THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Tuesday, March 26, 1996 TAG: 9603260005
SECTION: FRONT PAGE: A12 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: Another View
SOURCE: By JOHN S. OEHLER
LENGTH: Medium: 93 lines
When Virginia Gov. George Allen and most of the nation's governors gather for a national education summit March 26-27, the first topics for discussion will be academic standards and technology in the classroom, followed by debate on accountability in measuring student and system performance and school-to-work.
Hosted by International Business Machines at its New York conference center, the summit also will attract many of the nation's leading business executives, invited by their governors. Seven years have passed since the last discussion of this magnitude on education, when the nation's governors convened in Charlottesville with President George Bush and set national education goals.
Without question, our schoolchildren remain our most valued investment, and, at a minimum, creating effective schools will result in a better-trained work force. This marriage of education and business can guide the effective use of limited budget dollars to address many problems that plague today's schools.
But let us not forget what is good in our schools. And what is good with our schools of education. When the National Education Goals were accepted by the Congress and the president as a framework for education reform, they agreed that superior schools need superior teachers.
As schools of education preparing thousands of teachers who enter their first classrooms each year, we share the responsibility of producing educators who are versed with issues that dominate today's learning environment. As we discover more each day about how children learn, experienced teachers must have access to information and skill training that will make them even better professionals. Teachers are the gatekeepers in reaching any goals we set for the nation's education system.
Those who prepare teachers and other educators have not been silent observers while citizens, business and corporate interests and parents called for more rigorous educational standards. At Virginia Commonwealth University, our School of Education has refocused its teaching degrees to blend an undergraduate degree in designated humanities and sciences with a graduate program in education. We also have turned to growing affiliations with area public schools to guide both our teaching programs and our faculty research, to align our programs with the issues that teachers face when they turn away from the blackboard.
New generations of students require us to engage in new learning strategies, such as integrating technology - which in many cases is still not available due to budget limitations - into our lesson plans. The face of our school population is rapidly changing, with minority children expected to make up 46 percent of the nation's school-aged children by 2020.
One of the shocking revelations we discovered during a 1995 Holmes Group study was that fewer than 5 percent of education faculty have taught in urban schools, and many have not taught in decades. As college educators, we certainly can't provide innovative curricular changes or teaching methods if we haven't stepped into an elementary or secondary school recently.
Because research and teaching methods must be kept current, VCU has created exchange programs where our faculty go back into the classroom, and schoolteachers come to the university as teachers-in-residence and adjunct faculty. We also have developed professional-development school affiliations with six Richmond-area schools. These affiliations allow student-teachers to gain quality on-site experience in local schools, much as medical students gain experience in affiliated teaching hospitals.
At VCU, much of our practical experience for students also relates to our educational mission as an urban research university. As a university based in the center city, we share a natural obligation to equip our students with the unique challenges they'll find in urban schools. As education schools, we can't just prepare students to teach in suburban or rural localities.
Both higher education and public schools need to ask how we can more effectively teach today's youngsters. We can't be afraid to regularly question how we should prepare our teachers. Only by ensuring that our nation's education schools are producing quality teachers with the knowledge and skills needed in today's classrooms can we expect every child to gain the highest-quality education possible.
The challenges that face our nation's governors are paramount, but not without solutions. Many good things are happening every day in classrooms and in schools of education across America. We encourage our leaders to seek out those successes as models for education in the 21st century.
To advance in our educational mission, the partnership of our political and business leaders is essential. Standards, technology and accountability are critical components to the effectiveness of today's schools, but education schools provide the keys to producing cutting-edge research on teaching and translating that new knowledge into effective front-line educators. MEMO: John S. Oehler is dean of Virginia Commonwealth University's School of
Education.John S. Oehler is dean of Virginia Commonwealth University's
School of Education.
KEYWORDS: EDITORIAL by CNB