“We know the way in which we currently compensate K-12 public school teachers is incredibly inefficient,” said Matthew Springer, director of the federally-funded National Center on Performance Incentives and assistant professor of public policy and education. “The problem is that we have yet to find a better way.”

The new study, co-authored by Michael Podgursky of University of Missouri-Columbia, examined teacher compensation in the United States K-12 public school system and is featured in the National Tax Journal, a quarterly publication by the National Tax Association.

The authors conclude that an integrated and coherent compensation policy is the central core of an efficient human resource policy. In private and many public organizations, the compensation package is considered as a strategic whole and carefully designed to get the most human resource return per dollar of compensation. By contrast, in public K-12 education, the compensation system is fragmented and uncoordinated, with provisions often determined by means not based on systematic assessment of the overall incentive effects.

For more information: Teacher compensation systems in the United States K-12 public school system, Michael Podgursky, Matthew Springer, 64 National Tax Journal 165-92 (March 2011).

Ellen Goldring

New research from the National Center on School Choice reveals little difference among school leaders across public, private and choice schools.

Although much research exists regarding the impact of school leaders on school improvement, little is known about whether principals in choice schools exhibit more of the leadership practices associated with school improvement and increased student achievement. The latest brief, “Leadership Practices and School Choice,” released by the National Center on School Choice, examines variation in leadership practices across school types. Responses include principals from public, private and choice schools such as magnets and charters.

Key findings published in the brief include: principals from choice schools face similar levels and types of leadership challenges; the focus of the role of choice school principals was not significantly different compared with traditional public school principals; principals use their time in similar ways across school types; and differences were found between affiliated and non-affiliated charter schools.

“All school principals, regardless of whether they work in charter schools, private schools or traditional public schools, focus on the core business of leading their schools,” said Ellen Goldring, Patricia and Rodes Hart Professor of Education Policy and chair of the Department of Leadership, Policy and Organizations. “School choice does not pull principals away from leadership toward public relations, student recruitment or financial management.”

While no pronounced differences in challenges faced by principals emerged across school types, the study did find differences in acquiring financial resources and the amount of time principals spend on instructional development between charter schools that are affiliated with parent organizations and charter schools with no affiliation. Such differences infer the need to address charter school management structure in school choice studies, which often group together choice schools in general categories and compare them with traditional public schools.

“Findings from this study suggest it is increasingly important to examine the variation in the organizational arrangement of schools of choice and their influence on school leadership,” said Xiu Cravens, assistant professor of education policy.

For more, visit: snipurl.com/pb-schoolchoice

Fort Worth Independent School District, or FWISD, officially joined the National Center on Scaling Up Effective Schools at Peabody in April. Other center partners are Florida State University, the University of Wisconsin-Madison, the Education Development Center headquartered in Newton, Mass., and Broward County Schools in Florida.

“FWISD is working to improve student learning and achievement by improving the rigor and quality of instruction in classrooms rather than relying on short-term strategies and gimmicks to improve test scores,” said Thomas Smith, center director and associate professor of public policy and education at Peabody. “We are thrilled to team up with them in this effort.

“By the conclusion of the center’s work, we will have developed, implemented and tested new processes that other districts will be able to use to scale up effective practices within the context of their own goals and unique circumstances,” Smith said.

The Peabody College building that houses the Vanderbilt Kennedy Center, the Department of Special Education and the Susan Gray School has received a new name. Known in recent years as the MRL building, the original Mental Retardation Laboratory located on Magnolia Circle and backing 21st Avenue is now officially named One Magnolia Circle.

Bickman

Chatman

Cho

Erickson

Ford

Hughes

Milner

Murry

Leonard Bickman, Betts Professor of Psychology, received the American Evaluation Association’s 2011 Alva and Gunnar Myrdal Evaluation Practice Award, given to an evaluator who exemplifies outstanding evaluation practice and has made substantial cumulative contributions to the field.

Vera Chatman, professor of the practice of human and organizational development, received the 2011 Excellence in Reviewing Award from Academic Medicine, the official peer-reviewed journal of the Association of American Medical Colleges.

Sun-Joo Cho, assistant professor of psychology, quantitative methods and evaluation, received an award for outstanding application of educational measurement technology from the National Council on Measurement
in Education.

Sue Erickson, interim director, Peabody Library, was appointed 2011-12 co-chair of the education committee of the Library Management and Administration Association’s measurement, assessment and evaluation section.

Donna Ford, professor of special education, received the Outstanding Service Award from the Association for the Gifted, Council for Exceptional Children.

Carolyn Hughes, professor of special education, was among 10 researchers nationwide recognized by the American Association on Intellectual and Developmental Disabilities for “exceptional service to the field.” The researchers were recognized for authoring the Supports Intensity Scale, designed to assess the support needs of children with intellectual disabilities. Hughes also has been appointed to the editorial board of the Journal of Vocational Rehabilitation.

Lyle Jackson, videographer for Peabody College, received awards in the script and education categories of the 32nd Annual Telly Awards, which honor outstanding local, regional and cable TV commercials and programs, video and film productions and Web commercials, videos and films. The winning piece featured Peabody Professor Velma Murry and her research on African American success in rural areas.

Richard Milner, associate professor of education, has been named senior editor of Urban Education, which publishes hard-hitting, focused analyses of critical concerns facing inner-city schools and provides thought-provoking discussions on key issues from gender-balanced and racially diverse perspectives. Milner is the third editor since the journal’s inception in 1964.

Velma McBride Murry, Betts Professor of Education and Human Development, was asked to serve on a National Institutes of Health study section on community influences in health behavior.

Kimberly Paulsen, associate professor of the practice of special education, received the David Schleyer Faculty Award recognizing outstanding student mentoring.

Bethany Rittle-Johnson, associate professor of psychology, received the Peabody Award for Excellence in Research.

Marybeth Shinn, professor of human, organizational and community development, was appointed to the social sciences and population study section of the National Institutes of Health Center for Scientific Review.

Paul Yoder, professor of special education, led a Prelinguistic Milieu Teaching workshop in Turkey to a handpicked group of faculty, doctoral students and psychology, special education, and speech and language pathology professionals at Ankara University.

Jason Grissom

Carrie A. Kortegast

Christine Quinn Trank

Carrie Masten

Kristopher Preacher

Erik Carter

The Department of Leadership, Policy and Organizations welcomed three new faculty members this fall: Jason Grissom, assistant professor of public policy and education; Carrie A. Kortegast, assistant professor of the practice of higher education; and Christine Quinn Trank, senior lecturer in organizational leadership.

The Department of Psychology and Human Development welcomed Carrie Masten, assistant professor of psychology, developmental science and Kristopher Preacher, assistant professor of quantitative methods and evaluation.

The Department of Special Education welcomed Erik Carter, associate professor of special education.

The Department of Teaching and Learning welcomed five new faculty members: Molly Fuller Collins, lecturer; Molly S. Dalgarn, lecturer; Heather L. Johnson, assistant professor of the practice of science education; Emily Pendergrass, lecturer; and Mary Elizabeth Wilson-Patton, lecturer.

James Hogge (right), associate dean and professor, emeritus, leads students in Peabody’s annual Hanging of the Green at the Wyatt Center on December 1.

Guoming Long receives a high five from a Susan Gray School student during a tour of the school for ELLE participants as Gao Guangtang watches.

A delegation of Chinese educators visited Vanderbilt University in October and November to learn the latest in U.S. education policy and experience American classrooms and techniques firsthand.

This marked the seventh consecutive year that the Education Leadership Learning Exchange (ELLE) has convened leaders from  Peabody, South China Normal University and Metropolitan Nashville Public Schools for seminars, school visits, cultural experiences and cooperative dialogue.

“One of the enduring lessons of this exchange is not that we can replicate in form the styles of each system, but rather, by focusing on what we each hope to accomplish, we have found that we have a great deal in common,” said ELLE director Tom Ward.

During the two-week program, the Chinese cohort, visitors from the Guangdong Province, Hong Kong and Macau, shadowed area teachers and administrators. They also participated in a leadership symposium with Metro Nashville Public Schools’ Teacher Leadership Institute and local educators from the Principals’ Leadership Academy of Nashville—a yearlong professional development partnership between Peabody College and MNPS. Tennessee Commissioner of Education Kevin Huffman presented the keynote address.

The ELLE program serves as a cornerstone of Vanderbilt’s involvement in this region of China and builds upon existing partnerships between the Guangdong Province and Nashville. Last summer, seven teachers from Nashville area schools went to this region as visiting professors. This year, Nashville’s Hume-Fogg Academic Magnet High School will host a teacher from the Affiliated High School of South China Normal University.

“Vanderbilt strives to build long-term and mutually beneficial collaborations with our international partners,” said Vice Provost for Faculty and International Affairs Tim McNamara. “ELLE is an excellent example of university partnership that connects research, teaching and service for the community. We are pleased to see that it is growing and receiving so much local support.”

Benbow had been invited in her capacity as a member of the National Science Board.

The program that the first lady announced is the Career-Life Balance Initiative of the National Science Foundation. It is a 10-year plan to provide greater work-related flexibility to women and men in research careers. Its goal is to reduce the dropout rate of women in the STEM fields: science, technology, engineering and mathematics. Women currently earn 41 percent of the Ph.D.’s in STEM fields, but make up only 28 percent of tenure-track faculty in those fields.

According to Benbow, the NSF Initiative “represents a significant advance for women working in STEM fields and for young women who may feel encouraged to pursue careers in these areas. Announcing this initiative at the White House, with the full involvement of the first lady, sends an important signal to young women that they are valued members of the U.S. scientific community.”

The dean was particularly pleased that Peabody alumna Monica Cox was a featured panelist at the event. Cox, who received her Ph.D. in leadership and policy studies from Peabody in 2005, is an associate professor at Purdue University, where she directs the Pedagogical Evaluation Laboratory. In 2008 she received a Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers from NSF. While she was at Vanderbilt, Cox was a member of the assessment and evaluation thrust of VaNTH, the Vanderbilt–Northwestern–Texas–Harvard/MIT Engineering Research Center set up in 1999 to improve bioengineering education.

Mark Lipsey, director of the Peabody Research Institute (center), receives the Earl Sutherland Prize for Achievement in Research at the fall faculty assembly from Chancellor Nicholas S. Zeppos (left) and David Weintraub, chair of the Faculty Senate.

Mark Lipsey was awarded the Earl Sutherland Prize for Achievement in Research at the fall faculty assembly for his contributions to education studies and the design of evaluation studies.

“Mark’s work is having a transformative effect on the quality of education in Tennessee,” said Chancellor Nicholas S. Zeppos. “He has produced seminal social science and public policy research on such topics as early childhood education and risk and intervention for juvenile delinquency and substance abuse.”

The Sutherland award comes with a $5,000 prize and the winner’s name is engraved on a silver bowl, which the winner keeps for a year.

Lipsey, director of the Peabody Research Institute, is currently helping to conduct a five-year $6 million study on the effectiveness of Tennessee’s prekindergarten program.

Illustration by Sara Tyson

Visit Peabody College’s website
at peabody.vanderbilt.edu

Bonnie Arant Ertelt, Editor

Donna Pritchett, Art Director

Michael Smeltzer, Designer

Nelson Bryan, Class Notes Editor

Contributors: Kurt Brobeck, Brent Meredith, Lisa Robbins, David Salisbury, Jennifer Wetzel

Camilla Persson Benbow, Patricia and Rodes Hart Dean of Education and Human Development

Jennifer Zehnder, Associate Dean for Development and Alumni Relations

©2012 Vanderbilt University

The Peabody Reflector is published biannually by Vanderbilt’s Peabody College of education and human development in cooperation with the Vanderbilt Office of DAR Communications. The magazine is mailed free of charge to all Peabody alumni, parents of current Peabody students, and to friends of Peabody who make an annual gift of $25 or more to the college. Correspondence, including letters to the editor and Class Notes submissions, should be mailed to: The Peabody Reflector, Office of DAR Communications, PMB 407703, 2301 Vanderbilt Place, Nashville, TN 37240-7703 or by email to reflector@vanderbilt.edu.

Over the last decade 12 states have passed bills expanding in-state tuition. Another 10 states gave such bills serious legislative consideration although they failed to pass. Michael McLendon, associate professor of public policy and education, wanted to find out what factors might put such a controversial initiative on the legislative agenda.

“Against the backdrop of an increasingly restrictive environment for immigration at the federal level, why have some states considered adopting laws that cut across the political grain?” McLendon said.

McLendon and his colleagues, Assistant Professor of Public Policy and Higher Education Stella Flores and Center for Naval Analysis Research Analyst Christine Mokher, surveyed state legislative activity on the issue from 1999 to 2007, looking for political, economic or demographic characteristics common to states that consider in-state tuition bills. They found that states with a large foreign-born population, higher relative unemployment and a higher percentage of women in the legislature were more likely than others to consider tuition bills. Surprisingly, states considered politically liberal and those where legislatures are controlled by Democrats were no more likely than others to take up tuition legislation.

The tuition issue is likely to remain an important one for the foreseeable future, McLendon says. In 2005 alone, more than 65,000 children of undocumented workers graduated from U.S. high schools.

“Discerning the conditions under which [in-state tuition] policies become positioned for legislative consideration in some places may help shed light on the prospects for expanded postsecondary access for undocumented students elsewhere,” the researchers write. “Understanding the origins of these policies also may help policy makers better anticipate future claims on state coffers.”

In a new study published in the journal Developmental Science, researchers from Peabody and the Kennedy Krieger Institute found that early motor experiences can shape infants’ preference for objects and faces. In the photo below, taken from video of project participants, an infant using “sticky mittens” is shown manipulating toys. This kind of early motor development was shown to increase interest in faces, suggesting that it advances social skills.

In a new study published in the journal Developmental Science, researchers from Peabody and the Kennedy Krieger Institute found that early motor experiences can shape infants’ preferences for objects and faces. The study findings demonstrate that providing infants with “sticky mittens” to manipulate toys increases their subsequent interest in faces, suggesting advanced social development.

This study supports a growing body of evidence that early motor development and self-produced motor experiences contribute to infants’ understanding of the social world around them. Conversely, this implies that when motor skills are delayed or impaired—as in autism—future social interactions and development could be negatively impacted.

“Our findings suggest that in early development, there are more connections among different behaviors than people may expect,” said study co-author Amy Needham, professor of psychology and Vanderbilt Kennedy Center investigator. “Early motor development is so important for infants—in this case, beginning to grasp and move objects allows infants to control their own experiences much more directly than they could before.”

Previous research has found that infants diagnosed with autism spectrum disorders (ASD) show less interest in faces and social orienting. While the current study was conducted with typically developing infants, it indicates that infants who are at risk for ASD or show signs of abnormal social development may benefit from motor training as early as 3 months of age.

For more, visit: news.vanderbilt.edu/2011/09/sticky-mittens

The findings, reported in the Journal of Intellectual Disability Research, conclude that infants with Down syndrome experience high rates of mortality at three distinct times in the first year. These groupings are tied to specific, different causes of death.

The researchers used birth, hospital discharge and death records from the Tennessee Department of Health to identify infants born with Down syndrome from 1990-2006. Those who died during the first year were separated into three groups —first day death, neonatal mortality (2-27 days) and post-neonatal mortality (28-364 days). Data from the birth and death records were used to compare the three death groups and the survival group on correlates of mortality.

The research showed 56 percent of deaths among infants with Down syndrome occurred during the post-neonatal period, while 27 percent occurred during the first day. Newborns who died on the first day had significantly lower birth weights, APGAR scores and gestational ages, whereas those who died in the post-neonatal period had significantly more heart-related causes of death.

“Our findings help us understand why mortality during the first year is so high in this group,” said Hodapp, professor of special education who focuses on intellectual disabilities and families of children and adults with disabilities. “By identifying specific causes of mortality at distinct time periods over the first year, our work alerts parents and physicians to different life-threatening issues at each age, leading to more targeted treatment approaches.”

The first group of graduates from Vanderbilt’s Next Steps program (with thanks to supporter Linda Brooks and the Tennessee Council on Developmental Disabilities) crossed the rotunda stage at Peabody’s Wyatt Center on Dec. 8. The two-year certification program is designed for students with intellectual disabilities, providing individualized programs of study in the areas of education, social skills and vocational training.

School Choice and School Improvement

(2011, Harvard Education Press) edited by Mark Behrends, Marisa Cannata, senior research associate, and Ellen Goldring, Patricia and Rodes Hart Professor of Education Policy and Leadership, brings together a collection of papers that examines how communities, districts and states use choice as a strategy for improving schools and student learning. The book includes research on private schools and vouchers, charter schools and traditional public schools, and intra-district transfer programs, adding depth and perspective to ongoing debates about school choice options.

The Survivors

(2011, Chafie Press) a young adult novel by Amanda Havard, BS’08, MEd’10, sets its back story in 1692, when 26 children are accused as witches in Salem, Mass., ultimately exiled and left for dead, but 14 of them survive. This first novel in a proposed series chronicles Sadie, whose family has been content to be in hiding for more than three centuries. When Sadie abandons the family’s hiding place in Montana, she relinquishes the human world to which she’s sought to belong for more than a century, returning to her Puritanical family and an uncertain future filled with witches, shape-shifters, millennia-old mythology and the search for her own mortality.

Between Citizens and the State: The Politics of American Higher Education in the 20th Century

(2011, Princeton University Press) by Christopher Loss, assistant professor of public policy and higher education, tracks the outcomes of the federal government’s growing involvement in higher education between World War I and the 1970s, and the conservative backlash against that involvement from the 1980s onward. The book looks at higher education’s central importance to the larger social and political history of the United States in the 20th century, and chronicles its transformation into a key mediating institution between citizens and the state.

Nicole Garcia, MEd’11 (left), Community Development and Action, and Jill Robinson, Community Research and Action PhD candidate

A professor at Peabody once said in class that research is advocacy just as much as handing out a pamphlet is advocacy. On May 26, 2011, we both saw our research turned into advocacy on a scale that few graduate student researchers ever get to experience.

When either of us tells someone the subject we have spent many hours researching and writing about, a puzzled look often appears. For when you bring the issue of human sex trafficking into a conversation, you can’t just brush that aside and then talk about the weather. Some questions that immediately follow include:

Slavery still exists? Sure, maybe at a small scale and in the deepest darkest depths of impoverished countries, or in the backyards of lunatics. But widespread? And that doesn’t happen in the United States, right?

Sex trafficking is a problem that few people want to talk about because everyone thinks that it’s an issue “over there.” It is not, and we were given a great opportunity to work with the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation (TBI) to help prove that it not only happens in the United States, but it also happens in our own backyard.

Jill began researching the topic eight years ago when she first heard about it and was just as perplexed about its existence as many people still are today. She spent much of her master’s program researching the issue and did her thesis on public perceptions of human trafficking in Moldova. Nicole became aware of the issue during her undergraduate study and spent most of her graduate program looking at the issue as it occurs in the United States. She is passionate about the issue as it occurs in the United States, because there are so few resources available for victims to fully recover, largely because people don’t believe it occurs here. For both of us, it is an ultimate form of injustice for one human to exploit and deny the freedom of another.

In the fall of 2010, we were contacted by the TBI to consult on a statewide survey to determine the extent of human sex trafficking in the state. We used the federal definition of human sex trafficking, which is “a for-profit sex act that is induced by force, fraud or coercion OR in which the person performing such an act is under the age of 18 years.” Awareness of the issue has grown nationally and locally, thus prompting the state legislature to pass Public Chapter Number 1023, in order to “study human sex trafficking, the improvements that should be made to existing laws relative to human sex trafficking and the impact of human sex trafficking on children and youth in this state. …”

Throughout several meetings we worked with the TBI in the role of academic researchers to assist with the creation of the survey as well as help edit pieces of the report. The TBI sent out the survey to representatives from law enforcement, social service agencies, district attorneys’ offices and guardian ad-litems. When the surveys were completed, we met again as a team to go through results and organize the report. We were able to contribute our past research experiences to add a literature review for the study. We also compiled a list of non-profit organizations statewide that provide education about and services for victims of human trafficking. The study was released with results that surprised many, showing that there is a great deal of human sex trafficking of both adults and minors in Tennessee. Just a few short weeks after the report was released, the Tennessee legislature revisited the issue, passing HB35/SB64 and HB154/SB69. Essentially, these bills changed state law so that the penalties for the promotion and solicitation of juvenile prostitution are tougher.

It was a pretty easy sell. The sexual exploitation of kids is obviously wrong, however, one of our legislative victories was the decriminalization of juvenile prostitutes. That has created a new challenge. If minors are not held in any kind of custody, where do they go? Presently there are few resources to help victims of human trafficking recover, thus creating a system within which they often return to their pimp/trafficker or the situation that made them vulnerable in the first place. Furthermore, adult victims of sex trafficking were not included in the new legislation. That’s a tougher sell, because of the competing public perceptions of adult prostitution.

Being a part of a major policy change, especially when it comes to changing state law, feels like a career highlight for us action-oriented researchers. It is satisfying to know that the work we put in contributed to a change that is intended to combat, or at least mitigate, a particularly sinister injustice. However, when the dust settles, and the adrenaline has stopped pumping, we are faced with the unintended consequences of our good intentions. Our next challenge? After being a part of this policy change, where do we go from here?

New research from Peabody finds that preschool teachers’ use of sophisticated vocabulary and analytic talk about books, combined with early support for literacy in the home, can predict fourth-grade reading comprehension and word recognition.

The findings, published in Child Development and included in a review article in the August 19, 2011, edition of Science, present evidence that there are lasting, complex and mutually reinforcing effects that flow from strong early childhood classrooms.

“We need to take very seriously the importance of teaching language in the preschool years,” says David Dickinson, author of the study and professor of education.

“It’s easy to look at tangible accomplishments such as counting or letter recognition but much harder to measure richness of vocabulary and language ability. Parents should take a careful look at what is happening in their kids’ preschool classrooms and see if the teacher is engaging the child in conversations that are rich in language.”

This latest research, co-authored by Michelle Porche of Wellesley College, reports results of a longitudinal study that examined in detail language experiences of children from low-income homes when they were in preschool. The authors sought to identify influences of these early experiences on children’s language and literacy at the end of kindergarten and again in fourth grade.

Preschool teachers were audio- and videotaped, teachers were interviewed and classrooms were observed for their support of language and literacy. Children were individually assessed, and parents were interviewed to learn about their education level and income and any family practices that foster language and literacy.

Although the sample was small, the researchers found robust relations between early classroom support for language and later language and reading ability. The authors also found long-term effects of the home, as children whose parents reported providing more support for early literacy had stronger vocabulary scores in fourth grade. Finally, the structural complexity of children’s language at age 3 was associated with fourth-grade vocabulary.

Ginette Cambronero’s preschool class of 3- and 4-year-olds responds to questions she asks during group reading time. Cambronero teaches at the Vanderbilt Child Care Center.

One preschool teacher behavior which predicted children’s growth was the frequency of sophisticated vocabulary use during informal conversations. Such exposure predicted children’s kindergarten vocabulary, which correlated with fourth grade word reading. Teachers’ use of sophisticated vocabulary correlated with children’s kindergarten print ability, and it is through that skill that the early vocabulary exposure indirectly affected grade-four reading comprehension.

Group book reading in preschool also had long-term associations with later reading. Conversations which included analysis of stories and discussion of words and teacher corrections of incorrect responses predicted receptive vocabulary at the end of kindergarten. This enhanced vocabulary ability was associated with better vocabulary in fourth grade. Also, preschool teachers’ efforts to hold a child’s attention was related to fourth-grade comprehension skills.

“While raising the level of interaction in group activities is important, some of my stronger results in this study are seen from informal interactions between teacher and child, showing the importance of elevated language during times such as play and lunch,” Dickinson says.

Dickinson notes that in recent years preschool has become more of an academic setting, where previously the focus was primarily on socialization and kids’ adjustment to groups. He will begin working with Nashville preschool programs to develop an approach that can help provide teachers with skills to effectively build language among their students. Specifically, he will examine how teachers can use discussions surrounding book reading in combination with teacher support for dramatic play to build language abilities.

He suggests that parents carefully examine the nature of interactions happening at their child’s preschool to see if teachers are engaged in conversations that will stretch language and knowledge.

“I would want to know how often the children are read to,” Dickinson says. “What are some of the books read to the children? Are they books that have three words to a page, or are they books that are similar to what you know you can read to them at home?

“And I would want to know what opportunities the children have for play, and what does the teacher do during that time? Does the teacher actively engage small groups in conversation? You want teachers who are actively engaged without taking over the play. Look to see if the teachers engage children in conversations that take on and build their interests.”

Camilla P. Benbow

Whether in economics, politics or global affairs, we have all been struggling to make sense of a world that no longer feels very stable.

In such a climate, education offers our best refuge and remedy in a world where so much feels uncertain. The more we know about how the world really is, the greater our tolerance for complexity—and for each other. It bothers me that when we scapegoat teachers, schools and even higher education for our national ills, we deny our children the very resources needed to secure them against an unpredictable future.

As this issue of the Peabody Reflector seeks to make clear, Peabody faculty send our education alumni out into the world well prepared to navigate a profession beset by society’s demands of teachers. Young professionals like Brooke Fox Allen, BS’09, MEd’10, deserve our admiration and support.

Of course, Peabody-trained teachers are not the only ones characterized by altruism. Graduate students like Jill Robinson and recent graduate Nicole Garcia, whose essay is included here, represent the kind of research-based engagement with issues that partly defines our Department of Human and Organizational Development. In this instance, their efforts are directly helping to reduce the negative impacts of sex trafficking on women and society.

Students, faculty and programs alike have all been transformed by the success of Vanderbilt’s recently concluded Shape the Future campaign. To ensure that this momentum is maintained, the Opportunity Vanderbilt initiative will continue to seek resources to enable every deserving student to attend without regard to financial ability.

We are grateful for your support for both of these efforts, as we are for all you do to promote Peabody’s success.

Camilla P. Benbow

Patricia and Rodes Hart Dean of Education and Human Development

Beth Halteman Harwell, speaker of the Tennessee House of Representatives

Beth Halteman Harwell, one of the most powerful and politically connected women in the state of Tennessee, began her political profession in the classroom.

A Pennsylvania native, Harwell came to Nashville to attend David Lipscomb College. Though she took a keen interest in the political process, she was not interested in the usual path to politics. “I didn’t want to become a lawyer,” she says. “I didn’t want to be around criminals and criminal law, and corporate law didn’t interest me.

“I knew from an early age that I wanted to be a teacher,” Harwell says. “I really loved the teaching of political science, and, of course, Peabody has a world-renowned reputation for teachers. I thought, ‘That’s where I’m going to go.’”

After earning master’s and doctorate degrees in social science education, she spent a few years training government officials across the state. “And then a position came open at Belmont University to teach, and that’s where I ended up. I taught full time at Belmont for four years, and since that time, I’ve done part-time teaching here and there,” she says, “but my speaker position keeps me busy right now.”

Now serving her 12th term in the Tennessee House of Representatives representing District 56, which includes part of Davidson County, Harwell was elected speaker of the house in 2011 in recognition of her political acumen and service to her constituency.

Representative Beth Harwell, MS’79, PhD’80, signing the oath of office to become speaker of the house earlier this year.

She finds that her coursework at Peabody has served her well throughout her career. One of her least favorite courses, statistical analysis, has turned out to be one of the most beneficial.

“I’ve actually used that course quite a bit,” she admits, “because a lot of what I do is look at the data that drives the decisions we make in public policy, so that background in statistical analysis has been very helpful to me.”

During her career she has served on the faculties of Volunteer State Community College, Trevecca College, Belmont University, David Lipscomb University, the State Board of Regents, and the University of Tennessee Center for Government Training, among others.

Her teaching skills help her to present complex public policy issues in understandable terms to both her constituents and colleagues. “I think that a very important skill I learned was how to take questions from an audience,” she says. “That’s served me well talking to groups. And, when you’re a teacher, you certainly learn how to take questions from your students.”

Bobby Bowden

In the history of collegiate football, only a handful of names are considered to be among the best ever. Among that elite group is Bobby Bowden, who came to Peabody in 1953 to earn a master’s degree so he could begin a coaching career—a career in which he logged more than 300 wins and won two national championships as head coach of the Florida State University Seminoles.

The road to Tallahassee and football fame for Bowden began at a small college in Birmingham, Ala., Howard College (now Samford University), and detoured through another small college in Nashville. “I graduated from Samford University in January of ’53,” he says. “They let me get out of school about a month early and enter Peabody about a month late to work on my master’s degree.”

Peabody was a popular destination for coaches from throughout the South. “A lot of people at my school had graduated from Peabody,” Bowden says. “Our athletics director had gotten his master’s there. Our football coach had gotten his master’s there. They told me it was about the best teachers college in the South. So I got in there in January and finished in August.

“When I was there, there were hundreds of coaches. So many coaches that as I would travel through the Southern states recruiting, I’d run into many that I knew from school there.”

A master’s degree meant job security and a future in collegiate football for Bowden. “They told me that if I’d get my master’s degree, they’d give me a job. They’d hire me as assistant football coach and head track coach. So I had to have it. I really enjoyed Nashville, and I really enjoyed going over and watching Vanderbilt practice football. It was a good experience for me.”

Bowden’s career ascended as he served as head coach at South Georgia Junior College, Samford, West Virginia and Florida State. He cemented his legacy as coach of the Seminoles. He was named National Coach of the Year five times. His team was named the ESPN College Team of the Decade (any sport) in 1999, and he was inducted into the National Football Foundation and College Football Hall of Fame in 2006.

Since retiring from coaching, Bowden keeps busy by giving motivational speeches and promoting his autobiography, Called to Coach. “I spend most of my time making speeches. I speak two to five times a week. I’ve been all over the country, and Iraq, Israel—been everywhere.

Dean Camilla Benbow (left) joins Susan Gray School’s Ashley Pascarella with her students Grace Kahnle and Landon Fuqua (front), Peabody senior Harrison Hunter Breakstone, and Laurie Cutting (far right), Patricia and Rodes Hart Professor of Special Education, to thank everyone who has made the Shape the Future campaign a resounding success at Peabody.

Educators know that when many people are on board to help teach students, success is the most likely result. At Peabody, the tangible support of the many segments of our community—alumni, donors, parents, faculty, staff and friends—have all contributed to the enormous success of Vanderbilt’s Shape the Future campaign. Launched in 2003, the campaign received $1.94 billion in donor gifts and pledges in an historic initiative focused primarily on investing in people through scholarships and endowed faculty chairs.

Thank you, Peabody community

Peabody’s numbers in the campaign attest to your
generosity. During Shape the Future:

• Nearly 12,000 donors gave $72 million in gifts and pledges to Peabody College
• 41 new scholarships were established, 39 of them designated for need-based students
• 14 endowed faculty chairs were established
• More than $10 million in bequests were made

Thank You…

…from Peabody students like Harrison Hunter Breakstone, Class of 2012, recipient of the Adam Young Scholarship, which was endowed during the campaign.

…from outstanding professors like Laurie Cutting, Patricia and Rodes Hart Professor of Special Education, associate professor of psychology and human development, pediatrics, and radiology and radiological sciences, whose interdisciplinary work on the brain and language acquisition offers hope to students with dyslexia.

…from teachers and students at the Susan Gray School like teacher Ashley Pascarella and students Grace Kahnle and Landon Fuqua, who have an accessible playground for both typically developing and developmentally disabled students due to the Finan family and other contributors.

…for your contributions that have supported Peabody’s programs and research making it the most lauded graduate school of education in the United States.

Ongoing support for scholarships continues

More than 62 percent of undergraduates at Vanderbilt receive financial aid. For many Peabody undergraduates, being able to attend college without incurring debt is paramount. For the 2011-12 year, Vanderbilt has set a goal of receiving $20 million in gifts for Opportunity Vanderbilt scholarships. With your support and that of others committed to having the best graduates available for educational reform, Peabody will meet that goal, to continue its role in advancing research in education and human development initiatives at Vanderbilt and beyond.

This is exciting and inspiring stuff! I applaud your work!

One comment regarding the quote “the most effective instructional technologies are the ones that require the fewest changes in behavior on the part of the teachers and the learners” [quoted by Andy van Shaack on pages 16-17 of the Summer 2011 Reflector]: I can agree IF those environments are already student-centered and personalized. In other words, if they have moved away from the didactic, teacher-centric approach. In well-implemented educational technology settings I have observed that this is usually the case.

Leslie Wilson
One-to-One Institute
Mason, Mich.

As a graduate of Peabody College, I was disturbed to see that the cover of the Summer 2011 Reflector featured artwork that defies the laws of mathematics. While I love Peabody with 133 percent of my heart, the pie chart, whose pieces totaled the same, do not represent the exceptional quality of educational instruction that Peabody proffers. I would urge the publication to more carefully review its choices in artwork.

Grant England, BS’09
St. Louis, Mo.

Editor’s note: The cover artwork was meant to imply the possibilities available when learning and technology cross paths. It in no way represents the quality of instruction at Peabody and Vanderbilt, but is meant to represent that the imagination can go many places, including defying known laws.

More Information, Please

I love this magazine. It feels cutting edge and also down-to-earth. However, I would appreciate actual notations in or at the end of articles indicating where to find the complete research described. For example, in your Summer 2011 issue, I would love to know more about the “Tennessee pre-K students see gain in early literacy” research (page 12 in the Around the Mall section). I realize that it may be that the research is not yet published. Are professors Lipsey and Farran open to emails about this work?

I imagine that others may feel similarly interested in more information on articles you print. Would it be reasonable, if professors are willing, to put a link for more info at the end of articles?

Thanks again for putting this magazine together!

Jane Hewitt, MS’78
Durham, N.C.

Editor’s note: When we have links to further information at press time, we try to include them at the end of articles, or we link to them in the online version of the Reflector. Further sources related to an individual faculty member’s research can be found at peabody.vanderbilt.edu/faculty_and_research.xml.

More on the Watermelon Feast

On page 4 of the Summer 2011 issue of the Peabody Reflector, is a photo famous to the Peabody alumni of the 1950s. The picture is of Dr. Alfred Leland Crabb and Dr. Clifton Hall chowing down on watermelon, an on-campus feasting ceremony popular in that decade.

The editorial comment identifies Clifton Hall but neglects to say he was Professor Hall, who, among other things, taught an introductory French course while I was a student.  I will never forget his emphasis on the differences in spoken French in France vs. Quebec, Canada. “Remember!,” he would admonish us, “It’s pronounced K-bec, not Q-bec!” I never made it to France, but I was grateful to take Dr. Hall’s class.

For a link to Dr. Hall, and to Dr. J. Isaac Copeland, who was head librarian at Peabody for many years, visit: lib.unc.edu/mss/inv/h/Hall,Clifton_L.html.

Mary Kennan Herbert, BA’59
Brooklyn, N.Y.

Regarding the Summer 2011 Reflector, the picture on page 4 of the watermelon feast—Dr. Clifton Hall taught History of Education during my freshman year (1951). He was a great teacher; he kept you awake. He was also our Phi Chi Alpha faculty representative. Great memories! Thanks for the article!

Doug Horde, BS’56
Melbourne, Fla.

Ten Hubert H. Humphrey Fellows are at Peabody for the 2011-12 academic year. Front row, from left: Sonia Dias, Brazil; Sobia Alam, Pakistan; Julieta Sandoya, Ecuador; Aye Myint Than Htay, Myanmar; Cathy Arendse, South Africa; back row: Margaret Li Yin, Mauritius; Davry Jean, Côte d’Ivoire; Alonso Silva, Chile; Tomy Bawulang, Indonesia; Charles Kouadio, Côte d’Ivoire

August marked the arrival of the 2011–12 Hubert H. Humphrey Fellows in Nashville, where they will engage in a year of professional and leadership development at Vanderbilt and Peabody. The Hubert H. Humphrey Fellowship Program, part of the Fulbright Exchange Program, is administered by the Institute of International Education and sponsored primarily by the U.S. Department of State. Humphrey Fellows represent diverse professional and cultural backgrounds, but are selected based on a shared commitment to leadership and an exemplary record of service. The 2011–12 fellows, 10 distinguished mid-career professionals in the field of education, are from Brazil, Burma (Myanmar), Chile, Côte d’Ivoire, Ecuador, Indonesia, Mauritius, Pakistan and South Africa.

Fellows will spend 10 months devoted to academic coursework, professional and leadership development, community service, and fostering cultural exchange and friendship. Throughout their time at Vanderbilt, fellows will develop and eventually implement a plan for positive educational change in their home countries.

Today, once again, teachers find themselves grappling with change, as the nation responds to tough economic times and inadequate student achievement by asking schools to do more and more with strained resources. According to the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, 37 states cut their per-student K-12 funding to local districts this year. Teachers face high-stakes testing in the classroom, new evaluation processes, combative public debates on unionization and limits to collective bargaining, a new licensing landscape that can pit traditionally educated teachers against those who have taken alternative routes, and school competition that turns up the heat on underperforming schools. While the potential for positive outcomes is real, in the short term, all this change creates a stressful, unsure environment in which to start a career.

Peabody’s faculty members know the pressure their newly minted teachers will face. Through their work—from innovations in curricula to research on issues such as teacher retention and satisfaction—Peabody responds to the evolving teaching environment and influences the policies that shape it.

Accountability and evaluation

Its vocal opponents notwithstanding, standardized testing is entrenched as the primary method that government officials and the public use to evaluate school and student performance. There are controversies—the federal Department of Education’s decision to grant waivers to districts that won’t meet No Child Left Behind’s 100 percent proficiency target by 2014, for instance—but none that threaten testing’s prominence in the public education system. Teachers who hope to succeed must feel comfortable with the use of metrics as an evaluative tool.

“We at Peabody have an increasing attention to assessment and using data to inform instruction,” says Marcy Singer-Gabella, professor of the practice of education and associate chair of the Department of Teaching and Learning. “We had a diagnostic approach to teaching, but we are expanding out in our use of resources to make sure that candidates are familiar with the tools they’ll find in schools and districts.”

The trick, however, is to use standardized data as a tool without losing sight of what research and experience show to be the most effective teaching methods.

“There is always the concern that tests are not aligned with what we know will sustain good student learning outcomes over time,” Singer-Gabella says. “How do you manage the balance between deep learning and more formulaic learning? We have research that says students who can reason deeply about subject matter and can communicate about it—these are the classrooms in which student achievement scores go up. We try to prepare our students not to narrow curriculum to testing demands.”

An important element of this is subject-specific pedagogy.

“It combines a rich understanding of subject matter with a rich understanding of learners, of what makes the material accessible to learners,” Singer-Gabella says. “We turn people into diagnosticians, so that they carefully evaluate students’ developing understanding.”

Teachers also face increased pressure from new evaluation processes that assess their performance according to their students’ standardized test scores and through direct appraisal in the classroom.

Marcy Singer-Gabella, professor of the practice of education and Peabody’s associate chair of the Department of Teaching and Learning, believes that standardized data can be used without sacrificing what research and experience show to be effective teaching methods.

“In Tennessee this year, stemming from the Race to the Top, we have an accountability system that’s going into place that’s pretty intense,” says Kathy Ganske, professor of the practice of literacy and director of elementary education. “Hopefully the outcome will be exceptional teaching, but it’s not an easy process. There’s a lot of stress over it.”

The process determines teachers’ evaluation scores from three inputs: observation by principals or other instructional leaders (50 percent of score); student growth—i.e. value-added—data (35 percent); and student achievement data (15 percent). Established teachers are observed four times a year; new teachers, classified as apprentice teachers, are observed six times per year. At least half of the observations must be unannounced. Teachers receive a rating on a scale from one to five, and then these scores are applied to personnel decisions, such as professional development, tenure attainment and dismissal. For example, tenure eligibility will require a four- or five-level rating in each of the previous two years.

Fewer than two months into the new school year, complaints surfaced in the press that the new regimen overwhelms principal schedules, causes teachers to shift their focus from their students to their own evaluations, and even leads some teachers to quit.

The Murfreesboro City Schools went so far as to write a letter to the state’s education commissioner asking for relief: “We join your commitment to closing the achievement gap. However, we are having grave difficulty accepting the distraction from student learning that the current evaluation system demands. Therefore, we are asking you to revise the process … .”

Ganske says the teacher performance assessments (TPA) that Peabody students undergo help prepare the school’s licensure candidates for rigorous evaluation. TPA, which evaluates a candidate’s readiness for full-time teaching through an exhaustive set of reviews and self-assessments, was first developed in California in response to state law. Peabody is part of the consortium developing and piloting TPA in Tennessee.

“While it’s somewhat of a grueling process, it’s an excellent assessment,” Ganske says. “It’s scored by reviewers who are specifically trained in TPA. When students do not perform satisfactorily, we provide opportunities for them to remediate.”

Ganske adds, “Because we know they have TPA as part of their student teaching, we’re also threading things into our courses to prepare them, such as collecting video of practicum experiences, which can be looked at with a critical eye.”

There is concern, however, that the state’s evaluation process will make it harder for Peabody to place student teachers.

“Our veteran mentor teachers are still fine with having student teacher and practicum students, but others are nervous,” says Kimberly Paulsen, associate professor of the practice in special education and president-elect of the Tennessee Association for Colleges of Teacher Education. “They’re afraid to have novice teachers coming in, afraid they’re going to be evaluated poorly, or that achievement won’t be where it needs to be.”

Charters: competition and opportunity

High-stakes testing, which identifies weak schools and increases the demand for choice, has steadily ramped up support for charter school alternatives.

Some see charters as siphoning talent, funds and confidence from the wider public systems that they can never fully replace. In this view, the majority of teachers, still at traditional schools, are hurt by the resource drain and by weakened teachers unions that lose membership numbers. Others tout charters as public education’s best hope: they will provide superior schools and improve a district’s existing schools by incentivizing them through competition.

Brooke Fox Allen, BS’09, MEd’10, has taught at both a public special education school as well as a charter school. She is currently director of student supports at Nashville Prep, a new charter school within the Metro Nashville Public School system.

Research suggests the truth lies somewhere between. The best charters do phenomenal work; most have metrics comparable to traditional schools.

“I’m all for charter schools,” says Barbara Stengel, professor of the practice and director of secondary education. “It’s great if you can get people to build schools around a commitment. But the point of charter schools should be places of experimentation, so they can try things out that can come back and be adopted. Take KIPP. [Supporters] want every school to be a KIPP school. But we’re finding that good schools have good instructional leaders, whether they’re public or charter, rich or poor schools.”

For teachers, the charter school environment can be simultaneously invigorating and exhausting. Teacher attrition rates are high.

“I think there’s more freedom in how we implement programs and policies and things that are really good for our students,” says Brooke Fox Allen, BS’09, MEd’10, director of student supports at Nashville Prep. Allen taught for a year at Cora Howe Exceptional School in the Metro Nashville Public Schools before taking on a more administrative role at her charter.

“We are able to do things that are research-based that big districts aren’t able to do, because they don’t have support from the teachers, students, parents, the government,” Allen says. “But we’re governed by our board. We have a longer school day and school year, and our teachers go through so much more of a process. We keep data on everything, and then change policy in response to the data. It’s exciting to be part of a school that can change and improve in response to our students.”

Allen acknowledges, though, why many new teachers do not stay long in the profession. Between the high-stakes testing, the new evaluation system being implemented and the hours, time and energy it takes to be an effective teacher, the profession takes a toll.

“I don’t like that it’s so transitory for our students. It’s becoming a two- or three-year career,” Allen says. “But I can understand it, too, because I’m pretty stressed.”

Chris Barbic, BS’92, has taken a role that puts Tennessee at the forefront of charter school innovation. Barbic founded Houston’s YES Prep Public Schools, now a system of charters on eight campuses. In May 2011, Tennessee hired him as its first Achievement School District (ASD) superintendent. The ASD essentially will function as a district of charter schools spread across the state. School operators had until early October to submit applications to run charters for the ASD in 2012.

Power plays

Of challenges to teachers’ power within the public education status quo, none has erupted more angrily into the public square than efforts to limit collective bargaining by public sector employees. This was on most dramatic display in Wisconsin, where a capitol showdown between union supporters and the governor became a national spectacle. Other states have passed similar measures, or bills aimed specifically at teachers.

For now, the debate on whether unions help or hurt educational quality relies more on ideology than research. The relationship between unions, school policy, teacher performance and student learning is extremely complicated to measure; research thus far remains inadequate to drive decision making.

“There is a long-running narrative that teachers unions are bad for schools,” says Jason Grissom, professor of public policy and education. He notes that on average it suggests negative impact, but that the evidence is mixed, and that the scarcity of empirical data makes conclusions unreliable.

Last year, Grissom co-authored with Katharine Strunk of the University of Southern California a study that found evidence that stronger unions, through their power during collective bargaining, have greater influence over district policy, “negotiating contracts that are more constraining on the authority of administrators.” The study noted the potential implications of this finding, positive and negative. On the one hand were issues commonly associated with union power, such as administrators’ reduced control over personnel decisions. On the other were ways in which union influence might benefit districts. These included “the protection of teacher working conditions, which may decrease teacher turnover and enhance teacher productivity.”

“It is beyond the scope of this work to assess how contract restrictiveness affects student outcomes, although this area clearly deserves further attention,” Grissom wrote.

“One of the real difficulties when you study unionism—say, whether it positively or negatively affects student achievement—is finding your comparison group,” Grissom explains. ”In a lot of states, all the districts are unionized or not. And you can’t compare one state to districts in other states because the systems are so different. Membership gets confounded with so many other things that happen in schools.”

Education schools vs. new licensure paths

Like charter schools, alternative paths to a teaching career offer opportunities for innovation. Around the country, programs such as Teach for America have brought energy, enthusiasm and passion to struggling schools.

Still, conflict can arise when such alternatives serve not as complements to traditional professional training, but as rebuttals or threats.

“Last year, when I was looking for a job, Metro had put a freeze on hiring because they had to hire Teach for America teachers first,” Brooke Allen remembers. “I was livid. I’d been through five years of schooling and had a master’s. I was so frustrated. But then I got hired pretty early once that was lifted, and I didn’t teach with any nontraditionally licensed teachers
last year.”

Since moving to Nashville Prep, Allen has experienced Teach for America from a new perspective.

“I work in a world right now where our music and social studies teachers and I are the only traditionally trained teachers,” Allen says. “If you go into many of the Metro schools, it’s the Teach for America people who are most energetic and dynamic in their jobs and making more gains than many of the teachers who’ve been there for years. But then they leave.”

A study cited by Teach for America found that 61 percent of the program’s surveyed alumni continued teaching for at least a third year. Thirty-six percent taught longer than four years.

“I think Teach for America does some really good things,” Singer-Gabella says. “They recruit great talent, and get people excited about education. But one thing you see in alternative programs is persistence is not strong. Five years out, 70 percent of [Peabody] students who are recommended for licensure are still out teaching or are in masters programs with the desire to go back to the classroom.”

Robert Lundin, EdD ’09, who until recently served as Teach for America’s national vice president for university partnerships and now is a visiting professor at the University of St. Thomas in Houston, credits the program with changing his professional trajectory.

“I was one of the folks that arrived at Teach for America thinking this was going to be a two-year detour in my life, and education turned out to be my life’s calling. I loved the feeling that I had watching my students progress one by one,” says Lundin, who worked with Barbic at YES Prep after finishing his program commitment.

“In Teach for America, you take these two years and focus yourself laser like on student achievement,” Lundin says. “The organization makes it clear that whether you do this for two or 32 years, you need not only to embrace but fully understand the impact your role as an educator will have on students, schools and the communities you’re serving.”

No end in sight

There is no sign that the pressure on teachers will let up any time soon. Budgets are still tight. Too many schools still fall short on achievement. Socioeconomic policies that might address the conditions that impact students outside the classroom—providing the “wraparound services” that they need—remain political poison.

“As a teacher in this brave new world—highly politicized, contested and controversial—you will not survive unless you can navigate the system,” Stengel says. She tells students that it takes a lot more than expert classroom instruction.

“How do you make your way?” Stengel asks. “You have to be someone who can articulate what you are doing and why. You have to be a community builder, and you have to be an articulate student advocate. You have to identify what is getting in the way of your students getting what they need. You won’t be a good teacher until you can do these things.”

Lauren and Emily Failla

The abbreviated lives of Emily, BS’03, MEd’05, and Lauren Failla, BS’07, bear witness on an all-too-personal basis that out of tragedy comes triumph. The sisters, alumnae of Peabody’s human and organizational development program, died in tragic accidents, four years and half a world apart from each other. Their lives are now honored in perpetuity with the establishment of the Emily and Lauren Failla Memorial Scholarship at Peabody College.

Emily moved to the Seattle area after earning a master’s degree in elementary education and taught fourth grade in Everett, Wash. She died in a July 2006 rock climbing accident. “Emily loved her time at Peabody-Vanderbilt,” says her mother, Kay. “In addition to making great friends, she had exceptional mentors, especially in graduate school. She was nurtured and encouraged throughout her program in elementary education and graduated feeling confident about her abilities in the classroom.” Kay notes that Emily was especially grateful for that graduate school experience following her first round of parent-teacher conferences. “I recall her saying that some of the interpersonal techniques she learned, ‘actually worked!’

“Lauren struggled with the loss of her sister and the uncertainty of choosing a career path,” Kay says. “Her instructors were patient, compassionate and supportive throughout her time at Peabody-Vanderbilt. Her professors in the art program, in particular, were a huge help to her, both emotionally and academically.”

Frank, Emily, Lauren and Kay Failla with pet dog Lucie, Christmas 2005.

Lauren attended graduate school in London and earned a master of arts degree at Sotheby’s Institute of Art (Manchester University). “She found the organization of assigned group projects a simple thing to do and gave credit to her background in HOD at Peabody,” Kay says of Lauren’s graduate experience. She also worked with youth at St. Peter’s Church and had decided to work with children in art therapy. Lauren died in a snorkeling accident in India’s Andaman Islands in April 2010.

But sometimes good things happen to good people, and a movement was underway to fully endow a scholarship in the girls’ honor. Frank Failla, their father, works with WebMD as vice president of tax and finance. He learned that his colleagues had contacted Vanderbilt about creating a scholarship. “Returning to work at WebMD after Lauren’s death, Marty Wygod, chairman of the board, and his wife, Pam, had the vision to establish the scholarship at Peabody-Vanderbilt in memory of Emily and Lauren,” he says. “They recruited colleagues of mine at WebMD who also thought it was a wonderful way to honor our daughters. We were thrilled to learn that the scholarship was in the works and overwhelmed with gratitude to these generous individuals.”

Vanderbilt and WebMD moved quickly and were able to offer scholarships to two students this academic year. “We received gracious notes from each of the students, expressing their gratitude for the scholarship and explaining their career paths,” the Faillas report. “One is a senior who will be graduating soon, and the other is a current freshman who is still considering her options. We could relate to that!”

The vibrant lives of Emily and Lauren now have lasting influence on the lives of others. “There are incredible educational and community resources available through Peabody-Vanderbilt,” the Faillas say. “We hope that these recipients will use such opportunities to develop their talents to contribute and live their lives with gusto!”

In the Winter 2010 edition of the Peabody Reflector, there is an article with the heading “Early Reading First data shows impressive gains.” This article, a summary of results of a preliminary study, describes research that appears to be seriously flawed.

Based on the summary presented, it appears that the project’s research design has the following flaws:

   1) There is no control group mentioned. How can any results be linked to an intervention if there is no control (comparison) group?
   2) It appears that ELL children were administered a vocabulary test in English shortly after their arrival to their first formal school appearance. To report their mean score as 55 appears to be an egregious example of the misuse of a test, as it looks suspiciously like the “floor” or lowest score possible.
   3) The African American children’s scores increased from 88 to 94. This result is not impressive unless a control group would show virtually no improvement. Dr. Susan Gray, whose work preempts this study by about 50 years, demonstrated more impressive gains in a similar population in her Early Training Project conducted at Peabody in the 1960s! She had a control group!

And finally—the project director is quoted as saying “These final scores [a mean of 85.3 on a test whose average score per national norms is 100] are what I would expect to see as average scores in economically advantaged populations … .” On what basis would he expect economically advantaged populations to have a score significantly below the national norm?

I believe it would be helpful to have a follow-up article to apologize for these apparent flaws or present additional information to explain these apparent flaws.

Richard Brozovich, PhD’66
Clarkston, Mich.

Editor’s note: An article regarding the Reading First data reported on last issue is currently under review by Reading Research Quarterly. Until then, readers may want to see “Cross-site Effectiveness of Opening the World of Learning and Site-Specific Strategies for Supporting Implementation” in Early Childhood Services, 3(3), 179-191, by M. K. Ashe, S. Reed, David K. Dickinson, & S. J. Wilson published in 2009.

Charting a Path for Charter Schools

It is with great enjoyment that I see charter schools, performance incentives and individualized computerized learning programs in the most recent edition of your magazine. As a graduate of Peabody (MEd’03), founding teacher of KIPP Academy Nashville in 2005, and current principal of Rocketship Los Suenos Academy in San Jose, Calif., I couldn’t be more excited that more people are gaining access to some true innovations in the movement towards closing the achievement gap.

The new movement of charter schools, known as Charter Schools 2.0, is interested in creating highly successful and replicable charter schools, not in opening a few schools and making an impact on a relatively small number of families. Opening hundreds of charter schools across the country in the next decade will make a huge impact in a country that currently has 5 million elementary school students enrolled in failing schools. 

Thank you for your efforts in sharing developments with the greater Peabody community. A deeper understanding of low-income education in this country is necessary if we are to build an educational system that is truly equitable.

Adam Nadeau, MEd’03
San Jose, Calif.
  

Cheers for Paul Dokecki

Of course! While studying Herodotus, Homer, etc., Paul sat in the center rear seat creating music for his drums. And we still stood around him after quizzes/exams to find out what the correct responses were. Our class kept tabs on Paul. Whenever something of importance was accomplished, we all shared the news, by telephone in the ’60s and ’70s, even the ’80s.

Now it’s email, Twitter, etc. We who graduated [from Manhattan College] with Paul in 1962 have continued our admiration.

Paul F. Trudeau, PhD, CGP
Atlanta, Ga.

~

I took Paul’s Professional Ethics class as part of my master’s degree program in the late ’90s, and I enjoyed it immensely. It ranks high on my list of all-time favorite classes. Ever. Paul is a total treasure. Glad to see this piece about him.

Tamra Gentry, MEd’98
Bartlett, Ill.

~

Paul taught a graduate seminar in 1974 called Intervention. That class, with Dr. Dokecki’s modeling and inspiration, launched my career first as a clinician working with Indian tribes throughout the west, and now as a forensic psychologist working with intellectually disabled adolescents. Thanks, Paul.

Steven Abernathy, MS’76
Tallahassee, Fla.

Watermelon with Dr. Crabb

I greatly enjoyed the picture on page 8 in the winter issue of the Reflector since it is my father, Dr. A. L. Crabb, in the hat. He delighted in such mild exaggerations as depicted here—one should never overdo it, of course. 

I will share that picture with his grandchildren and great-grandchildren. They already know of most of his other accomplishments, and this should not be omitted!

And if you know, I’d like to know the name of the other gentleman in the photo.

Alfred Leland Crabb Jr.,
BS’40, MA’41
Lexington, Ky.

Editor’s note: We contacted the Special Collections staff at the Jean and Alexander Heard Library, which provided the photo. The other man in the photo is listed as Clifton L. Hall, and the photo is from July 4, 1951. It appears in the 1952 Pillar.

Reversing Underachievement Among Gifted Black Students, 2nd Ed., (Prufrock Press, Inc, 2010) by Donna Y. Ford, professor of special education. Two thorny issues continue to exist in education since the book was first published in 1996: the underrepresentation of black students in advanced placement classes and the persistent underachievement of black students even when identified as gifted. In this edition, these two issues are addressed, with updated information on key social, familial, educational and psychological factors that contribute to underachievement and underrepresentation.

Up from the Blue (2010, HarperCollins) by Susan Henderson, MEd’92. The debut novel from Pushcart Prize-nominee Henderson, Up from the Blue unfolds against the backdrop of 1970s America—a tumultuous era of desegregation, school busing and the early rise of modern-day feminism. The story of an imaginative young girl struggling to make sense of her mother’s mysterious disappearance, the book delves into the complexity of family relationships.

Bickman

Improving mental health services is the aim of a $3.8 million grant from the National Institute of Mental Health to Peabody’s Center for Evaluation and Program Improvement and the Indiana University Center for Adolescent and Family Studies (CAFS).

The five-year project will examine how to improve mental health services for youth and families in community mental health settings. The study will integrate a computer-based method of measurement and feedback about treatment developed by Leonard Bickman, CEPI director, Betts Chair and professor of psychology, psychiatry and public policy at Peabody, with an evidence-based treatment developed with Tom Sexton, director of CAFS and professor of counseling and psychology in the IU School of Education.

The project will apply functional family therapy, a type of clinical treatment for youth with violent, criminal, behavioral, school and conduct problems and their families, with Bickman’s “Contextualized Feedback System” or CFS. CFS is an automated, self-scoring and clinically oriented feedback system that includes measurement of treatment progress, detailed feedback, onsite training and Web-based clinical training modules. The Vanderbilt and Indiana researchers began to work together more than three years ago to apply functional family therapy to the computerized feedback system.

Roberta and Don Miller

When Roberta and Don Miller were pursuing their doctorates at Peabody in the early 1990s, they undertook a special project that examined funding in higher education. That’s when they made a $1 million dollar commitment to the school.

“When you become older you change your focus from buying things to helping people,” Don (MEd’89, EdD’92) says. “We decided it was time for us to start giving back, and we just liked the idea of helping Peabody because it was so important to us.”

The Millers believe that business, education and entrepreneurship are intertwined.

“From a business perspective, we believe that you use your education to multiply your worth which gives you the capacity to reinvest in educational institutions so that others can be educated,” Roberta (MALS’64, EdD’92) says. “That’s cross-generational dynamics—when the older generation helps the younger one grow through education.”

The Millers have established six charitable gift annuities that will benefit Peabody in the future. In the meantime, the annuities provide the couple with income that’s guaranteed for life.

“We really want to encourage others to consider this as a creative form of giving,” Roberta says. “In this economy it’s a good way to stabilize your income, and it certainly gives you some tax advantages. But the main thing is that it leaves our wealth exactly where we want it to be left.”

As hard workers and lifelong learners, the Millers say that the word “retire” isn’t in their vocabulary. A recent gerontology course taught them that there is new evidence supporting the theory that generous people live longer, further supporting their philanthropic nature.

“Once you release your money, you don’t worry about it anymore,” says Don. “It’s a good feeling to know that you’re able to give back to an entity that was so good to you.”

The rhythm of columns, archways and architectural curves is apparent from above, as seen in the colonnade between the Wyatt Center (Social Religious Building) and East Hall. The photographer did not climb a gingko tree to get the shot; he made use of a construction lift before it was moved.