A remark that UNC President Erskine Bowles made last week about Winston-Salem State University's poor showing in a study reflecting on the quality of teachers trained in the system set off rumors that WSSU was going to end its teaching program.
Chancellor Donald Reaves tried to squelch those rumors at a community meeting last Tuesday and acknowledged them again yesterday at a Board of Trustees meeting.
"There's been quite a buzz around the campus as a result of this study," Reaves said.
Teachers will still be trained at WSSU, which started as a teachers college, but the way they will be taught will be much different, thanks in part to the findings of the Carolina Institute for Public Policy, said Brenda Allen, the school's provost.
The study, which looked at the test scores of students taught by teachers trained in the UNC system, was released in January. Allen and other campus officials learned of the results of the study in August.
It linked the test scores of public-school students in North Carolina with the educational background of their teachers. In part, the study tried to determine whether students in the classroom who were taught by teachers trained in UNC schools fared better, worse or about the same on end-of-grade tests as students taught by teachers trained outside the UNC system.
In some cases, students taught by WSSU graduates fared worse than students taught by graduates outside of the UNC system.
Since learning of the results, Allen and other deans at the school have been looking at ways to improve the teaching program.
"It helped to reveal a set of issues that we need to put on the table," Allen said.
During the trustees meeting, she laid out a few strategies that she hopes will boost the program's standing. One area that needs beefing up is the number of required classes that focus on pedagogy.
WSSU students who want to teach high-school math, for example, will take several math courses, but are required to take just a few classes in pedagogy before taking their certification exams.
The schools in the UNC system that performed well in the study required their students to take more pedagogy classes, Allen said.
"We all agree that we're not doing as much pedagogy as we should," she said.
Allen said that the changes to the curriculum could come in time for the next academic year.
Her goal is to transform the teaching program, just as former Chancellor Cleon Thompson restored the school's nursing program.
"We're going to follow our own model by bringing it back to the point where we have a gold star teaching preparation program," she said.
In other news, Winston-Salem Council Member Vivian Burke was elected to serve on the board, and will fulfill a partial three-year term that ends in 2011.
lo'donnell@wsjournal.com | 727-7420
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