New York, New York, December 4, 2009 — Vartan Gregorian, President of Carnegie Corporation of New York, offered his support for the Bush Foundation's new effort to transform teacher preparation programs at 14 institutions of higher education in Minnesota, North Dakota and South Dakota. The Minnesota-based foundation yesterday announced a $40 million initiative aimed at producing at least 25,000 new, effective teachers over the next 10 years.
Commenting on the Bush Foundation's program, Vartan Gregorian said, "The quality of our nation's teacher corps will largely determine the success or failure of our public education systems and affect the future of our democracy for years to come. If we really want to continue to improve student achievement we have no choice but to improve teaching--and the Bush Foundation's new partnership is an important step toward that goal."
Gregorian continued, "The Bush Foundation's new teacher-preparation partnership is a direct response to one of the nation's most critical education challenges: preparing a sufficient number of highly effective teachers who can serve students both high needs rural and urban schools. Teacher quality is at the heart of education reform."
"The new multi-state partnership inspires, encourages, and supports the professional men and women who are shaping our next generation. We now know, after extensive research based on thousands of student records in schools across the country, that the teacher is the single most important factor in pupil performance."
"I am especially pleased that the 14 institutions of higher education partnering with the Bush Foundation will guarantee that the teachers produced by their re-designed programs will be effective. To accomplish this, these 14 colleges and universities have committed to radical changes in the way they recruit, place, support, and, with their K-12 partners, retain top talent."
Gregorian also said, "These proposed new practices represent a vast change from the way teacher preparation programs have been operated in the past, and require hard work, tough decision making, and political will to succeed."
Carnegie Corporation of New York is a philanthropic foundation created by Andrew Carnegie in 1911 to do "real and permanent good in this world." In education, the Corporation works to create pathways to opportunity for many more students by promoting systemic change and innovation in secondary and higher education.