An Open Letter to U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan

December 2, 2009

Education Secretary Arne Duncan spoke recently of 'the need for a sea-change in our schools of education' based on two principal failings reported to him in his conversations with people in schools: 'First, most of them say they did not get the hands-on practical training about managing the classroom that they needed, especially for high- needs students. And second, they say they were not taught how to use data to differentiate and improve instruction and boost student learning.'

Secretary Duncan is correct that there is an urgent need to reform the practices and pedagogies of teacher education. The College of Education at the University of Illinois accepts this challenge, which is why we are launching a Teacher Education Reform Initiative and integrated our expertise on education policy, organization, and leadership. Models and strategies for pre-service training, induction, and professional development are being re- examined. The contexts of schools are changing. The needs and characteristics of students are changing. Models of effective school leadership are changing. Instructional technologies are changing. Schools of education are rising to the occasion, too.

Serious, sustainable education reform is a complex task that must go beyond the redesign of our university programs and certification requirements. Blaming schools of education is too easy; and ignoring them as a crucial partner in reform is shortsighted and self-defeating. The roots of the problems Secretary Duncan identifies may be deeper, and the scope of the solutions may need to be broader, on three fronts:

1. One problem may lie in the conventional structures of schools and classrooms, which become more anachronistic by the day in the face of rapidly changing conditions of life for young people. Education needs to take advantage of the levels of engagement elicited by the new media (games, social networking, interactive media), the increasing diversity of learner identities (teaching to the middle of the class becomes a less and less viable strategy), and the subjectivities of today's generations of learners who demand greater self-direction and autonomy.

Solution: We need to rethink, in a fundamental way, the job of teaching for the very near future. This requires cutting-edge research and development, and colleges of education, in partnership with school communities, are best positioned to do this.

Practicing what we preach: The majority of our departments and programs are ranked by U.S. News and World Report in the top ten of the nation; our graduates (teachers and educational leaders) are highly recruited for the difference they can make in their schools. We are reconfiguring the programs that prepare school leaders and redesigning our teacher preparation program so they more closely connect to our schools and explicitly prepare educators for an evidence-based practice. Moreover, we have had the courage to base our success on the performance of our local schools, in terms of both teacher retention and professionalism and the outcomes of their students.

2. Alternative certification (such as Teach for America) and institutional structures (such as charter schools) represent uneven progress at best. Research tells us this. Moreover, a key issue is that these reforms are not scalable, and cannot provide a basis for professional development or school redesign across the board. The challenge we face is so enormous that broad institutional reform is needed, rather than reforms that impact so few and leave so much of an unworkable system in place.

Solution: Formal training is needed for all teachers, and better training is needed for those formally trained. If the delegation of power to charter schools leads to a quality education, a similar authority structure would be good for all schools.

Practicing what we preach: We offer a number of pathways for educational professionals, including a growing suite of online learning options that expand access and choice.

3. Just as no doctors or accountants would be certified without formal training, no teacher professional should be either. Moreover, the majority of teachers will continue to be prepared by colleges of education in universities. Notwithstanding the acknowledged limitations of teacher education today, such a huge investment should not be sidestepped. Nor should the waste represented by subpar teacher education be allowed to continue. The answer, however, is not to say that minimal training is just as good as poor training.

Solution: Radical reform to teacher education is needed, based not just on 'evidence' narrowly conceived within traditional educational frames of reference, but on an imaginative exploration of new possibilities in teacher education that meld theory and practice, and demand persistent inventiveness as well as rigorous measurement.

Solution: 'Linkage' funding will bring the intellectual rigor of colleges of education into engagement with the practical rigors of school administration.

Practicing what we preach: Through our core work and that of our four strategic initiatives - Ubiquitous Learning Institute, Center for Education in Small Urban Communities, STEM Education Collaborative, and the Forum on the Future of Public Education - we are marshaling our expertise to make the required breakthroughs. For instance, among other things, we are:

• Loosening the stranglehold that testing has over curriculum by constructing measures of complex learning to upgrade curriculum and raise expectations for performance.
• Examining the ongoing complex impact of culture on identity and performance, such as dealing with discipline problems, bullying, and the other emotional conditions of learning.
• Putting writing back into a curriculum, which has made literacy synonymous with reading because it is more cheaply assessable.
• Collaborating with scientists to engage learners in STEM areas and translating our research findings to produce new and innovative learning breakthroughs.
• Forging long term, systemic partnerships with local schools to improve professional learning and learner performance, and develop innovative educational leaders.
• Expanding our data collection on the impact of our university-school partnerships that are designed to improve learners' wellbeing and performance.
• Collecting data on our graduates' capabilities and using it to improve our curriculum as well as design and deliver professional learning that helps retain first year teachers.
• Developing meaningful pathways with community colleges to increase the chances of academic success for transfer students.
• Increasing and coordinating partnerships across campus and with a wide range of K-21 education providers.
• Deploying new technologies in teaching and learning as well as creating e-learning ecologies that expand access and connect learners in broader ways.