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Indiana Selected as Lead State for Woodrow Wilson Fellowships to Improve Teacher Preparation and Recruitment
Initiatives Designed to Attract Top Candidates for High-Need Schools
PRINCETON, N.J - The Woodrow Wilson National Fellowship Foundation has selected Indiana as the first site for its new national fellowship for high school teachers, intended to help overhaul teacher education and encourage exceptionally able teacher candidates to seek long-term careers in high-need classrooms. A grant from the Lilly Endowment of $10,161,106 will support the Indiana program, which focuses on high school math and science teaching.The Woodrow Wilson Indiana Teaching Fellowship, to be announced at a news conference today in Indianapolis by the Foundation, Endowment officials, and Gov. Mitch Daniels, will provide Fellows with a $30,000 stipend to complete a year-long master's program at one of four selected Indiana universities - Ball State University, Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis, Purdue University, and the University of Indianapolis. Fellows are then placed in a high-need urban or rural school that has committed to provide ongoing mentoring. In turn, they agree to teach in Indiana for three years.
"The time is right for this effort, and the need is great," said Sara B. Cobb, vice president for education at Lilly Endowment. "We are pleased that four of Indiana's top schools of education are committed to work with the Woodrow Wilson Foundation to recruit excellent candidates and enhance their educational programs so that they focus more on student learning. We look forward to seeing the eventual impact of the new approaches on the students they teach."
The fellowship will be open to college seniors and career-changers with outstanding undergraduate records and majors in math or science from around the nation who are willing to teach in Indiana. Initially the program will prepare 80 new Indiana math and science teachers each year - roughly one-quarter of the total number of teachers the state is now preparing in those fields - with aspirations to scale up to 400 per year.
"We're happy to be in on the ground floor of this program. This effort is just what Indiana needs to attract top talent to the classroom. Indiana is a life sciences leader, so improving math and science education in schools that need it the most will better prepare our students to participate in Indiana's economy," said Gov. Daniels.
The Indiana fellowship is part of a national Woodrow Wilson fellowship initiative with four goals:
* Transform teacher education - not just for Fellows but for the universities that prepare them, other teacher candidates in the same programs, and the high-need schools where they are placed as teachers;
* Get strong teachers into high-need schools. Indiana has chosen to focus on attracting math and science teachers, though other states may choose different subject areas;
* Attract the very best candidates to teaching through a fellowship with a well-known name and high visibility, similar to a National Merit Scholarship; and
* Cut teacher attrition and retain top teachers through intensive clinical preparation and ongoing in-school mentoring, provided by veteran teachers and supported by able principals.
"Indiana was selected as the lead state for launching this fellowship because of the commitment to education shown by the governor and other state leaders, strong support for the program within the state's philanthropic and business communities, and the willingness of leading universities, as well as local school superintendents, to advance exemplary approaches to teacher preparation," said Arthur Levine, the president of the Woodrow Wilson National Fellowship Foundation, who led a multi-year study on needed improvements in teacher education.
The participating universities will introduce new curriculum and outcome measures anchored by supervised clinical experience and ongoing mentoring in schools. The universities will receive 20 fellows each year and work with schools to support their graduates and track their effectiveness over time. These universities will break new ground in teacher education, reworking their programs to center on an outcomes-based, clinical approach to teacher preparation that includes three years of mentoring, as well as residencies for teachers on campus and for professors in the schools. The host institutions also will lodge responsibility for the teaching fellowship in the provost's office and promote close partnerships between their teacher education programs and their colleges of arts and sciences.
Applications for the first Woodrow Wilson Indiana Teaching Fellowships will be available in fall 2008, with Fellows to be named in spring 2009, begin master's work later that year, and start classroom teaching in 2010. In the interim, the selected universities will enhance their teacher education programs to meet Woodrow Wilson's standards for Fellows' preparation.
The Woodrow Wilson Foundation will pursue a state-by-state initiative to scale the program up nationwide, with other states, including Ohio, expected to launch Woodrow Wilson programs beginning next year. In addition, Woodrow Wilson is also launching a national version of the program, intended as a "Rhodes Scholarship" for teaching. Recipients of the Leonore Annenberg Teaching Fellowship will attend exemplary teacher preparation programs at Stanford University, the University of Pennsylvania, University of Virginia, and the University of Washington. The fellowship is funded by a $5 million grant from the Annenberg Foundation and a $1 million grant from Carnegie Corporation of New York.
"Schools are only as good as the teachers who serve in them," said David Haselkorn, senior fellow at Woodrow Wilson, who directs the Foundation's teaching fellowships. "This is a new strategy to ensure excellence in teaching, the profession that shapes America's future."
The Woodrow Wilson National Fellowship Foundation (https://www.woodrow.org) identifies and develops the best minds for the nation's most important challenges. In these areas of challenge, the Foundation awards fellowships to enrich human resources, works to improve public policy, and assists organizations and institutions in enhancing practice in the U.S. and abroad.