News in brief
Hayre Institute will aid in teacher diversity campaign
Former board president Rotan E. Lee dies
Contract with K12 for science curriculum lapses
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News in brief
Hayre Institute will aid in teacher diversity campaign
A Philadelphia-based institute aimed at training student teachers as urban classroom specialists and then recruiting them to full-time jobs in Philadelphia schools highlights the five-point action plan of a new campaign for improving the diversity of the District’s teacher workforce.
The Dr. Ruth Wright Hayre Urban Teaching Institute, which will recruit college students nationally and then prepare up to 100 student teacher “fellows” each year for urban teaching positions, is slated to open in September 2006. The announcement was made by School District officials, U.S. Representative Chaka Fattah, and other partners at a joint April news conference. Temple University’s College of Education and the American Association of Colleges for Teacher Education are supporting the effort.
At least 50 percent of the institute’s fellows will be teachers of color. Congressman Fattah pledged to secure a grant to support the institute.
“Urban teaching is a specialty,” said School Reform Commissioner Sandra Dungee Glenn, who has pushed for the teacher diversity campaign. She added, “And there are myths about the urban classroom that we want to explode.”
The institute is named for the first full-time African American teacher in the Philadelphia public school system, who was also the first African American senior high school principal and the first African American and woman president of the Board of Education.
Dungee Glenn said that to improve the effectiveness of the teacher workforce, action was needed to narrow the substantial gap between the total percentage of teachers of color in Philadelphia – 38 percent – and the combined percentage of Black, Latino, and Asian students – more than 85 percent.
Other components of the teacher diversity campaign include:
- new marketing efforts aimed at recruiting teachers from universities with large African American and Latino enrollments in nearby states and Puerto Rico.
- a test preparation initiative to improve the pass rate among teachers of color on the Praxis exam required for teacher certification.
- a “cultural proficiency” program to help teachers connect their instruction with students’ diverse cultural experiences, with proposed cultural proficiency standards to be applied in evaluating school staff.
- a teacher diversity advisory
council of community-based partners that
will advise the District on its teacher
diversity initiatives.
Former board president Rotan E. Lee dies
Rotan E. Lee, who served as president of Philadelphia’s Board of Education and a key figure in Philadelphia school reform in the 1990s, died of heart failure April 24. He was 57.
Lee was appointed by former Mayor W. Wilson Goode as a member of the Board of Education in March 1989, and he served as board president from December 1992 to December 1994. As a board member and then president, Lee was known to put in long hours, including frequent visits to schools. The 1993 ruling of a Pennsylvania Commonwealth Court that students of color were receiving a substandard education in the Philadelphia public schools was one of the central issues of his tenure, and racial equity was a topic that he often addressed with passion.
More recently, Lee had direct involvement in local school reform efforts during his tenure as executive vice president and general counsel for Universal Companies, managers of three Philadelphia schools.
Lee wore many hats: at his death he was a practicing attorney, a newspaper columnist for the Philadelphia Tribune and the Philadelphia Daily News, and a radio host.
A District testimonial in his honor presented by the School Reform Commission May 10 noted that “when he guided the business of the School District at public meetings, Rotan E. Lee was apt to reveal his love of literature by quoting Langston Hughes, and his infatuation with language by sprinkling the dialogue with a vocabulary worthy of the most rigorous college entrance test.”
The testimonial described Lee as “committed
to ensuring that the District served all
students as he would want his own children
– who attended Philadelphia public
schools – to be served.”
Contract with K12 for science curriculum lapses
The School Reform Commission allowed its $3 million contract for elementary school science materials with K12 Inc. to expire when it declined to act to renew the contract by a May 1 deadline.
Controversy about the K12 contract arose last fall after parents and others protested broadcast remarks by company co-founder and shareholder William Bennett about aborting Black babies that were widely seen as racist. A proposal to terminate the contract immediately at that time was defeated by a 3-2 vote of the SRC despite vociferous community protests.
District officials say they retain rights to the curriculum materials. K12, based in Virginia, has another contract, which expires June 30, to play a management role at the Hunter School.