make sure teaching practices align with the urgent needs of our schools and communities, and to improve success rates for teachers and students alike.  

* We have also worked to increase clinical preparation of student teachers: SUNY Teacher Education programs place student teachers for 75 to 90 days as compared to the SED requirement for 40 days.  Some require 100 days of student teaching.

* SUNY Teacher Education programs place students in an urban/or high need school for half of their student teaching assignment.  (SED and NCATE both require at least one placement in a high need/diverse school) 

* All programs also place students into early field experiences for a minimum of 100 hours.  

* TE Programs want to place students in classrooms with the most effective and experienced teachers.  Cooperating teachers must be a master teacher.

* All SUNY undergraduate TE programs have at least one �professional development school.�  Those with multiple PDSs include SUNY Buffalo State, SUNY Cortland, SUNY Oswego, and SUNY Potsdam.  

SUNY has tremendous resources and nationally-recognized programs. We also have the capacity to do much more�and a plan to do just that, as I have outlined to the Chancellor of the New York State Board of Regents and Commissioner Steiner.

The Power of SUNY: A Seamless Education Pipeline

Just last month SUNY launched a systemwide strategic plan called The Power of SUNY. As part of this plan, one of our top strategic priorities is the creation of a seamless education pipeline that extends from birth to retirement years to close the gaps that impede success. Preparing the quality and quantity of teachers � especially targeting high-need areas � is a critical part of that goal.  

Teachers today are faced with more challenges than ever before in our history, with greater diversity in our schools, the need for tailored instruction, increased English language learners, and other social issues.  To meet these challenges, we need to move toward enhanced clinical preparation � with more extensive use of simulations, case studies, and sustained, mentored school-based experiences.

To that end we are creating the SUNY Urban Rural Teacher Corps, targeted at rethinking our teacher education programs. We will employ more classroom simulations, extended and better structured real-time classroom experiences, not only to meet the needs of this critical practice-based profession, but also to make sure SUNY is placing teachers in communities of high need who will maintain their careers in New York�s classrooms.

SUNY will also seek ways to support a seamless education pipeline, with a particular focus on developing highly effective teachers. Far too many young people are dropping out of high school, and many teachers are prematurely exiting careers in the classroom.

These two initiatives � our SUNY Urban Rural Teacher Corps and our leadership in creating cradle to career partnerships targeted at student success � will be hallmarks of our newly minted strategic plan.  
   





SUNY�s Position on SED Regulations on Awarding Master�s Degrees on Behalf of Non-Higher Education Providers
 
I have previously expressed our concern regarding the State Education Department�s proposed regulations on teacher education.  As you know, these regulations would allow the Regents to award a Masters degree in teaching to completers of non-higher education provider programs.  

In a joint letter I wrote to SED along with CUNY Chancellor Matt Goldstein and Commission of Independent Colleges and Universities Chair John Sexton, we warned that awarding the authority for degree-granting preparation to non-traditional vendors is an unnecessary and unproven first step in seriously decoupling the education profession from its academic base (see attachment).

Awarding responsibility for teacher preparation to non-traditional vendors would create a dangerous precedent by diluting New York�s successful, comprehensive and diverse core of higher education institutions, which have the capacity to provide enhanced clinical components to those programs by better connecting universities to schools.

Quality teacher preparation should be the best possible clinical experience combined with rich content and pedagogical study, as well as significant support (including quality mentoring) once new teachers are employed. That is the standard that both the Regents and SUNY should hold high.  

Conclusion

I want to again thank the Committee Chairs and members for your attention to this critical issue. I am deeply committed to working in partnership with you to create a seamless education pipeline, of which teacher preparation is a key element.

I would be happy to take your questions.

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