A community of learners

Photo by Kanji Takeno

Professional development schools help

keep teachers in Maryland's classrooms

By Jan Lucas

A College of Education research study was instrumental in netting a $634,000 MHEC award to expand and enhance the Professional Development School (PDS) Network.

The study, conducted last year by members of the college’s faculty, showed that education students who had completed a one-year internship in a PDS were much more likely to be teaching after five years than those who had undergone a traditional student-teacher experience.

Karen Schafer, director of the COE’s Center for Professional Practice, says she and four colleagues—Todd Kenreich, Nancy Wiltz, Jane Neapolitan and Cindy Hartzler-Miller—collected and analyzed data on 87 members of the college’s class of 2001. The researchers found that 74 percent of the students who had had the PDS experience were still teaching in 2006. Only 34 percent of those who completed the traditional program remained in the profession.

“That’s a dramatic contrast,” says Schafer, “and you can understand why it got a lot of attention at the state level. Maryland always has a teacher shortage, and we’d shown that our PDS Network made a major difference in teacher retention.”

TU's 13-year-old PDS Network—now comprising 110 public schools in 12 systems—is the state’s largest. The MHEC funding, received last fall, will enable the College of Education to expand the network even further to accommodate TU’s Cherry Hill initiative in Baltimore City and a rapidly growing special education program.

Network enhancements will include summer workshops, research minigrants and additional teacher-training in the schools. The award has also enabled the college to give $750 to each PDS for program materials.   

PDS interns are required to spend one semester on a part-time basis and the second as a full-time member of the school’s faculty. “The expectations are high,” Schafer emphasizes. “Interns are expected to look, speak and act professionally, as well as be able to plan, teach and assess learning for K-12 students.”

The schools are racially and economically diverse, providing an authentic experience with a variety of educational challenges, she adds.

Schafer says participating schools benefit in a variety of ways. Perhaps most important, they get to see prospective faculty members on the job, with many offering positions to interns after graduation. PDS students benefit from the extra attention interns provide, and faculty members enjoy having another teacher in the classroom. The College of Education also lends a hand with professional development in the schools.

“School faculty members tell us that the presence of our interns is reenergizing,” says Schafer. “In modeling good teaching, they become better teachers themselves.”

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