Several fledgling programs undertaken recently as part of Metro State’s Teacher Quality Enhancement Program are beginning to soar.

TQE, the five-year $9 million grant awarded by the U.S. Department of Education (DOE) in 2004 to Metro State and Denver Public Schools (DPS) to recruit, prepare and retain highly qualified teachers for careers in urban middle and high schools, is branching in new directions since the appointment in August of Esther Rodriguez as director (see http://www.mscd.edu/~collcom/artman/publish/tqe_twv5071807.shtml for a profile).

In just six months, Rodriguez has held a retreat for all Metro State faculty and Denver Public Schools teachers involved in the program, instituted a mini-grant program and awarded the first of three branches of mini-grants, hired a consultant to provide an external evaluation of the program, revised the program’s Web site and promotional materials, personally recruited dozens of new secondary education students to the program, and planned a national summit on recruiting, preparing and retaining urban teachers. And she’s just getting started.

Rodriguez and DPS Co-Director Theress Pidick organized the retreat, held in September, to address key issues of the grant: the recruitment of secondary education majors to the program, the redesign and integration of coursework at both Metro State and in Denver Public Schools, the implementation of field experiences for future urban educators, and assessing the effectiveness of the program.

Mini-grants provide for relevant, ground-up experience
“At the retreat, the faculty came up with the idea of mini-grants,” Rodriguez says. “They wanted an opportunity to pilot activities that would frame and add substance to the program. We talked with the DOE and carved this out of the grant (in response).”

Fourteen mini-grants (generally $1,500 to $10,000) were awarded in December, in the areas of student engagement, faculty engagement, and research and evaluation. Each granted project has a Metro State faculty leader and a partner from one of the eight Denver public middle and high schools in the program, called Urban Apprentice Schools. Projects include tutoring and mentoring DPS middle and high school students by Metro State secondary education students; recruiting more Metro State students into the TQE program; course development in the core subject areas of math, science, social studies and English; and laboratory and field experience for TQE students, among others.

“The mini-grants give our faculty ownership in developing these programs, which in turn makes them more sustainable…. Also, through giving our teacher education students field experience, it puts them in the schools as early and as frequently as possible,” Rodriguez says, stressing the importance of relevant and extensive field experience for future urban educators.

At a recent meeting of mini-grant awardees to review progress to date, Rodriguez commended the Metro State faculty members, saying, “I appreciate your commitment to sustaining your work and weaving your Metro State work through DPS…. You are leveraging these mini-grants into highly effective programs. With a small amount of money, you’re making it work.”

More mini-grant applications will be accepted in February, April and August. Jim Loats, math professor and principal of a mini-grant for a math lesson study at Martin Luther King middle school, said to his fellow mini-grant awardees at the meeting, “This is an incredible amount of work, and really the beginning of something. As we approach the next mini-grant application deadline, let’s think about whether there is anything else that would help train our urban teachers even better.”

National Summit on Urban Education
In a parallel initiative, Rodriguez announced that through the TQE Office, Metro State and DPS will host “Great Teachers for Our City Schools,” a national summit on urban education, April 30-May 2. She announced that other collaborators on the summit include The College Board, Educational Testing Service, state higher education executive officers and the Western Interstate Commission on Higher Education. Promising practices from urban teacher preparation programs at UCLA, the University of Wisconsin, Montclair State (New Jersey), and Temple University will be presented.

“We need a national network with a focus on urban teaching,” Rodriguez says. “It is my hope that this conference will be the beginning of such a network.”

To read more about the summit, including speakers and a preliminary program, go to http://www.mscd.edu/~tqe/summit08.shtml.

Other initiatives
Recruitment of more Metro State students to the TQE program has been a primary focus for Rodriguez.

“One of the things I found when I started (as director of the program) is that this program is absolutely the best-kept secret on campus,” she says.

Rodriguez has personally gone to secondary education classes to promote the program, an effort she says has been highly effective.

“We’ve had 30 students sign up for the program in the last week alone,” she effuses, which brings the total up to 136 TQE students.

Another focus is evaluating how well the program is doing. Toward that end, Rodriguez has retained the services of the nonprofit education consulting firm McREL (Mid-Continent Research for Education and Learning). Over the course of the next two years, McREL will assess the effectiveness of TQE.

“They will help us make course adjustments along the way, as well as help prepare the final grant assessment report to DOE,” says Rodriguez. “I think it’s useful to have an external, more objective perspective on how successful we are and where we need to improve.”