Resources

Educators and policymakers across the United States recognize a growing urgency to improve the nation’s systems of teacher preparation. Ensuring that teachers stay and thrive in the profession depends largely on having system-wide policies and practices in place that address teacher shortages, promote equity and excellence, and cultivate expertise, diversity, and more.

The California State University (CSU) system partnered with the S.D. Bechtel, Jr. Foundation to launch the New Generation of Educators Initiative (NGEI), in an effort to transform the nature and quality of teacher preparation at both individual CSU campuses and across the CSU system as a whole. To answer the question, “What does it take to transform teacher education?” WestEd and SRI International conducted an evaluation to examine and share learnings about the CSU-led effort to implement large-scale clinically oriented teacher preparation reform.

As part of a series of new evaluation reports that explore key transformational elements of effective teacher preparation programs, this paper describes how participating CSU campuses and their partner school districts strengthened their relationships and developed strategic partnerships to establish the necessary foundations for high-quality, clinically oriented programming.

This paper identifies four levers that can be operationalized in order to sustain strong partnerships between stakeholders:

• Lever 1: Create and operationalize a shared vision
• Lever 2: Identify key roles
• Lever 3: Ensure space and time to collaborate
• Lever 4: Share data to identify needs and monitor progress

To find out more about lessons learned and promising practices that emerged throughout the implementation of  NGEI, download the related papers in this four-part study:

1. Strengthening the Clinical Orientation of Teacher Preparation Programs
2. Strengthening the Data Use and Continuous Improvement Capacity
3. The NGEI Approach to Improving Teacher Preparation in the CSU Through a System of Supports