Many of you have heard me speak about the role of the university in helping the United States remain economically competitive. One of the most critical ways we can make an impact is in assuring an educated workforce for our future, and we can do that in part through our work to improve the educational outcomes in our nation's K-12 schools.
If every student had a highly effective teacher for even three years in a row, we could nearly eliminate the achievement gap between student groups. Over the past several years, the K-12 Initiative at Stanford has been dedicated to offering a comprehensive, transformative and multidisciplinary approach to educational improvement. The initiative has led to the creation of two new multidisciplinary centers—the Center for Education Policy Analysis (CEPA) and the Center to Support Excellence in Teaching (CSET)—that are providing innovative research and tools for educators and decision makers.
We know that great teachers are the cornerstones of improving student performance, but we know less about how to prepare teachers for the modern classroom. Since 2009, CSET has worked with more than 1,200 teachers and school leaders to determine what attributes make a great teacher and create professional development courses to help improve teacher quality. Recently, a set of districts and universities around the country has begun using CSET's innovative online professional courses to help prepare more effective teachers.
Reform in K-12 education has been based too infrequently on measurements of student outcome. A key shortcoming has been the lack of data and sophisticated analysis to tell us what reforms are most needed and cost-effective. CEPA is helping decision makers at all levels analyze and interpret large volumes of data, translating evidence into improvement by working directly with state and federal policy makers. Participating in the program are seven large school districts across the country serving nearly 2 million students, in cities including New York, Miami, Milwaukee, Kansas City, Denver, San Francisco and Oakland.
Both centers are committed to addressing issues related to leadership capacity to sustain effective change. The integrated, long-term partnerships they maintain with school leadership development teams allow innovation to take hold and to be sustained for maximum impact on student achievement. These two centers join a variety of efforts across the University—from the Hoover Institution's Koret Task Force on K-12 Education to the Stanford College Prep program offered to East Palo Alto students through the Haas Center to Stanford's Summer Program for Teachers—in contributing to solutions to this critical national problem.
We have also made an important leadership appointment in our School of Education, where Claude Steele returned this fall to serve as dean. Dean Steele is not only recognized as a leader within higher education, having most recently served as provost at Columbia University, he is a social scientist dedicated to improving the quality of our schools and the educational outcomes of our students. His work examining the underachievement of minority students has been used extensively by educators to understand group differences in school and test performance, and has led to a variety of interventions in educational settings that improve these performances. He understands intimately the challenges facing our schools and is passionate about making a difference.
To further the conversation about the university role in K-12 schools, our 2011 Roundtable event held in collaboration with Stanford Reunion Homecoming focused on solutions to the difficulties that plague public education. We invited PBS host Charlie Rose and a distinguished panel including Claude Steele, Newark Mayor Cory Booker, '91, MA '92, and Netflix founder Reed Hastings, MS '88, Gr. '98, to campus to discuss with all of you how innovators and innovations can help us change the status quo.
Working simultaneously with teachers, policy makers and leaders, Stanford University is applying its research expertise to develop the models necessary to drive education reform and, ultimately, improve the achievement levels of our nation's students. I am very proud of this work and I hope you will be, too.
John Hennessy is the former president of Stanford University.
