Political Quotes

“today I am introducing legislation, along with my colleague from Connecticut, Senator Blumenthal, which will strengthen the content knowledge and instructional skills of our present K-12 teacher workforce. Our goal with this legislation, like any education legislation I support, is to ultimately raise student achievement. The Teachers Professional Development Institutes Act would establish up to eight new Teachers Professional Development Institutes throughout the nation each year over the next 5 years based on the successful model that has been operating at Yale University for over thirty years. Every Teachers Institute would consist of a partnership between an institution of higher education and the local public school system in which a significant proportion of the students come from low-income households. These Institutes will strengthen the present teacher workforce by giving each participant an opportunity to gain more sophisticated content knowledge and a chance to develop curriculum units with other colleagues that can be directly applied in their classrooms. We know that teachers gain confidence and enthusiasm when they have a deeper understanding of the subject matter that they teach and this translates into higher expectations for their students and an increase in student achievement. The Teachers Professional Development Institutes are based on the Yale-New Haven Teachers Institute model that has been in existence since 1978.…”