VCU School of Education awarded $5.9 million teaching grant

By Mike Frontiero
VCU School of Education

RICHMOND, Va. (Oct. 20, 2004) – The U.S. Department of Education has awarded Virginia Commonwealth University’s School of Education a $5.9 million grant to develop and retain teachers who are more effective in increasing student achievement within four Richmond-area school divisions.

 

The grant creates the META Teacher Development and Retention Project and will involve the school divisions that make up the Metropolitan Educational Training Alliance, or META. META is a partnership among VCU’s School of Education and the public school systems in Chesterfield, Hanover and Henrico counties and in the city of Richmond. The alliance was formed in 2001 to meet the professional development and training needs of teachers, administrators and other educational personnel.

 

The project calls for redesigning education courses to provide more experiences in Kindergarten through 12th grade classrooms. It also will create an interdisciplinary major for elementary teachers in VCU’s College of Humanities and Sciences.

 

The development project also will work to ensure the consistency and quality of student-teaching experiences by training a large pool of exemplary K-12 teachers to work with VCU student teachers. Another goal is to strengthen mentoring programs for beginning teachers, especially those in the most challenging schools.

 

The project will identify and train more than 600 commendable teachers, who will work with both VCU student teachers and beginning teachers over a five-year period.

“We are thrilled that this grant will enable us to accelerate our efforts to improve the preparation and retention of teachers in the metro-Richmond area,” said Terry Dozier, Ed.D., META coordinator and director of the Center for Teacher Leadership in VCU's School of Education.

 

“The significant changes developed and sustained through the program will dramatically improve the way teachers are prepared for the subjects they will teach and how they will teach them,” Dozier said. “It also will strengthen the support they receive in their first two years of teaching.”

 

The program will benefit more than 141,000 students in Kindergarten through 12th grades, about 275 VCU education graduates, and 1,250 beginning teachers each year in the metro-Richmond area.