Thought Leaders Blog

Arne Duncan, President-elect Barack Obama's choice for US Secretary of Education, is according Education Week (January 2, 2009), a collaborator. I am hoping that he will view favorably the potential collaborations between universities and pre-K-12 schools. That collaboration ought to include, but also extend beyond, schools of education in universities.

In 1966, we learned from James Coleman's historic study that socio-economic factors and influences beyond the classroom were more influential in student achievement than what happened in classrooms. Then in the 1990's Bill Sanders and colleagues showed enormous value added of high quality teachers. Today we know that high quality teaching makes an essential, perhaps the greatest, difference in student learning. A teacher for today's schools needs to know how to teach reading, writing and mathematics, how to manage a classroom, how to develop curriculum that's content-rich and challenging but also engaging. A teacher for today's students needs to know how a child from rural Somalia and a child from urban Bogotá learn, how to teach a gifted child and a child challenged by learning or physical disabilities. A teacher today needs to know how to use tests to assess learning, and how to adapt instruction when learning is not taking place. Schools of Education who partner with school districts will do a better job of preparing teachers for the classrooms of today, and will help contribute to improving those schools

However, recent research also supports Coleman's finding. In 2002, Albert Beaton, statistical architect of the Coleman report, showed that poverty remains the persistent foe of student performance. Using data from the Third International Mathematics and Science Study, which compared over forty countries, he found that math achievement is affected more by socio-economic differences (parents' education, their presence in home, number of books in the home, etc.) than by anything else. Good teaching, it seems, is necessary but not sufficient for student achievement. The fact is, no matter how knowledgeable, competent and prepared the teacher, the child who comes to school hungry, exhausted from a job or from caring for younger siblings, in pain from a toothache or fearing for his safety -- this child is not ready to learn. It takes the involvement of other professionals---psychologists, physicians, social workers-to provide the conditions for learning.

Through partnerships between schools and a research university we can address both kinds of needs and significantly affect public schools and the lives of children and youth. Perhaps both Sander and Coleman are right, and today we need collaborations with teacher education school to help enhance teacher quality and we need collaborations with psychology, social work, medicine, dentistry to help all children and youth come to school ready to learn. I hope that the next Secretary of Education encourages the collaborations across schools at universities and between universities and preK-12 schools.