 Hello. Welcome and thank you for joining us today. My name is Maria Heiler and I'm Deputy Director of the Washington D.C. Office and Senior Researcher at Learning Policy Institute. LPI is a non-profit educational research and policy think tank that conducts and communicates independent high-quality research to improve education policy and practice in ways that support empowering and equitable learning for each and every child. We appreciate you all for attending this webinar, bridging the continuum, teacher preparation and induction for deeper learning. It's the third in our series, State Efforts for Building an Effective Diverse Teacher Workforce. The first and second webinars can be assessed by visiting NABC's and Learning Forward's websites. They are also linked in the comment box, leveraging S's Title II for job-embedded professional development and how teacher leadership, career ladders, and relicensure can support teaching for deeper learning. This webinar will close out a series that has drawn connections between systems of professional learning and the wider career continuum, including quality preparation, early career supports, and ongoing development and advancement on the service of expanding deeper learning opportunities for all students. So we will start by framing the discussion prior to having a moderated discussion with all of our guests and then we'll open it for audience questions at the end. I'd like to take this time to offer a special thank you to our partners, Learning Forward, National Association of State Boards of Education, and National Conference of State Legislators for working together to forward this important work. I'd like to remind you all that resources are available in the top chat box and in our follow-up email. The time for questions is at the end. Resources are also available on the event page. I'd like to start with first defining what we mean by deeper learning. Deeper learning refers to the understanding and use of complex content knowledge as it is applied to new contexts and situations. It's the 21st century knowledge and skills we want our students to be able to know and be able to do. So they include the mastery of academic content knowledge for application and transfer, critical thinking and problem solving, communication and collaboration, metacognition, and the development of academic mindsets. When we think about teacher preparation for deeper learning, as the teaching skills needed to enable students to acquire and master these competencies, and I'll share a little bit about that later, the goal of education systems should be that all teachers have the capacity to teach in ways that develop deeper learning capacities for all students. So one challenge to the goal of such a teacher workforce is that there can be a disconnect between expectations and learning and preparation and what new teachers often encounter in their initial years teaching. So what is expected of a teacher to earn licensure and graduate graduate program may not align or look much like the systems of a professional learning and evaluation system at the district level. Early career induction programs or district or state led early career supports can be a structure to support the bridge between pre-service and in-service teaching. Such an effort to create better prepared new teachers and support early career teacher increases the likelihood of retaining them long term. LPI is currently exploring the elements of quality teacher preparation with the goal of understanding how teacher preparation can support deeper learning in the classroom for all students. So in our study of teacher preparation, I think we can go back a couple slides. We found five domains of deeper learning that demonstrate learning environments that are rich and deeper learning experiences. They are learning is applied and transferred, learning is developmentally grounded and personalized, learning occurs in productive communities of practice, learning is contextualized, and learning is equitable and socially just oriented. These domains represent elements that are important inside of K-12 classrooms but as importantly they represent the learning that teacher candidates were experiencing as they became teachers in the sites that we studied. It's very hard to create learning experiences when you've never experienced those yourself, so it's vital that teacher preparation programs create such experiences for their teachers who are learning to teach. Since we're focusing on the bridge between preparation and early career there are some structures and supports that surface in the study that have implications for connecting pre-service and induction. These programs in our study supported a bridge were standards, performance assessments, and authentic partnerships with K-12 districts. The programs had common visions of teaching that were indicated in their standards. Standards that are aligned with district and state standards as well. In this way teacher candidates were being prepared and assessed in ways that were aligned with the same expectations that hiring districts helped. In addition the programs also employed performance assessments that help candidates know precisely what practices they were strong in and those in which they need to continue professional development. These assessments can serve as a guide map for more personalized coaching and modeling during their early career mentoring. Finally the programs in the study had authentic reciprocal relationships with K-12 districts. They weren't just places to put their teacher candidates. Instead K-12 faculty were seen as partners in the development of the new teachers. University classes were often taught in school classrooms. Higher ed faculty were often in schools supporting professional development or whole school and district initiatives. So there are really strong authentic relationships between teacher preparation and K-12 districts. Key to supporting the bridge between in-service and pre-service teaching. So now I'd like to turn to a group of individuals who explore the policies that support building a continuum from teacher prep to professional learning systems that help ensure every student has access to deeper learning opportunities. Part of this discussion will include the role of partnerships at all levels in a state system that support this bridging and alignment. First I'd like to introduce you to Representative Robert Benny. He's a member of the National Conference of State Legislators Phase 1 and Phase 2 International Education Study Group, Chair of the Indiana House Education Committee and Co-Chair of NCSL's Education Standing Committee and then NCSL Early Education Fellow. Next I'd like to introduce Sandra Hindulaider. He is an educator preparation lead at the Center for Instructional Support in the Massachusetts Department of Elementary and Secondary Education. Sandra Lee is Massachusetts Education Preparation work where 70 providers endorse a total of over 5,000 educators each year. Margaret McKenna is President America from Lesley University in Massachusetts. She's a member of the Massachusetts Board of Elementary and Secondary Education. She served as the Deputy White House Counsel, as Deputy Secretary of United States Department of Education and headed the education transition team for President Clinton. She is a former President of the Walmart Foundation as well. Finally I'd like to introduce Jennifer Tuttleton. Dr. Tuttleton is Executive Director of Talent Pipeline for Louisiana's Department of Education and has served in multiple leadership roles over her 25 years at the local and state level. So I'd like to thank you all for joining us for the conversation and I'd like to get started with asking you Representative Benning. Could you just start us off by highlighting how Indiana is creating a system of quality teacher preparation and supporting new teachers entering the classroom? Sure I'd be happy to. I'm going to begin by thanking everyone involved Learning Policy Institute and National Association of State Boards. Indiana has, I've had the opportunity as an introduction to spend a couple of years with it to start doing this deep dive into international education where a lot of the countries that are outperforming us currently have taken research developed by many of our institutions in the United States and put it into practice. One of the programs that I've had an opportunity to work with I actually work for Marion University which is a I think the seventh largest teacher prep program in the state of Indiana but it's a non-public university and when I came to Marion several years ago we were able to we were in the process of redesigning our teacher prep program. I was on the leadership team so we have been able to basically integrate a lot of what we, a lot what you've already kind of addressed as well as a lot of what was discussed at the international study committee into our program. We have started by having rigorous admissions, more rigorous admissions criteria. We knew that from the rest of the world they were recruiting teachers from the top half of entering freshmen. The United States traditionally comes from the bottom half so we decided we need to increase our rigor as well as have a performance portfolio so they could demonstrate their ability to connect. We will have all of our students will have a content major even in elementary we will which is something else we found very common in some international competitors even in elementary they have math science specialists. Our teachers are taught from day one they begin in the K-12 environment in the freshman year but we also have teacher simulation labs which was developed by the University of Michigan and ETS so the students have an opportunity numerous times to teach in front of amateurs and have all sorts of different levels of demonstration in terms of student reaction etc. All of our students will we no longer will be graduating students with a bachelor's degree at Merriam we will only have a master's degree and we also are requiring which will be paid for and it's the fifth year of the program depending on how many year four or five depending on how many years of how many credits you bring in the program. We are requiring and that fifth year we are requiring a one-year residency where we are partnering with local school districts and they will pay the residence so they will be a paid residency and their master's degree will be paid for at the same time. We are a tap school so we are very intent in terms of making sure that we are driving down to the data to make sure that teachers can directly impact student performance and the last component we have embedded was a study abroad component so that all of our students will have an opportunity to study abroad in a high-performing country. I just got back from South Korea where we spent two weeks looking at the teacher prep programs as well as visiting schools and learning how teachers are trained as well as how they teach in the classroom. The state of Indiana we have been looking at we're kind of I think a shining star right now in terms of development programs right now in Indiana but we are also looking at expanding residencies and making residency a we've spent last summer in an unstudied committee studying that our budget year will be next year so we're hopeful that we will be able to include funding available for residencies and we also several years ago created what's called next generation who's your educators would be we provide an additional $7,500 per year which is stackable on understate aid for students who want to go into teaching and they have to be the top 20 percent of their class and then they also have to compete as a competitive scholarship we currently are offering 200 slots per year for all four years of their teaching or their higher ed experience and then they will have to teach in an Indiana school for five years upon graduation. You know we talked a little bit about increased rigor that we're pushing we have pushed that as well in public policy and as well as Marion. Marion our cohort first cohort that into the new program was this year and our previous year cohort had a starting GPA of 3.16 SAT of 1006 and only had 7.8 percent minority for the first cohort of a new program our GPA jumped to 3.6 average GPA SAT is 1132 and our minority percentage is 21.7 percent but the class of 18 we've come from again to a 3.7 GPA 1143 SAT unfortunately our minorities not as high as we'd like we want to get to 40 percent but we're at 16.4 percent we've actually doubled our enrollment from 16 to 19 or to the fall of 18 so it proves that increasing rigor and selectivity if you couple that with an active recruitment policy you can actually get more high qualified students engaged in education but we have taken work very closely with our state board actually had a discussion with them just last night a couple of their state board members in terms of how we can start taking some of the best practices that Marion is implementing and how we can state take that statewide the governor's just released last fall his talent workforce plan and we are providing the commission for higher ed the authority to start having more direct input in terms of future prep quality programs and how we can align those and in the next session we hope to take and do more in terms of incentives in terms of state student aid to kind of direct programs towards a higher rigor more a program that's more focused on making sure students are ready on day one and having residences and options like that available to them that's very exciting it sounds like Indiana has really made some key investments and some key resources have you have really channeled some key resources into strengthening future preparation in the state I was wondering Sandra if you could say a little bit about what the work is looking like in Massachusetts and if you would chime in Jennifer that would be great sure so this is Sandra and here in Massachusetts we have actually followed the three different principles that Maria outlined earlier in terms of thinking about standards performance assessments and authentic partnerships that's absolutely what we have been doing here in Massachusetts so it started in 2012 when our board passed some updated regulations that both elevated our expectations around what it would mean for teachers to be fully prepared to meet the needs of their students on day one but it also pushed us to more deeply aligned K-12 with educator preparation really intentionally creating that bridge between the two so that there could be a more streamlined process from the moment someone identifies that they would like to be an educator all the way through to completing a program and then being inducted and mentored in pre-k-12 public school in Massachusetts and so what we did was we looked at the standards that we had for our in-service educators and we broke them down to identify we worked with a field to break that down and identify of all of these standards what are the most essential elements but a new teacher absolutely cannot go into a classroom in full responsibility without meeting these expectations and through that we identified our six most essential elements and used that to develop our performance assessment that every candidate every teaching candidate would have to go through and demonstrate proficiency with in order to be endorsed for licensure in Massachusetts this process so we call it our candidate assessment of performance sorry candidate assessment of performance it exactly modeled off of our educator evaluation system upon which we evaluate our pre-k-12 educators which both sets up our candidates to know what the expectations will be of them once they get into the field but it's also meant that our cooperating teachers here in Massachusetts we call them our supervising practitioners who are those licensed educators mentoring and supporting our candidates during their practicum experiences are also fully knowledgeable and deeply embedded within that system as well and they're able to make sure that they're fully supporting our candidates and we've just received a ton of positive feedback both from our educator preparation side as well as from teachers in the pre-k-12 schools that are partnering with those at prep to to talk about how that clear alignment between the two makes them better supervisors and again just hold the bar higher for our candidates themselves um we also in terms of the authentic partnerships piece we explicitly outlined a domain for educator preparation that they need to demonstrate in our accountability system for these programs so when we review these programs as as Maria mentioned we have about 70 across the state one of the things that we explicitly look for evidence of is the extent to which they are intentionally partnering with their pre-k-12 schools and districts not just to have a placement where a student can do their student teaching but really thinking more broadly about how are they addressing the needs of those pre-k-12 schools and districts both well the candidates are candidates but also when they're thinking about hiring when they're thinking about that induction and mentoring piece so we're we're really pushing our educator preparation programs to be responsive of those needs of their of their partner districts which is formed which has allowed them to form more authentic and robust partnerships that better serve candidates themselves as well as the students um and then we get to our induction and mentoring so a few years ago we updated our induction and mentoring guidelines and since that time we've been doing an annual report to really try and understand how districts are implementing induction and mentoring it is a requirement of all districts to have a two-year induction and mentoring process but we wanted to make sure that we're collecting data to understand what that looks like the data that we're collecting it's going to inform some updated guidelines that we're working on this year again further bringing into alignment more significantly what's happening with preparation and what's happening in pre-k-12 we do have a few examples of of of districts that have started thinking about how they can leverage training of of preparation in in their induction and mentoring so we have a couple of regions here in Massachusetts who have identified an educator preparation program that they partner with to offer the professional development and support through their induction and mentoring program it sounds like you really made some key efforts at the state to think about the full continuum and to really develop ways that preparation can work together very deeply with k-12 districts and not in a shallow manner and it sounds like it's been really successful in messachusetts yeah one of the links that that that was just sent out over the chat is our partnership toolkit so if folks are thinking about what this could look like that's the toolkit that we put together to help and just kind of reinforce what it is that organizations and districts might want to think about as they engage start engaging in this robust partnership that's fabulous thank you for so much for sharing that uh jennifer can you talk a little bit what's going on in louisiana and how you all are working with building alignment between preparation and induction yeah absolutely thank you maria um hi this is jennifer tuttleton from louisiana department of education and um i would like to commend robert on what he described was happening um in indiana because louisiana and also like massachusetts are taking on a lot of those efforts around um the whole redesign of teacher preparation um sandra had mentioned um about uh you know bridging between pre-service and in-service that you had talked about maria around standards and performance assessment and authentic and what i really like is what you said is reciprocal partnership and so louisiana for over the past decade we've been really working um to bridge this gap and create really strong partnerships um so for us it's been more about alignment between preparation and workforce and how we we feel that void and so um matter of fact um maria someone could put us on slide one of mine that might help create a land state thank you um so you know uh acting on the belief here in louisiana of high expectations to help students succeed in the classroom beyond um we've also raised the expectation for preparation programs and schools and districts gosh in louisiana have gone to great lengths to improve the quality of education for students across louisiana but you can see back in 2000 um uh when schools and districts were adopting new curriculum revamping their professional development programs uh using our teacher evaluation system to provide feedback we were busy at the preparation level um level back in 2011 where our preparation programs created themes um dedicated to understanding all of this new body of work the new content standards that align to the assessments um in addition to that the department trained faculty at the preparation level um on compass the state's evaluation system and then beginning in the fall of 2013 university started integrating that into their curriculum um we've developed advisory councils and other partnerships involving um pk-12 partners to use input to make improvement processes um we really looked to um our field of teachers um in order to find out though were these efforts making the um marked improvements that we wanted and so we reached out by doing a survey of over 6000 educators and if you'll turn the slide to i'd like to address that and what we found out through this body of work is that we weren't actually um preparing teachers to be prepared um as sandra said on day one and so to better understand this through the survey what we found were the most prominent themes from survey results was one school systems of preparation program agreed that teacher candidates need more on experience prior to entering the classroom and it's our adoption of long residencies um under the toolage of a high quality um mentor and we also found that preparation program and school systems generally agreed on what should be taught but what we also found is there was such a disconnect um that you spoke about maria earlier where uh learning and skills were not being transferred and the third thing is that um school systems experiences shortages of teachers in specific subject areas that we're not coordinating with what the preparation program was doing on the recruitment side so if you'll advance to the next slide um we took a real tactical approach in 2014 where we had launched i'm sorry you can advance to the next one with we launched an initiative in 2014 um now known as believe from prepare and this included 41 Louisiana school systems and 24 preparation providers um and impacted basically about 1300 aspiring um aspiring mentor teachers and um through this grant program districts and their preparation partners were awarded funds to prepare aspiring teachers and to incentivize that collaboration that was much needed based on our survey results um in 2016 our board approved updated regulations to expand your long residencies and um that were based on a uh a competency type of curriculum and we've um and we've elevated that statewide to the point where we have now had over 850 aspiring teachers who've benefited through these partnerships and the year long residencies um additionally over 35 school systems and then nearly all of our 27 preparation providers in Louisiana have partnered to implement um full-year residencies to point um like um our friends in massachusetts um we have also instituted some um incentive pay where we are developing high quality mentors and we have developed a funding force where we can pay our mentors uh a stipend for this body of work along with working with preparation programs where we can offset some expenses by providing stipends um at the residency level as well. I love the use of data um that you talked about Jennifer in terms of um surveying 6 000 of your teachers and really hearing from teachers um what they need and what they want in their perspective that's so key um and I appreciate uh the redesigned efforts that you've been going through in Louisiana um especially it's as in um in Louisiana as in Indiana the use of residencies is a key to a higher retention pathway so uh investing resources and to those types of um programs with a full year of mentoring with a um high quality mentor teacher is key to retaining our um teachers over a long haul and you've all you've all talked about partnerships I'd like to turn to Margaret for um a moment and um I'm curious about the work that you're doing um at the state level and if there are other partners in the work we've heard about partnerships between k-12 districts and education preparation programs but are there other partners in this work and um who have you had the opportunity to partner with in your role sure I I can go back to you know many roles the president of leslie actually uh we had uh residency and partnership programs 50 years ago so not a new idea um both with uh private schools shady hill buckingham brown and it goes and with public schools we had residences before they were even popular so uh I guess the time has come but you know I I'm encouraged by listening to everybody a particularly representative benning uh in the work he's been involved in but I don't want to throw cold water on what people are saying but you know go back to what ntsl uh report no time to lose uh came out with uh in terms of uh the talk in other countries other countries talk about having the best teachers in the world it's something we seldom hear of in this country we talk about having the best students and we're worried about our students being competitive but we seldom talk about having the best teachers in the world and I don't think we do enough to do that while sander talks about uh you know concentrating on on our 70 preparation programs and the standards we hold them to we also have alternative programs in massachusetts where people walk into our classrooms and they do around the country with seven weeks of preparation having past tests and having seven weeks of preparation before they walk into a classroom uh with an old mentor teacher and have their own classrooms so you know and I think you know if we're serious about this we're going to do the kinds of things that representative benning and others have talked about here which is we're going to do true preparation we're going to give teachers support we're going to mentor them we're going to pay them we're going to give them career ladders we're going to give them time uh and we're going to give them career ladders to be master teachers not to be administrators we're going to give them comparative pay and we're not going to allow people to teach our kids uh when they've had no classroom experience and they're not being mentored and we're allowing that to happen all over the country uh and we and we do not allow that to happen in other countries that do well we're also going to make sure that our our teaching course is diverse that they're culturally competent and I think one of the things that was learned in the study of no time to lose was that all the teachers in those countries had serious special education learning all the teachers in all the classrooms and and it really helped to have have that for all students because it makes everybody a better teacher and everybody able to to uh identify and work with teachers with students with any kind of learning disability so I think the things we've heard today are all great but I think that attracting and keeping the kinds of students that representative Benning and others have talked about is going to be an effort unless we do all the other things in terms of support in terms of pay uh in terms of diversity cultural competency also in terms of allowing teachers to teach uh in terms of creativity and I think one of the issues around testing and I am not anti testing at all but we have to be really careful about what has become in some places teaching to the test as opposed to testing what people are learning because we want to make sure that our classrooms are places where teachers who are great can be creative and innovative and that's what keeps good teachers in the classroom and we want our best teachers to be teaching in the most challenging classes rooms and schools and so that our our students who need the best teachers get the best teachers so we need to do more and all of that and we need to you know my parents were both public school teachers their whole lives and if I put my mother and my father and my aunt together we come up with 118 years of teaching so there's no one who respects teachers more than I do and I think that's something our country needs to come back to and now that's an error when the best students went into teaching and then we had a law as as representative Benning says where we went into the bottom half of the class we need to do everything we can to attract again and keep again the kind of students we want in teaching and therefore the respect for teachers and good teaching. Yes I I think a lot of what you've mentioned aligns the types of teachers that we want in classrooms aligns with the deeper learning competencies I spoke about the domains earlier and I think one of the things we need to think about is often like why are the bottom half of the students the bottom half of the classroom right so if we would encourage and have teachers who are able to engage in deeper learning for all students there will be no bottom half of the classroom and all of our students will have the types of knowledge and skills available to be excellent teachers and I appreciate your point Margaret that we need to shine light on the fact that our teachers are some of the greatest teachers in the world and acknowledge that and help help people to realize that teaching is a really important profession and stop stop always putting out the challenges but also the rewards and to provide those incentives and resources conversation for teachers so that it is a viable profession for people who want to engage who want to enter the profession so I'm going to say if I this is representing if I can just comment briefly on a couple things Margaret said which I know that some of the research Linda Dilling Hammond has done and we have found in terms of our international study the special ed component you talk about there's no question that the rest of the world and one I mean we spend more money on k-12 and all but four countries but they're able to drive more money in a classroom and one of the ways they do it is in different classroom structure size things like that but they also when come out special ed you hit the nail on the head they have all their teachers tend to have better education support in terms of special ed so they don't do as much pull out separate separation their teachers are better able to meet those needs and I also applaud with you Margaret when you say talk about career ladders we also learned very clearly that in those high performing countries they have career ladders even in China when I was in China when you think of a communist country I was talking to the president of normal university and and he would toward it back to me representing you live in a capitalistic society you know how to reward high performance every part of your economy but teaching and so Indiana actually adopted a program called career pathways or opportunity culture and negotiated into the largest school districts and save Indiana's a collective bargaining agreement where they're paying up to almost $20,000 more per year for teachers to stay in the classroom but take on a lead teacher roles so you have high performing educators staying there as opposed to moving into the administration and the last time you would you bring up in terms of respect uh representative um Sharon Tico Sanchez and I spoke on Monday on NCSL's behalf to the National Association of State Directors of Teacher Education and Certification and that was one of the questions that came up and um we both agreed that it you know we cannot legislate um uh respect but it's something we all kind of need to work together on uh hand in hand legislators policymakers and educators but um you know I think you will find especially if you elevate the requirements that as we have done in the program and Mary and you know people will come and they will engage and you'll have a higher level of respect when you have people perceive this to be a much more rigorous program to get into so I think you hit a number of nails on the head Margaret thank you very much thank you um on we have a very excited interested audience and have several questions and I'd like to um turn to the rest of the time to um respond to some of those if that's all right we have one question um I think you could um address this um perhaps Margaret and then we'll go to um Jennifer um would love to hear any suggestions for how state boards can evaluate their programs for deeper learning domains what should we look at and what questions should we ask well I think we have to find a way to do assessments that that are deeper than uh paper and pencil testing I think I'm not saying that that student performance should not be a part of it but I think we have found that it that it is not the only way to do things and I think one of the things that uh that teachers have objected to is that their evaluation is based on just standardized testing I think no one's objected that standardized testing can be a piece of it but we have to find other ways to assess uh deeper because we're saying deeper learning we're not just because standardized testing is not deeper learning it's it's a piece so I think one of the things that that is really lacking is figuring out assessments that really make sense and you know that even the ETS the college board has uh in the in their college board uh seminar has developed a new way of evaluating an AP exam and uh I think we've got to figure out how to do that which is not just a standardized test so that's not a great answer but because I'm not an assessment person but there are a lot of people that are and we've got to figure out a better way portfolio is one of them it may take more time but we got to learn from it and do it a different way yes there's a continuum of standardized tests that are performance based so and there are examples of fine assessments that get at those deeper learning competencies that I was talking about earlier would you like to add to that Jennifer um no I do not disagree Maria and I actually kind of took the question in a different direction around assessments at the preparation level and accountability at the preparation level so I'll I'll just leave it at what Margaret said and say that I support um exactly what she said Sandra anything that you'd like to add no I think I agree exactly with with what's been said there I think um with you know how do we elevate our expectations to make sure that the learning that's happening is really deep at all levels is something that we are you know continuously thinking about how um how we make sure that what candidates are getting and then what they're being trained to do and being prepared to do when they're with students absolutely needs to go beyond the tests and the standardized assessments that they're doing and I think in some places we're seeing folks who are doing that really well and in others I think they're kind of more um earlier on in the stages of pushing to that level makes sense um I'd like to take another question from the audience a person asked how do you resolve higher expectations for incoming teacher candidates and filling the shortages of teaching positions in key areas such as STEM with with teachers with diverse ethnic backgrounds and I think that representative Benning you you you address that um with your opening comments about the work that you're doing in Indiana so I'd love to if you would address that and love to hear from others on the panel as well um thank you very much great question um Indiana happens to be a state where we have actually developed more talent than we need in terms of k-12 so we're kind of an exporter however we still have shortages in STEM special ed it is constantly a challenge one of the ways I think that we're going to have to be if we're serious about really elevating education and profession serious about getting more um highly qualified individuals in the classroom there's two things we have to do no we have to be willing to compensate them in a higher level and recognize that and number two we have to go actively recruit teachers um I would challenge that most teacher prep programs are much more the default programs in universities they tend to be programs where people go who don't necessarily know exactly what they want to do unfortunately or academically when I talk to president um Daniel that Purdue which has a highly ranked teacher prep program they had the lowest entry in SAC and the lowest entry in GPA if you're serious about really I think we're and really trying to go back to the we're going to have to get progressive about recruitment and in our example in a small little university we have we are actually having signing days for teachers we have like a big deal about the fact that one of these and we're going into a minority school trying to recruit high performing students into education we need more kids of color teaching in our schools today when 40 of our population is you know kids people of color in the classroom we need to have our race balance much more closely aligned and I think it's going to take active engagement as well as maybe uh when you talk about STEM maybe we talk about this on Monday as well differentiate at pay when they be willing to compensate we have several states Utah for instance is talking about giving $10,000 extra per year to a teacher who teaches STEM they tend to be more rigorous programs to get into in terms of the academics we need to kind of recognize that but to me we're going to have to be more aggressive and more willing to try to get the best and best into the classroom as well as providing one of the other things that when the darling Hammond has suggested is trying to graduate those students in those shortage areas with as little to no debt as possible so incentivizing them with state student assistance etc which is something Indiana has with our STEM money as well as next gen has tried to focus on so if I can add to that one of the programs this is Margaret one of the programs we had and I've seen others have is taking folks who are early retirees from STEM industries and turning them into teachers uh people retiring you know in their fifties and uh trying to figure out what you do next and they may not want to teach full time and that's why we have to be innovative and flexible uh and you put them through a pedagogical program don't put them right in the classroom I'm not suggesting that but put them through a you know a a summer program have them teachers a second teacher in a classroom and then give them a physics class to teacher a chemistry class to teach just one or two and they love it school system wins everybody wins but you've got to be innovative but innovative with the school system and with the union to make that work we did that when Polaroid was in Cambridge and it it worked out wonderfully yes I had a bit more context here in addition to what they had in Louisiana we absolutely are appreciating the sentiments of what you are talking about and most recently we have tried to elevate the teaching profession launching a statewide campaign called be irreplaceable as a teacher and we did that in high concentrations in rural I need areas where we are really working with our preparation programs due to strong post-back opportunities communities where we can do much of what you are but another layer to that that I think that we are steadily working towards getting it right is mass production of work workforce that can help inform our preparation about who they need to recruit in what areas and incentivize through our accountability system a structure that helps our preparation program work with with our school systems to feel the workforce needs and that's information our preparation programs have not always had and that's dialogue that has not always occurred so we are seeing some positive traction around that especially in our rural and high need areas that's so key is to understanding you know if we're developing teachers that they don't need it's a waste of resources whereas it can be much more targeted and fill the needs of the district so that partnership again is so key I want to add one thing here what we have learned when we think about lessons regarding that work so while we are elevating the workforce trying to draw more people into the teaching profession and we're also trying to work to bridge some of these barriers that we have talked about between pre-service and in-service an incredible lesson for us has been it's kind of on the induction theme that here in Louisiana we have to have strong mentor teachers ready to host and support folks who are either new to the profession folks who are have been recruited are in all cert programs or post-bac through having strong mentors we have been working with learning forward sponsor of the call today to work to create high quality mentor teachers so that not only once we get them there through our campaign and other recruitment efforts they are in a position to sustain and that we don't lose them on those early years through frustration and a lack of support and so that's been pretty incredible and over the last year this year and next year we will train about 2500 high quality teachers to also be high quality mentors and supports as we ramp up our recruitment efforts that is great you still you stole the question right out of my mouth all right about that no it was fabulous because we were talking a lot about recruitment right and preparation and a lot of the studies that we've done here at learning policy institute emphasize the need for paying attention to the retention of the teachers and the high quality teachers so I wanted to ask the founder if you would speak a little bit I know that Massachusetts is involved in the diversity and learning red learner ready a teacher initiative with CCSFO and I know that part of the plan is also talking about retention did you want to share a little bit about that work you're doing sure and and as it speaks specifically to the diversity of our teachers we're seeing that in Massachusetts teachers are not staying at their schools at the same rates so well each year 15 percent of white teachers leave their school at the end of the year 25 percent of teachers in other groups so teachers of color are leaving their schools so we're really trying to think about what needs to happen so that there is not a discrepancy between the the rate at which folks are leaving and I mean speaking more broadly and some of these questions are coming through about how do we retain our excellent teachers and so as it pertains to the diversity work that we are doing we're thinking about what does it take to ensure that school systems are culturally responsive that the leaders in the schools are being culturally responsive to their teachers and that their teachers are being culturally responsive in their classrooms with their students and so that one component of our strategic plan is really scaling out the supports and the expectations that we have around cultural responsiveness at all levels of leadership and as teacher leadership as well and and I think it's something you know Margaret mentioned career ladders and the importance of being able to identify ways for master teachers to stay engaged in the classroom and so we're doing some other work around supervisor certification and seeing whether there's a mechanism that we can put in place to for as professional development for master teachers to demonstrate that they've got these skills to be high quality supervisors and just exploring other ways as well to support that career ladder and help incentivize it from the state level while districts implemented at the local level. Yes there is one other policy issue that I think needs to be considered at Margaret and both of you bring up the career ladders but the other thing when you start looking at demographics and think about millennials and how studies show that they are going to have a number of careers and how they're motivated motivated by other things other than money and so one of the things that we have also looked at in the state is how do you make some of their benefit plans more portable and it would be very true when Margaret talks about having second career people enter into the marketplace instead of having defined benefit plans look at defined contributions that vest much earlier and then they're much more portable so the individual decides to come into the field late in life it has value to them likewise because you don't want to miss the opportunity for those great educators when they're engaged if you provide them flexibility they have some ability to move around as opposed to you know to define benefit plans that we've had historically have been somewhat more restrictive I appreciate that making note of that so we're wrapping up and I'd like to thank our speakers for sharing their experience and perspectives I know that this webinar was focused on bridging the continuing teacher preparation and induction for deeper learning but I think that the ways in which we also talked along the continuum talking about mentor teachers and supervisor and career letters are key pieces to thinking about supporting our early career teachers making that bridge from teacher preparation to in service so the threads all tie together it's hard to stay focused when we're thinking about a full system so I appreciate the rich conversation and the multiple perspectives that you all brought in thank you very much I'd also like to thank all of you the audience for attending the great questions I'm sorry we only got to a couple of them but we appreciate you being part of this important discussion and encourage you to continue to take these conversations back to your places where you're doing this work I'd like to remind everyone the resources being available in the chat box will be included in a follow-up email sent to all of you so that'll be available and again this will be recorded and available in a couple days thank you once again we really appreciate you all engaging this conversation thank you great thank you