The College of Education at Wichita State University is in the process of meeting the teacher-training reforms recently outlined by U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan in a speech covered by the Associated Press (“Official: Colleges don’t prepare teachers,” Oct. 22 Wichita Eagle).

Thanks to a U.S. Department of Education grant worth $6.2 million over the next five years, WSU’s education faculty can continue work on a program that advances teacher preparation for urban education. Funds for development of the Urban Teacher Preparation Program at WSU came from the DOE’s teacher quality partnerships grant program.

In his speech, given to Columbia University’s Teachers College, Duncan called for an overhaul of college teacher preparation programs. He cited two common complaints from teachers: not enough hands-on training in the classroom; and not enough learning about how to use data to improve instruction and boost student learning.

“WSU is likely one of the first universities to hit the ground running with the new delivery programs for teacher preparation on a large scale with all undergrads involved,” said Iorio.

The new program at WSU will add deeper layers to already existing partnerships with Wichita public schools by sending teacher candidates into high-need schools.

“Not only are our WSU students preparing in these schools, faculty from the colleges of education, fine arts, and liberal arts and sciences will be helping our students in these schools as well,” Iorio said. “There is no other program that we know of than the professional development schools model we use at WSU that will give teaching students more time in school classrooms.”

In addition, Iorio pointed out that all undergraduate students at WSU are taught about creating tools for data collection in a course early in their programs, and they complete mini-research projects in methods and student teaching. These projects require the collection and analysis of data in terms of the whole class, two individuals and two groups. WSU students cannot graduate without meeting the competency on these assessments.

Graduating students at WSU consistently give high marks regarding preparedness in the College of Education’s exit survey, Iorio said. In turn, those who end up teaching in Kansas are highly rated by their employers, according to a 2009 College of Education survey sent to Kansas schools that hire WSU undergraduate teacher education candidates.

Iorio said the survey asked the employers to rate the candidates as either highly prepared, moderately prepared or slightly prepared. Results found that about 74 percent of Kansas employers who hire WSU undergraduate teacher education candidates consider them “well prepared” to enter their first year of practice and an additional 23 percent of employers consider WSU candidates “adequately prepared.”

Taken together, said Iorio, 97 percent of employers feel WSU candidates are prepared for their first days of teaching.

For more about the state of the nation’s teacher preparation, the American Association of Colleges of Teacher Education has responses to the secretary of education’s speech at http://www.aacte.org.