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UCR Today: New News, New Look. Go!

RIVERSIDE, Calif. — www.ucr.edu — Education Professor Douglas Mitchell and Linda Scott-Hendrick, Ph.D., director of teacher professional development programs at the Graduate School of Education, will spend their summer completing a study of teacher induction support programs for the State Department of Education and the California Commission on Teacher Credentialing.

The duo will lead a team that will assess the 157 state-approved Beginning Teacher Support and Assessment (BTSA) programs serving more than 24,000 teachers, and 74 University Intern-Alternative Teacher programs serving more than 7,300 interns statewide. Their efforts are supported through a $925,000 state department of education grant.

About 30 BTSA programs will undergo intensive field studies along with 10 internship programs, according to the project documents.

“This is going to be a mechanism for the state to meet its teacher quality standards under the No Child Left Behind law,” said Mitchell.

As professional standards have been introduced into teacher training and internship programs, state officials have expressed concern that some programs not duplicate the efforts of others.

Programs such as BTSA and internship programs serve 871 school districts statewide at a cost of nearly $25 million in the 2005-06 fiscal year.

“This is going to help us determine if there are enough resources for induction and intern programs to do what they have been mandated to do, or if they must look to other sources of support,” Scott-Hendrick added. “We’re also hoping to shed some light on the question of whether we’re making it easier to retain quality teachers in schools with the greatest need for high-performance teaching.”

Mitchell and Scott-Hendrick expect to have their data collected by June 1 and to submit their report to the state by Sept. 30, 2007.

The University of California, Riverside (www.ucr.edu) is a doctoral research university, a living laboratory for groundbreaking exploration of issues critical to Inland Southern California, the state and communities around the world. Reflecting California's diverse culture, UCR's enrollment has exceeded 21,000 students. The campus opened a medical school in 2013 and has reached the heart of the Coachella Valley by way of the UCR Palm Desert Center. The campus has an annual statewide economic impact of more than $1 billion.

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