New Beginnings

A Glowing Renewal

TC aces its Middle States accreditation

The middle states commission on Higher Education has emphatically renewed Teachers College’s accredita­tion and affirmed the College’s efforts to remain at the forefront of shaping new approaches to teaching and learning in the 21^st century.

The Commission awarded its highest marks, finding that the College is in full compliance with all review standards and offering no mandated recommendations for improvement. The evaluation capped a two-year review process that included a final three-day site visit by a Middle States team and a College self-study conducted by admin­istrators, faculty members, professional staff, students, alumni and a trustee.

“Teachers College is among the top graduate programs in education in the country,” the Middle States team wrote in its evaluation report. “It aspires to be at the intellectual forefront of issues facing American education. The vision is to use a research-inspired multi-disciplinary approach, blending both theory and practice to educate the next generation of teachers, counselors, etc.”

TC President Susan Fuhrman said the review “produced a wealth of excellent ideas for improving the College, in part by strengthening our ability to respond to the needs and concerns of our students, faculty, alumni, and other key stakeholders and con­stituencies.”

The review process was led by Sasha Gribovskaya, Director of Accreditation and Assessment, and a steering committee chaired by Bill Baldwin, Professor of Practice in Ed­ucation and former Vice Provost, and A. Lin Goodwin, Vice Dean and Evenden Professor of Education.

Read the Middle States report and TC self-study here.

CHANGING THE WORLD THROUGH DISCOVERY

Teachers College Provost and Dean Tom James has received Outward Bound’s 2016 Kurt Hahn Award, named for the wilderness organization’s founder. Recipients are those who “change lives through challenge and discovery and create a more resilient and compassionate world.”  An education historian, James has written on the schooling of Japanese-Americans interned during World War II. At TC, he has created an investment fund for faculty work. He also has helped conceive Outward Bound programs. The award committee called James “a person of great dignity and decency.”

Living Lives of Meaning

The second annual Spiritual Life Conference, led in June by TC psych-ologist Lisa Miller, focused on spiritual activism — which results, said Tran- scendental Meditation expert Bob Roth, from conviction and persistence. “You are more qualified to make the transformation that needs to happen in the world,” Roth told listeners, “because you have the knowledge that change begins within.” http://bit.ly/2dLMW0T

TC: A Spike Lee Joint

Last spring, director (and former TC medalist) Spike Lee released “2 Fists Up,” a documentary about black student protests at the University of Missouri that included TC English Education professor Yolanda Sealey-Ruiz, postdoc Jamila Lyiscott and Patrick Gladston Williamson (M.A. ’16). This fall, he visited campus to screen the film. Lee’s documentary on Hurricane Katrina inspired the 2007 TC curriculum, “Teaching the Levees.”                                                      

‌Loud Reports: Headline-Makers from TC

“Who Opts Out and Why?”— the first national, independent survey of the “opt-out” movement—revealed that its support­ers oppose the use of test scores to evaluate teachers and believe that high-stakes tests force teachers to “teach to the test” rather than employ strategies that promote deeper learning. The new survey also reports concern about the growing role of corporations and privatization of schools.

“For activists, the concerns are about more than the tests,” said Oren Pizmony-Levy, TC Assistant Professor of Interna­tional & Comparative Education, who co-authored the study with Research Associate Nancy Green Saraisky (Ph.D. ’15). “Who Opts Out and Why?” also reveals that opt-out propo­nents oppose high-stakes, standardized testing be­cause they believe it takes away too much instruction­al time. In its July report on 2016 standardized test scores, New York State disclosed that about 21 per-cent, or an estimated 250,000 of the approx­imately 1.1 million eligible public school students across the state, declined to take the tests — about the same as in 2015, when the state led the nation in combined math and English Language Arts test refusals.

“Early Labor Market and Debt Outcomes for Bache­lor’s Degree Recipients,” a study by TC education economist Judith Scott-Clayton, finds that the typical college graduate fares well in terms of earnings and debt management. Private institutions often outperform public ones on measures such as graduation rates, but Scott-Clayton’s study finds that public university graduates often do better in the job market than peers from private colleges and universities. 

In a study in the journal Leadership and Policy in Schools, Alex J. Bowers, Associate Professor of Education Leadership, and Jared Boyce (Ph.D. ’15), categorize prin­cipals who leave schools as satisfied or disaffected, finding that reten­tion policies may succeed primarily with the latter, who are potentially most problem­atic to hold in schools.

TC HONORS ITS CONSUMMATE PEOPLE PERSON

 

In May, Jack Hyland, Board Co-Chair, received TC’s Cleveland E. Dodge Medal for Distinguished Service to Education. Hyland’s 29-year service spans two presidents and record-setting campaigns. He is “the consummate master” at “bringing people together,” said fellow Co-Chair Bill Rueckert, who estimated Hyland has attended 116 board and 400 committee sessions — trailing only Rueckert’s grandfather, for whom the Award is named. He served on TC’s board for 67 years.

To Dr. Vogeli, With Love

“It’s the highest honor for a uni­versity professor,” he says. “I’d rather have it than a new Rolls Royce.”

TC in the Election 

It was the third consecutive presidential election in which TC hosted an adviser or ad­visers of the two major party candidates. (This year, the Trump campaign declined participa­tion.) A TC website (tc.edu/kossoff2016) ran commentary by and interviews with faculty, students and alumni on subjects ranging from nutrition policy to the sticker price of college tuition.

Published Wednesday, Nov 30, 2016