Mr. AKAKA -- Mr. President, I am introducing the Teacher Acculturation Act of 2005 as a means to address an issue that impedes effective learning in our nation's classrooms, and that is cultural incongruence. Such a lack of congruence exists in a wide range of situations, from rural and underserved communities in remote areas to well-populated urban centers, from my state of Hawaii to areas on the Eastern seaboard. The dynamic I am describing exists along lines of race and ethnicity, socioeconomic strata, age, and many other vectors, which can muddy the stuff of learning that needs to be transmitted between students aiming to learn and teachers seeking to teach.
Mr. President, as many of my colleagues and I have said many times, our children are our future. Furthermore, our great nation is dependent on the success of our educational system and what it is delivering to our children. An essential part of our educational system is a highly qualified teacher with knowledge of the subject area, and the ability to teach that subject to students. This is the most important factor in the academic success of the student. My bill will address one attribute of that success: the ability of the teacher to present the lesson in a way that students are ready to learn it.
I started my professional life as a teacher, so improvement of the field of education is never far from my thoughts. Even after all of my teacher training, I remember walking into a classroom and thinking, "What do I do now?" and, "Will I be able to connect with my students?" I have never forgotten those thoughts. Through my bill, I hope to work to help teachers answer these and similar questions, particularly for those teachers who are placed in states that are new to them, or in parts of their home states with which they have little or no familiarity. In my state of Hawaii, according to an article published Monday in the Honolulu Advertiser, Hawaii's 258 public schools need 1,400 to 1,600 new teachers every year to replace those who retire or leave the system, particularly in the areas of special education, speech pathology, autism, and hearing impairment. However, only about 500 Hawaii teachers are graduating and earning their licenses every year from both public and private colleges, and many of them are being drawn away from the state to schools on the mainland. Recruiting trips by the Hawaii Department of Education are seeking hires in cities such as New York, Chicago, Los Angeles, and San Francisco. I would like to help to ensure the success of these and other teachers in similar situations across the country, to help smooth their adjustment to their new homes, and thus, make a fluid transition to their new classrooms.
The Teacher Acculturation Act seeks to address cultural incongruence between the teacher and the student population in the classroom. To be successful, the teacher must be prepared to teach in a way that students are ready to learn. And with a increasingly diverse student population, that becomes harder and harder as time goes by. To achieve these ends, the bill proposes programs in three parts.
The first two parts recognize the success of ongoing and sustained professional development to affect positive change in teaching pedagogy. The bill authorizes demonstration programs that aim to assist teachers in learning, developing, and implementing pedagogies that help all students learn. I have modeled the programs on the Lesson Study theory of change, which is a model that uses a cohort of professionals for lesson development, presentation of the developed lesson by a member of the cohort to a class, observation of the presentation by other members of the cohort, and post-presentation analysis and reflection by the entire cohort, along with coaches, mentors, and supervising practitioners. A group of teachers working together to improve their pedagogy has been shown to be very effective, and this model is becoming more popular at every level in teacher education and professional development, from classroom work in colleges of education, to cohort work by candidates for National Board Certification -- the highest performance achievement available to a teacher in the United States.
The first demonstration program would take place during the time the prospective teacher is in a college or school of education, and introduces a multicultural awareness component into the pre-service teaching activities. In this program, prospective teachers would work with members of the community, trained academics, and practicing teachers to learn about cultural characteristics of the student population, to develop pedagogies and curriculum to fit those cultures, and to study how to deliver the new lessons in a culturally relevant style. Prospective teachers would then deliver these lessons to the students in a real classroom setting while student teaching. Post-teaching analysis, reflection, and discussion would then allow the student teacher to analyze and reflect upon the performance.
The second demonstration program is structured similarly to the first program, but conducts a professional development activity during the time the teacher is new to the profession -- generally the first three years -- recognizing that many teachers develop teaching styles in these initial years that they may use for the duration of their teaching careers. Through this program, a cohort of teachers would undertake a year-long program, which includes two summers, under the direction of a coach trained in multicultural education. Participating teachers would already be placed in teaching positions and have a defined learning community to work with. If done right, such a program has the potential to involve the whole school community and, eventually, contribute to whole school change.
These two programs taken together have the potential to develop a cadre of teachers adept at teaching in ways that are culturally-relevant, ways that address the needs of the students, and ways in which the students are ready to learn. I truly feel that such programs working with new and prospective teachers can make a difference in addressing the current achievement gap, particularly impacting the groups most at risk of being on the losing end of the achievement gap.
The third section of the Teacher Acculturation Act of 2005 would set up Centers of Excellence in Multicultural Education. These centers would support the professional development activities from the first two parts of the bill by providing trained mentors, coaches, and academics, as well as undertaking research into the areas of multicultural education. The centers would also develop activities for use by schools and districts to provide ongoing professional development opportunities to all faculty or teachers.
We must never forget that a solid education is the cornerstone of our future. And a highly qualified teacher is needed to provide that education. The teacher not only needs to be knowledgeable about the subject being taught, but needs to know how to teach the subject to the students. This bill would help address the question of how. It seeks to prepare the teacher to deal with groups of students with different learning styles, as well as to identify the needs of divergent groups of students and how to vary teaching to support the learning of these students. My bill seeks to improve learning among those groups who are underserved today. Although my bill alone would not eliminate the achievement gap, it seeks to provide a good start.
This bill is supported by leading experts and organizations in the field of multicultural education, including Ms. Joyce Harris, Executive director of the National Academy for Multicultural Education, Dr. James Banks of the Center for Multicultural Education at the University of Washington, and Dr. Randy Hitz, Dean of the College of Education at the University of Hawaii. I ask unanimous consent that their letters of support be entered into the Record. I ask unanimous consent that the text of the bill be printed following my statement.
I urge my colleagues to cosponsor this important piece of legislation and yield back the balance of my time.
