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K-12 Task Force Report

THE CHARGE

At the initial meeting of the Task Force on January 27, 2000 Executive Vice Chancellor and Provost Daniel Fogel reiterated his written charge to the Task Force:

Chancellor Emmert and I are looking forward for action steps and strategies that will effectively demonstrate LSU's commitment to children, families, and schools and to the lifelong development of the human resources of Louisiana. Operating downstream of K-12 education, LSU cannot advance among the nation's public research universities unless K-12 education also advances, nor will LSU be able to recruit and retain greater numbers of highly talented faculty and staff if they do not find local and regional communities supportive of the high aspirations we would expect them to have for the education of their families.

The Task Force itself was comprised of not only LSU faculty members, staff representatives, and administrators, but also members from the community involved in education. It included two teachers, two K-12 principals/heads, a member of the East Baton Rouge School Board, an associate superintendent of the East Baton Rouge School Board, and a member of the Louisiana Board of Regents and Governor's Task Force on Education. (View a list of membership.)

THE ISSUES

For the first two weeks the Task Force members shared—with considerable passion—their views of the problems facing K-12 education in Louisiana. These reflected the national debate about education generally:

• Without doubt the greatest concern is the lack of respect for educators and the profession of educator, which is reflected most clearly in the poor salaries that teachers receive. As long as Louisiana is unwilling to commit resources to raise the pay of teachers and consequently the value of that profession, the state will languish near the bottom not only in educational rankings but in economic and quality-of-life rankings as well.
• The ability to maintain a classroom environment conducive to learning is hampered by social, economic, and family issues, particularly in certain school settings. K-12 education is not simply about working with students but reaching out to and including parents, extended families, and even neighborhoods.
• The number of teachers being prepared does not match the projected need for teachers, especially in acute areas such as special education, mathematics, and science.
• Merit and effectiveness must play a greater role in the placement and reward systems for teachers.
• While teacher preparation is extremely important, training for leadership for leadership positions in schools must be stressed as well. Often effective principals and other administrators make a great difference in the success of individual schools.
• Teachers, universities, and communities must all be committed to the ongoing retraining/upgrading of teacher skills. The legal, medical, scientific, and engineering professions insist that their members constantly update their knowledge and skills. Teachers must do so as well, but it is up to universities especially to make that possible.

LSU'S ROLE IN FACING THESE ISSUES

How to maintain such an inventory led in turn to the Task Force considering what mechanism could be put in place not only to maintain such an inventory, but to coordinate some of the outreach programs, to identify new programs, to make certain that those programs were of benefit to K-12 education (by creating a cooperative and mutually beneficial atmosphere with K-12 schools), and to seek funding to make new projects possible. The Task Force agreed that the focus of this mechanism should not be limited to K-12 education, but should involve pre-school programs as well and extend through to college and even to graduate school. K-12 itself was too limited; pre-K-16 would be more appropriate.

A subcommittee was charged with the task of identifying the necessary components of this mechanism. Of specific interest sere the questions:

• How could the University establish and maintain strong and real community partnerships with schools and other agencies focused on improving school-related environments;
• how can interdisciplinary research, particularly on outreach mechanisms and learning strategies, be fostered;
• how can academic/research faculty be encouraged to participate in outreach, especially in the area of service learning;
• how can extramural funding for programs be coordinated;
• how can holistic assessment of our projects be performed;
• how can we gather data from various pre-K-16 outreach initiatives;
• how can we provide more organized support for the various lending and materials programs that have developed throughout the University;
• how can we merge some existing centers and programs to provide better and more coordinated PK-16 service than we are currently?

The result was the Task Force's proposal that the University establish what we have entitled the LSU Institute for Partnerships in Education (LSUIPE). We propose that this office be a university-wide office answerable to the Provost and to the Chancellor. In broad strokes, its function will be to:

• maintain the inventory of LSU's involvement in PK-16 education projects;
• encourage and assist in the composing and submitting of education grants by bringing together university faculty and units, public and private schools, the community, and corporations;
• bring together scholars from different fields who might be working on similar projects that will benefit PK-16 education, similar to those in interdisciplinary research teams created by Vice-Chancellor Lynn Jelinski;
• bring educators from throughout the city and state to advise us on their needs and what they think LSU can do to make their efforts in the classroom more effective and their professional development more meaningful.

A third subcommittee conducted an experiment in how such an office would work in the most practical way possible: it composed and submitted a grant proposal, completed in June, was a US Department of Education Gear-Up Grant in the community partner component of the competition. (View the LSUIPE proposal.) The proposal is for $2,043,187 in federal funds (total project cost with matches is $4,797,404) and is a collaborative effort between East Baton Rouge Parish and LSU with several community and industrial partners. The proposal takes advantage of resources throughout the LSU campus and would be specifically aimed at high-risk middle school students with the specific goal of finding interventions that would make these students more likely to be prepared to enter and to graduate from college. The grant application demonstrated that, with appropriate structure and people in place (in this case the Task Force subcommittee), we can effectively marshal resources across the University.

OBSERVATIONS

This Task Force completed its deliberations in light of another very important but completely independent activity. The Board of Regents and the Board of Elementary and Secondary Education recently formed a Blue Ribbon Commission on Teacher Quality. This group was working under the charge "to recommend policies that lead to a cohesive PK-16+ system that holds universities and school districts accountable for the aggressive recruitment, preparation, support, and retention of quality teachers who produce higher achieving K-12 students." Our Task Force has been fully informed of all the Blue Ribbon Commission's activities, as Frances Henry, a member of the Blue Ribbon Commission and of the Board of Regents, served actively in our group. We would like to acknowledge her efforts. The Blue Ribbon Commission has developed a set of numerical criteria by which all the universities in the state will be judged. The standards are aimed at assessing teacher recruitment and preparation. Included is a mandated organizational reporting structure that will have to be met by the University when the Commission's recommendations are complete. Our group consciously avoided working toward that end and is simply making recommendations we think appropriate to LSU and its community partners. However, we are aware that the recommendations made here do in fact predispose the University to providing an acceptable solution to the organizational guidelines that will be required to respond to the Commission's recommendations. We think that this further suggests that our recommendations are timely, and, if implemented successfully, should allow LSU to respond with its own internal plan that has the benefit of meeting the requirements of an external reporting agency.

SUMMARY OF RECOMMENDATIONS

1. The University must argue with all of its resources, including expert witnesses, presentations in public forums, and public relations that he key to economic growth in Louisiana is education, and that commitment must start in teacher compensation. This includes our most vigorous support for increases in teacher salaries. If nothing is done about critically low pay, particularly for teachers who have demonstrated exceptional merit, Blue Ribbon Commissions and Task Forces charged with making improvements and seeking accountability will ultimately be measuring nothing more than the lack of societal support for the professional status of teachers and their key position in educating our children.
2. The University must support and champion alternative certification of individuals who, through education and experience, are qualified to become excellent teachers. These kinds of people must be recruited into the teaching profession wherever possible.
3. The University should implement the LSUIPE for its many benefits including:
   • maintaining an active, dynamic inventory of K-12 outreach initiatives,
   • creating a site outside the College of Education for educational research by discipline-specific faculty,
   • providing an entity where members of the community and LSU faculty can interact as equal partners,
   • providing and entity whose leadership would be charged with developing interdisciplinary extramural funding for K-12 outreach,
   • providing a single unified source where materials destined for loan to the K-12 community could be coordinated an supported,
   • providing assessment of our outreach activities,
   • providing the appropriate public relations for innovative programs that should be recognized not only at the state but also the national level.

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