Summer 2002
GSEHD Offers Teacher Training Tutorial
Faculty Members and Students Help Ease School Budget
Cuts in Fairfax County
By Sara
Ortega
President Bush’s landmark “No Child Left Behind” education
reform passed Congress only a few months ago by a majority vote in both
houses. Two of the six key components under this program provide state
grants to recruit and train teachers and expand programs to train teachers
in specific subject areas. The need for greater quantities, and a higher
quality, of well-trained professionals has become the focus of this
2002 legislation. However, the effects of this reform could be weakened
as the economic concerns persist and attention to international affairs
intensifies, forcing the federal government to suspend educational endowments
and state legislatures piece together funds from over-burdened budgets.
Like 40 other states in the same position that have a combined educational
cutback of $10 billion, the state of Virginia has likewise eliminated
many seemingly expendable school programs. Fairfax County’s School
Board passed a $1.6 billion educational cut in late May, ending many
remedial programs, administrative positions, small class sizes, the
purchase of more library books, and the anticipated teacher pay raise.
The public may presume a decreasing value in academic standards, but
GW’s Graduate School of Education and Human Development (GSEHD)
has stepped in to maintain a first-rate education for thousands of Virginia’s
students.
GSEHD professors Sharon Lynch and Jay Shotel spearhead two programs
in which GW graduate students and professors work within the Fairfax
County Public School System. The respective ventures seek to maintain
excellence and distinction in the classroom.
Lynch, through the Department of Teacher Preparation and Special Education,
pilots the Inter-Agency Research Initiative (IARI), a program working
in conjunction with the National Science Foundation, the US Department
of Education, and the National Institute of Health. This 10-year, $1
billion investment is expected to enhance science and math standards
for traditionally low performing students such as females, minorities,
and other students disadvantaged by economic factors.
“We can do more than after-school programs,” says Lynch. “It’s
not that they don’t work, but we can offer better trained teachers,
better materials, and diverse teaching styles. We’re all familiar
with mile-wide and inch deep textbooks lacking any significant product,
so basically we’re here to help the system that doesn’t seem
to be working.”
Because parent involvement enhances the classroom environment, Lynch
is positive that if secondary schools focus on the parents, the IARI
can compensate for other dynamics.
Trial studies within five middle schools, focusing on a test group of
3,000 students, show great promise. Videotaped sessions of GW-trained
teachers employing specific IARI techniques and materials have been
praised for the achievement attained thus far. These tapes will be submitted
to the federal government for further expansion of the math and science
program.
Because of the success gained by IARI, Lynch, working with Professors
Joel Kuipers and Curtis Pike, also has begun writing a similar $6-million
proposal for Montgomery County, which will include programs throughout
all of its 35 middle schools. “Every district and every school
needs some common ground if we expect to maintain an exceptional public
school system,” says Lynch. “Teacher development is the key.”
Identifying this fundamental objective of quality teaching preparation,
Shotel, directs a similar program of graduate educational training.
The Fairfax Transition to Teaching (FTT) partnership enables graduate
students to complete the requirements for licensure during a one-year
internship sequence, with additional coursework needed to complete the
MEd degree.
“When this program was created 15 years ago, there wasn’t
necessarily a shortage of teachers,” says Shotel, “but there
weren’t exactly enough qualified substitute teachers. Students
grew accustomed to the one-day sub who might hand out some worksheets
or play a video. Both the students and the substitutes were losing out
on an ideal educational atmosphere.”
The FTT trains full-time graduate students to become permanent substitute
teachers in Fairfax County’s 23 high schools. The school district
pays the students’ salaries to the Graduate School of Education
and Human Development, which in turn gives its students a monthly $500
stipend. While high school students become better acquainted with on-site
substitutes and graduate students obtain a greater knowledge of teaching
skills, the school district gains a higher cadre of professionalism.
Twenty-three students are eligible to receive this fellowship annually.
More than 300 hundred graduates have completed GW’s program, with
the GSEHD priding itself on a 96 percent job placement rate after the
students attain their master’s degree, with 92 percent continuing
to teach.
Interest in the graduate programs grows each school year as both graduate
students and Fairfax public schools are able to boast undeniable success
in times of mounting uncertainty. As of January, the Bush administration
promised to make educating every child its number one domestic priority,
but a challenge to reach the country’s 46.8 million public school
children still looms when impoverished districts must compete with affluent
ones in accountability formulas. Should the nation adopt the GW model,
each of the three million public school teachers will find themselves
working in an optimal educational setting.
Send feedback to: bygeorge@gwu.edu
