Thomas MacMillan Photo
Blatteau: C students need the help.
As Yale committed up to $4 million a year to help send New Haven kids to college, it quietly closed down ambitious efforts to train their teachers.
Yale has informed participants in its Urban Teaching Master’s Program that the effort will end this coming summer. Since 2005, the masters’ program has trained 20 people to become teachers for free in exchange for a promise to teach in city schools for at least two years. Fourteen of the program’s 20 graduates remain in city classrooms.
Yale also decided to close out its undergraduate Early Childhood and Secondary teaching certificate programs.
It made those decisions quietly just days before Yale’s president joined Mayor John DeStefano at a nationally covered rally to unveil the “New Haven Promise” program. Yale has committed up to $4 million a year for four years under that program. It will pay as much as 100 percent of the cost of in-state public-college tuition for city public-school students who graduate with averages of at least 3.0 and maintain good grades as undergraduates.
“The master¹s program was a worthwhile endeavor, but Yale believes its best support for public education in New Haven will come from initiatives other than formal teacher education programs,” said Yale spokesman Tom Conroy.
The decision caused dismay among city teachers who graduated from the Urban Teaching Program. They praised New Haven Promise while lamenting the loss of a novel effort that made a big difference in city classroom.
“We are so psyched about the Promise grants, but it is such a shame that Yale has chosen not to couple this initiative with continuing to train teachers for the district, who can help in the effort to give our students the tools to achieve Promise’s high standards,” said Michelle Shortsleeve, a New Haven Academy teacher who graduated from Yale’s master’s program in June.
“What concerns me most is that Yale sends a clear statement with this decision that reverberates beyond the 15 of us: ‘We will gladly throw money at this problem of underperforming urban schools in New Haven, but we won’t get our hands dirty — Yale people shouldn’t be teachers.’ It’s this statement that sums up what is so wrong with the education system in this country, and it just makes me furious,” Shortsleeve said.
The Yale program paid for students to spend 13 months earning their master’s in teaching as well as certification in a subject matter such as history or English. They spent time in city classrooms. They also formed a team that stays together long after graduation, sharing experiences from the classroom.
One such gathering of program grads is scheduled for Tuesday. Leslie Blatteau plans to be there.
Blatteau, who finished the program in 2007, is in her fourth year teaching in city public schools. She’s currently at Metropolitan Business Academy. (Read about some of her experiences at a previous post here, and click on the video.)
Like Shortsleeve, Blatteau had mixed emotions about last week’s dual developments: excited about Promise, discouraged by the abandonment of the teacher training effort.
“The Promise program is a great idea. But it is pretty indicative of the bigger picture of Yale: We’ll step in as the heroes and put the money in the end rather than invest in the day-to-day hands on in the trenches work, which is what we’ve been doing for the past five years” through the master’s program, Blatteau said.
“They’re deciding they have pocket change to spend on education. They can spend pocket change training a small amount of teachers. Or they can spend their pocket change — - $4 million is pocket change for Yale — on investing in college. It’s sexier. It’s a good thing. But the kids who are going to get Bs and go to college are going to get Bs and go to college [with or without New Haven Promise]. We need good teachers in the classroom for the kids who are struggling, so the kids who are getting Cs will think about” staying in high school instead of dropping out.
Blatteau said the Yale program aimed at making teachers “change agents” in their schools. It also taught here to see teachers not as “performers” entertaining students in the classroom but rather people charged with “creating a community where kids can do things … constructing interesting, purposeful tasks that the kids want to do.”
She still carries with her lessons about turning around bad days through reflection. “I had a crazy class last week,” she said Monday. “I didn’t say, ‘It was the kids’ fault.’ I thought about it this weekend. I planned for the class, and we had a great class this morning. The kids knew it. I knew it.”
Conroy said Yale’s commitment to supporting public education remains strong. He noted that other programs continue, including the celebrated Yale-New Haven Teachers Institute.
It made last week’s decision based on where the demand is, he said. Enrollment has proved low for the master’s program, he said. That’s because aspiring teachers are instead gravitating to Teach For America.
The program certified just three graduates in 2010, he said. Meanwhile, 17 percent of Yale seniors applied to TFA last year, and 46 of those went on to teach through TFA. New Haven has embraced TFA as part of its school reform drive; read about that here and here.
Update: On Tuesday, a national expert panel called for the creation of new teacher-training programs — programs similar to the expiring Yale one. Read about that here.
This is infuriating. Teach for America is not a replacement for high quality, intensive teacher education programs (like the Yale Masters). Research shows that trained, certified teachers outperform uncertified teachers on a number of different measures. New Haven schools need high quality, TRAINED teachers who are committed to New Haven in order to boost student achievement and help students get their hands on this Promise grant money. Without good teachers, many students will not be able to meet the high standards of the Grant. By closing its education programs, both Graduate and Undergraduate, Yale is turning its back on teaching as a profession. I am incredibly disappointed that Yale would give up on an initiative designed to create long term change in the schools. Ms. Shortsleeve is right when she says that this is indicative of Yale's response to many of New Haven's issues-- throw money at the problem, but don't get your hands dirty actually collaboratively solving it.