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The State Education Department announced today that it is offering a Request For Proposals (RFP) seeking institutions to participate in a pilot program to better prepare teachers to work in high needs schools and to improve their retention rates in those schools.听

An estimated fifty percent of new teachers in high needs schools leave within the first five years. Research shows that preparation grounded in a skills-based clinical approach increases teacher retention and leaves teachers better prepared for the realities of the classroom. In an effort to improve the retention and effectiveness of novice teachers in high needs schools, SED is offering an RFP that seeks to identify institutions that will partner with high needs schools with demonstrated shortages of certified teachers. These partnerships will participate in a project to address the teacher shortage issue through a graduate-level, clinically-rich teacher preparation pilot program. In addition to training teachers to serve more effectively in high needs schools, the pilot program also seeks to develop practices that can be adapted by other institutions for their teacher preparation programs.

The RFP will help to implement the pilot program by providing funding awards to eligible collegiate or non-collegiate institutions within New York in partnership with one or more high needs schools. These partnerships may opt to include other institutions or community based organizations. Funding for this pilot project will come from New York鈥檚 successful Race to the Top award.

The Board of Regents have appointed a Blue Ribbon Commission to assist in the review of proposals submitted to the Department. Commission members, listed below, are nationally recognized in the field of teacher education and preparation.

The RFP is available at this address:
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Blue Ribbon Commission

Barnett Berry, President and CEO of the Center for Teaching Quality, Inc.
A former high school teacher, Berry has worked as a social scientist at the RAND Corporation, served as a senior executive with the South Carolina State Department of Education, and directed an education policy center while he was a professor at the University of South Carolina. Currently, he advises the National Council of Accreditation of Teacher Education鈥檚 Blue Ribbon Panel, Education Testing Service and its Teacher Leadership Initiative, Urban Teacher Residencies United, the NEA Foundation鈥檚 Closing the Achievement Gaps Initiative, the Ford Foundation and its teacher retention project, and the Rose Community Foundation and its initiative around the strategic management of human capital.

Mary Diez, Ph.D., Dean of Graduate Studies, Alverno College
Diez has been named a recipient of the 2010 United States Postal Service award, "Women Putting Their Stamp on Metro Milwaukee." Diez was honored for her outstanding achievements in the field of education. Alverno College has long been a leader in education, and is recognized nationally and internationally for the faculty鈥檚 work with ability-based education and performance-based assessment.

Ronald Ferguson, Senior Lecturer in Education and Public Policy at Harvard鈥檚 Graduate School of Education and at Harvard鈥檚 Kennedy School
Ferguson is a Senior Lecturer in Education and Public Policy at the Harvard Graduate School of Education and the Harvard Kennedy School. He is also an economist and Senior Research Associate at the Malcolm Wiener Center for Social Policy. He has taught at Harvard since 1983, focusing on education and economic development. His research and writing for the past decade have focused on racial achievement gaps, appearing in a variety of publications. His most recent book is Toward Excellence with Equity: An Emerging Vision for Closing the Achievement Gap. He is the creator of the Tripod Project for School Improvement and also the faculty co-chair and director of the Achievement Gap Initiative at Harvard University. Ferguson earned an undergraduate degree from Cornell University and Ph.D. from MIT, both in economics.

Mildred Garcia, Ed.D., President, California State University, Dominguez Hill
Garcia is the seventh president of California State University, Dominguez Hills and the eleventh female president in the California State University system. From 2001 to 2007 she served as President of Berkeley College in New York and New Jersey. Prior to Berkeley, she was at Arizona State University (1997-2001), Montclair State University (1986-1996), and Hostos Community College of City University of New York (1979-1986).听 Garc铆a is an active member of the American Council of Education.

Paul Hill, Ph.D., Director and Research Professor University of Washington
Hill is the John and Marguerite Corbally Professor at the University of Washington. He is Director of the Center on Reinventing Public Education, which studies alternative governance and finance systems for public K-12 education. Hill's current work on public elementary and secondary education reform focuses on school choice plans, school accountability, and charter schools. He chaired the National Working Commission on Choice in K-12 Education. He is the editor of Charter Schools Against the Odds: An Assessment of the Koret Task Force on K-12 Education. Before joining the University of Washington faculty, Dr. Hill worked for 17 years as a Senior Social Scientist in RAND鈥檚 Washington office, where he served as Director of Washington Operations (1981-87) and Director of the Education and Human Resources program (1979-80).

Muriel A. Howard, Ph.D., President, American Assoc of Colleges and Universities
Formerly the president of Buffalo State College, State University of New York, Howard has been an active member of AASCU for many years. Her volunteer involvement with AASCU includes serving as chair of the board of directors (2006鈥�2007) and committee and commission memberships that included the Voluntary System of Accountability Presidential Advisory Committee, the Millennium Leadership Initiative, the Commission on Public University Renewal, and the Alliance for Regional Stewardship. Dr. Howard also served as a faculty member for AASCU鈥檚 New Presidents鈥� Academy.

Timothy Knowles, University of Chicago
Knowles is the John Dewey Director of the Urban Education Institute and the John Dewey Clinical Professor in the Committee on Education. The mission of the Urban Education Institute is to create new knowledge and educational models to address one of the nation's most significant and enduring questions: how do we produce reliably excellent schooling for children growing up in urban America?

He was deputy superintendent for teaching and learning at the Boston Public Schools from 1998 to 2002. At the Boston Public Schools, he has been responsible for school improvement and professional development, developing and sustaining community partnerships, and supervising principals and district staff. He was co鈥揹irector of the Boston Annenberg Challenge, a $30 million effort to improve literacy instruction, and has served in a number of other administrative positions, including founding director of a full鈥搒ervice, kindergarten鈥搕hrough鈥揺ighth鈥揼rade school in Bedford鈥揝tuyvesant, New York City.

Jim Pelligrino, Distinguished Professor in Psychology and Education and Co-Director of the Center for the Study of Learning, Instruction and Teacher Development at the University of Illinois at Chicago
From 1973-1979 Pelligrino was Professor of Psychology and a Research Associate of the University of Pittsburgh's Learning Research and Development Center.听 From 1979-1989 he was Professor of Education and Psychology at the University of California at Santa Barbara where he also served as Chair of the Department of Education from 1987-1989.听 From 1989-2001, he was Frank W. Mayborn Professor of Cognitive Studies at Vanderbilt University, where he also served as Dean of Vanderbilt鈥檚 Peabody College of Education and Human Development (1992-1998) and as co-director of the Learning Technology Center (1989-1992).

Larry Rosenstock, High Tech High
Following law school, Rosenstock taught carpentry for eleven years in urban high schools in Boston and Cambridge.听 He served as staff attorney for two years at the Harvard Center for Law and Education, and was a lecturer at the Harvard Graduate School of Education for five years.听 He was principal of the Rindge School of Technical Arts and of the Cambridge Rindge and Latin School.听 He directed the federal New Urban High School Project, was president of the Price Charitable Fund, and is the founding principal of High Tech High in San Diego. Larry's program, "CityWorks," won the Ford Foundation Innovations in State and Local Government Award in 1992, and he is an Ashoka Fellow.

Jesse Solomon, Director, Boston Teacher Residency
Mr. Solomon has taught middle and high school math for 10 years at the King Open School in Cambridge, Brighton High School, and City on a Hill Public Charter School, where he was a founding teacher, lead teacher for curriculum and instruction, and a member of the board of directors. While at City on a Hill, he founded the Teachers Institute, a school-based teacher preparation program. He has been an instructor at the Harvard Graduate School of Education and is a National Board-certified teacher. Mr. Solomon holds a B.S. in mathematics from MIT and an M.Ed. from the Harvard Graduate School of Education. 听听听

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