97-12-10 Urban Educators Meet in Columbus

URBAN EDUCATION REFORM NETWORK TO MEET IN COLUMBUS

     COLUMBUS -- Local educators are providing leadership for a
national reform agenda that will bring educators from across the
country to Columbus this week to discuss improved education of
teachers for urban schools.  Participants will meet Thursday
through Saturday (12/11-12/13) at the Crowne Plaza Hotel, 33 E.
Nationwide Blvd.

     The educators are members of the Holmes Partnership’s Urban
Network to Improve Teacher Education (UNITE).  The Holmes
Partnership, headed by President Nancy Zimpher, dean of The Ohio
State University College of Education, is a reform-minded
confederation of 70 schools and colleges of education working
closely with their local school districts.

     Leadership teams from more than 30 urban partnerships will
meet on a regular basis in UNITE to address the needs of teachers
in urban districts.  This inaugural meeting is in Columbus, which
will serve as the hub of UNITE.  Other cities represented include
New York, Los Angeles, Phoenix, Miami, Albuquerque, N.M., and
Hartford, Conn.

     Kenneth Howey, professor of educational policy and
leadership at Ohio State, and John Grossman, president of the
Columbus Education Association, will co-direct UNITE.

     An urban network within the Holmes Partnership has been
organized because of the distinct challenges and opportunities in
urban, and especially inner-city, schools and communities. 

     “Better teacher recruitment and education is a critical
need,” Zimpher said.  Studies have shown that only one in 15
prospective teachers prefers to teach in large urban,
multicultural contexts.

     “This factor, combined with a large number of teacher
retirements in the immediate years ahead, foreshadows a major
problem,” Zimpher said.

     Grossman said local partnerships between colleges of
education, school districts and teacher unions are essential to
tackle challenges faced by educators in large cities. 

     “We need collaborative structures to support teachers in
their first years of teaching,” Grossman said.

     The nationally recognized Columbus Peer Assistance and
Review Program, which extends teacher education into the initial
years of classroom work, will be among projects featured at the
meeting.

     Howey said local partnerships also are creating Professional
Development Schools where education professors and classroom
teachers can teach together.

     “The range of diversity in America’s urban settings
represents distinctive potential for our city schools to be
great,” Howey said.  “The urban network will address the issue
that school curriculum in our cities must better relate to the
lives of the students and the communities outside of the school
building.”

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Contact:  Kenneth Howey, College of Education, 614-263-5313

Editors and news directors: Reporters are welcome at meetings
taking place from 8:30 a.m. to 5 p.m. Friday and 8:30 a.m. to 
noon Saturday in the Muirfield Rooms of the Crowne Plaza.


[Submitted by: Von Vargas  (vargas.12@osu.edu)
               
Thu, 11 Dec 1997 14:57:35 -0500 (EST)]
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