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Home » Strategic Planning

Pre-School-College (P-16) Policy Directive

Adopted by the Board of Regents, March 8, 1995

The University System of Georgia

GOALS:

1. To promote a reform effort that encompasses pre-kindergarten through college (P-16) in all pertinent policies; in all opportunities for advocacy; and in communication with various institutions, the Governor and State Legislature, and other publics, beginning immediately.
2. To ensure the successful implementation of the Governor's proposed creation of the Promise Forgivable Loan Program for prospective teachers and the HOPE program for graduate degrees for teachers in critical shortage areas, beginning in fall 1995.
3. To create a high-profile Georgia P-16 Community Council to provide policy direction and planning, including success measures, to improve the educational systems in the state, beginning in fall 1995.
4. To strengthen curricular requirements for any new graduate and undergraduate degree programs that might be established in education, based on broad consensus with the heads of current programs, effective fall 1995.
5. To use FY 1996 Chancellor Initiative allocations for teacher preparation, plus external funds, to invite accelerated exploration and development of new paradigms for teacher education and the roles of teachers and schools, as called for by the Board policy established in A Plan for Change and currently being implemented, and to encourage the creation of local P-16 Community Councils by each System institution that offers teacher education programs.
6. To promote the "co-reform" of teacher education and P-12 schools through formal partnerships between schools and System institutions that prepare teachers, beginning immediately, with the following dimensions:
   • To establish formal partnerships with schools that serve as the nexus for co-reform of schools and the initial and continuing education of teachers.
   • To explore multiple models and develop new paradigms for the education of teachers by collegiate faculty in education, arts and sciences, and P-12 teachers in partner schools.
   • To explore ways to build linkages among P-12 schools, health and human services, and preparation programs for prospective teachers and human service providers.
   • To reconstruct the role of teacher in partner schools in ways that position teachers as the key decision makers on matters pertaining to student learning.
   • To experiment with flexible calendars/time in partner schools to accommodate the needs of the pupils, prospective teachers, and the continuing development of P-16 faculties.
   • To explore the possibility of developing a new kind of graduate degree for classroom teachers that includes emphasis on knowledge acquisition at advanced levels in the teaching field(s) and advanced pedagogy.
   • To invite System institutions to examine faculty reward systems and recommend how better to recognize and reward the work of faculty who are advancing the co reform of teacher education and P-12 schools.
   • To establish high expectations of all teacher education programs in the System, continuing support only for those that have achieved and are maintaining a high level of success in preparing teachers.
   
   
7. To encourage the creation of local P-16 Councils, beginning in the Fall, 1995, for the purposes of elevating and more clearly articulating P-16 curricular standards and improving the academic success of all children and youth, with special emphasis on poor and minority children, by undertaking the following tasks:
   • To collect, analyze, and disseminate to the public data that show the progress of students through the Georgia P-16 educational systems.
   • To create P-16 alliances in each subject, or group of subjects, offered through the P-12 curriculum, for the purposes of developing challenging curricula that are articulated from pre-school through college (including Tech-Prep), consistent with developing national standards, and backed by strong systems of student assessment.
   • To collaborate with P-12 schools toward raising standards for high school graduation and college admission, while providing safety nets to support student success.
   • To improve the success, in collaboration with P-12 schools, of poor and minority children through the P-16 systems at ratios proportional to their percentage in the school-age population.
   • To promote professional development programs for faculty, in collaboration with P-12 schools, that feature teaching strategies (including the use of technology) to build upon the conceptions, cultures, interests, motivations, and learning modes of students.
8. To develop a proposal for a comprehensive, collaborative, year-round pre-college program for all at-risk P-12 students in Georgia.

BACKGROUND:

What is P-16 Reform?

The reform effort nationally recognizes that all sectors of education, pre-school through college, are fundamentally and systemically linked. Change or lack of change in one affects all; and significant improvement in one requires the effort of all. Based on this understanding, the purpose of P-16 reform is to improve student achievement to high levels by focusing on interlocking, cross-sector initiatives. P-16 reform is grounded in the beliefs that: our society needs the contributions of all of its members; in a democracy all children and youth have a right to an education of high quality; faculty and support staff in our educational systems have a responsibility to see that all children and youth learn at high levels; and P-16 reform requires policies that offer incentives for P-16 faculties to collaborate in cross-sector change. While it does not pre-determine what specific changes are needed to achieve these aspirations, P-16 reform does direct that change be pursued systemically and across educational sectors. In Georgia, the adoption of this approach to reform would mean that the planning and implementation of change across the spectrum of P-16 systems would need to be coordinated.

Why Must Higher Education Lead P-16 Reform?
The American Association of Higher Education (AAHE) warns:

AAHE suggests several reasons why higher education should lead the P-16 reform agenda. By taking a leadership role, higher education can:

• Acknowledge that its role is central to many of the core tasks that need to be undertaken.
• Improve any of its own practices that impede reform, including low standards of admissions, and the dominance of passive pedagogies in college classrooms.
• Learn lessons about pedagogy, particularly the use of technology, from P-12 teachers.

Why Should P-16 be a Priority for the University System of Georgia?

In 1991, the Georgia Board of Regents affirmed an important thrust of P-16 reform by adopting the report and recommendations contained in A Plan for Change in Teacher Education. This powerfully spurred the System's institutions in their ongoing work, in partnership with P-12 schools, to improve their own teacher education programs and to exercise appropriate leadership in educational reform. Given the continuing gap between Georgia's needs for an educated citizenry and Georgians' level of educational achievement, however, we need not only to sustain, but to accelerate further and make systemic the momentum that is underway. That requires improving the "readiness to learn" of pre-kindergarten children, particularly in areas with high concentrations of low-income and minority populations. It requires challenging the underlying assumptions of our school structures, rather than trying to "teacher proof" them through bureaucratic micro management of courses of study, text book selection, and time-segments. And it requires changing how we teach and model teaching at the college level. As called for in A Plan for Change, new paradigms in teacher education are needed. There is a greater probability that they will be developed if they are connected to a broad P-16 reform effort linking education, pre-school through college, fundamentally and systemically.

Especially, we need to strengthen the necessary links between schooling and teacher education (including content education in the arts and sciences) in our reform efforts. We know that teacher education programs of high quality require the interlocking collaboration among P-12 school systems, schools/colleges of education, and colleges of arts and sciences. We also know that reform of teacher education and schooling are inextricably linked, and to be effective, they must be approached as related parts of the same effort. Yet with the exception of a few recent examples to the contrary, including some encouraged by A Plan for Change, each of these units has largely functioned as a "stand-alone" entity. And even in the best current examples of school-university partnerships that focus on teacher education reform, the involvement of faculty from the arts and sciences is often limited to a few unusually self-motivated individuals. Yet pre-service teachers receive more than half of their curriculum through the arts and sciences.

Then we need to establish firm connections between educational institutions and human service agencies, since readiness to learn depends on students' overall well-being. We know that children and youth cannot succeed in school unless barriers to learning, development and health are removed. When children and youth do not experience school success, they tend to drop out and encounter personal and social problems. The assumption is made that such problems (e.g., child abuse, drug addiction, mental health problems, unemployment, teen pregnancy) will be treated by our social service systems. Yet our social service systems are not designed to intervene until the problems are so severe as to be almost irreversible. Despite the obvious connections between child well being and learning, most school reform initiatives have remained disconnected from change strategies in our health and human service systems and from programs that bring parents into a true partnership with the school. Likewise, most teacher education reform efforts have remained disconnected from programs that prepare social workers and other human service professionals. And higher education and P-12 schools still operate in relative isolation despite recent data suggesting that cross-sector collaboration can lead to improved student success.

One of the Board of Regents' 1994 Principles for Strategic Action calls for the use of national patterns of academic excellence in its curricula and operations. A leadership role on the part of the University System in P-16 reform would place Georgia in a pace-setting role in national patterns. It could position Georgia in the lead of a national higher education agenda to regain the public trust through educating young people and returning adults who are prepared for work, further learning, and responsible citizenship in the twenty-first century. There can be no more compelling role than to accept responsibility for shared leadership in advancing improved outcomes for children and youth through our P-16 educational systems. The agenda advanced herein will help the University System of Georgia fulfill this vision.

IMPLEMENTATION:

As first steps toward implementation of goals one and three (listed on the first page of this policy directive), the Chancellor will work with the institutional Presidents and heads of education programs, the Department of Education, the Professional Standards Commission, and other groups to promote the creation of a Georgia P-16 Community Council to focus on: (1) compilation of P-16 initiatives that are already underway in Georgia, including but not limited to those at University System institutions; (2) development of criteria for measuring successful improvements; (3) strengthening of linkages among schooling, health and human services; (4) development of policy recommendations for incentives to support cross-sector change and for eliminating any existing policies or regulations that impede P-16 reform; (5) short-term waivers of existing policies or regulations for specific P-12/higher education/community partnerships that are working on major aspects of P-16 reform; and (6) preparation of progress reports on P-16 reform to the citizens of Georgia.

While the over-all approach to P-16 reform will be through incentives, because of the urgency of this agenda and the University System of Georgia 1994 Guiding Principles for Strategic Action, the Chancellor's Office will, in consultation with the Teacher Education Advisory Committee, develop requirements for any new programs in education that might be proposed, that they: ( a) clearly document connections between the proposed new program and centrality of the institution's mission and institutional priority; (b) articulate the ways in which the new program advances the co-reform of P-12 schools and programs for the education of educators; (c) show consistency with national standards of the discipline-based learned societies; and (d) use consultants when developing proposals for new specialist in education programs, as is now required for doctoral programs (goal four).

In support of P-16 reform, the Chancellor's Office will cultivate external funding (goal five) as a supplement to the FY 1996 Chancellor Initiative allocations for teacher education. External funding will be used to support the year-round, collaborative pre-college program for at-risk P-12 students in Georgia (goal eight). The FY 1996 Chancellor Initiative allocations for teacher education, plus supplemental external funding, will support the Challenge Grants described below.

The initial way the Chancellor's Office will advance goals six and seven and their respective components will be through two kinds of Challenge Grants--one for teacher education; a second for local P-16 Councils. Both grants will be available on a competitive basis to System institutions (that offer state approved teacher education programs) in partnership with P-12 schools and other groups, as noted below. The Chancellor's Office will, of course, continue also to encourage additional collaborations with and service to P-12 schools on the part of all its institutions.

• The Challenge Grants in Teacher Education are for the purpose of rethinking the total teacher education program in ways that advance fundamentally the co-reform of schools and teacher education. Only collaboratives that include faculty in education, arts and science, and teachers in P-12 partner (professional development) schools are eligible to apply. Additional partners may be parents of children in the partner schools and/or human service professionals. Applicants will be asked to focus their proposals on goal six and some or all of its listed components.
• Challenge Grants for local P-16 Councils are for the purpose of working on ways to elevate and more clearly articulate P-16 curricular standards, improve the academic success of all children and youth, and ensure that poor and minority children succeed through the P-16 systems at ratios proportional to their percentage of the school-age population. Only collaboratives of faculty in education and arts and science, teachers in P-12 schools, and, where appropriate, the inclusion of two-year colleges and DTAE, are eligible to apply. Applicants will be asked to focus their proposals on goal seven and some or all of its listed components.

Those institutions that receive the Challenge Grants will be invited to form a Georgia Network for P-16 Reform (to be supported by external funds), through which to share lessons learned and sustain the over-all momentum on P-16 reform. All institutions submitting proposals will be invited to become affiliate members of the Georgia Network for P-16 Reform, so that lessons learned in the funded sites can be shared statewide. Opportunities will be created through which to connect the Georgia Network with various national networks that focus on major aspects of the P 16 reform agenda advanced herein.

A new position of assistant vice chancellor for academic affairs has been created in the Chancellor's Office to provide leadership toward achievement of the goals contained herein, working in consultation with the System's Teacher Education Advisory Council and in collaboration with the Department of Education, the Professional Standards Commission, and other agencies and groups as appropriate. This Assistant Vice Chancellor will have four main responsibilities: (1) to work collaboratively with the leadership of the schools/colleges of education and their colleagues in the arts and sciences and partner schools to advance co-reform of P-12 schools and teacher education; (2) to promote the creation of local P-16 Community Councils by System institutions that prepare teachers, each to include colleagues in P-12 schools and, where appropriate, two-year colleges and DTAE ; (3) to collaborate with other groups and agencies at the state level to advance P-16 reform in the policy arena; and (4) to coordinate the Georgia Network for P-16 Reform, as proposed herein.

The Board of Regents therefore directs that:

• The Chancellor's Office collaborate with DTAE, DOE, and other groups and agencies, as appropriate, to create a Georgia P-16 Community Council by fall 1995 (goals 1 & 3).
• The Chancellor's Office collaborate with the Georgia Student Finance Commission, the Professional Standards Commission, and the Department of Education in the development of implementation guidelines for the Governor's proposed creation of the Promise Forgivable Loan Program for prospective teachers and the HOPE program for graduate degrees for teachers in critical shortage areas, by July 1, 1995 (goal 2).
• The Chancellor's Office create new guidelines for all proposed graduate and undergraduate degree programs in education and communicate them to the institutions by Fall, 1995 (goal 4).
• The Chancellor's Office seek external funding for the year-round pre-college program for at-risk P-12 students (goal 8) and partial support of the Teacher Education and P-16 Challenge Grants by Fall, 1995 (goals 5, 6, & 7).
• The Chancellor's Office develop Teacher Education and P-16 Challenge Grants, consistent with the goals stipulated in this policy directive, and detail the guidelines for awarding them to institutions. These guidelines should support the implementation plan for conversion from the quarter to semester system (goals 5, 6, & 7).
• The University System institutions, particularly those that offer teacher education programs, and the Teacher Education Advisory Committee work collaboratively with the Chancellor's office in developing and implementing all these initiatives.

The Board further directs that all work on P-16 reform be aimed toward helping the System to achieve its vision of "Access to Academic Excellence," and be guided by its Guiding Principles for Strategic Action, including in particular, #1 and 4 on educational access and excellence, #8 on academic excellence and recognition, #11 on making teacher education a priority, and #29 on ensuring that Georgia's children and young people receive strong preparation for college.

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