Christa McAuliffe Fellowship Program Discontinued
WASHINGTON, March 19–The Christa McAuliffe Fellowship program – which in recent years awarded teachers from Wolfeboro, Concord and Claremont more than $30,000 each to improve their skills and advance their schools’ standards – has been discontinued by the Education Department, much to the surprise of previous recipients.
The national teacher fellowship program was created in 1996 to honor the Concord teacher who died 16 years ago in the explosion of the space shuttle Challenger.
“The Department of Education has done a refocusing of priorities, and this unfortunately was not one of them,” said Jon Quam, the director of the Council of Chief State School Officers in Washington, which has administrated the fellowship for the past six years.
The program has allowed teachers to take sabbaticals, conduct research and undertake projects that increase standards-based educational reform in their schools. The recipients have used the money, which is based on teachers’ average salaries in their states, to supplement their salaries while away from the classroom or to purchase materials while remaining on the job.
The federal government last year distributed $1.8 million in McAuliffe fellowship grants to 59 states and territories, according to Quam. The states awarded fellowships to K-12 teachers with eight or more years of experience who presented project proposals that jive with their standards-based school reform priorities. Quam said New Hampshire’s priorities were to improve early literacy development, purchase educational technology and increase the performance of all students.
A McAuliffe fellowship helped Jade Warfield, a language arts teacher for kindergarten through fourth-grade students at the Eastman and Broken Ground Schools in Concord, purchase “thousands upon thousands” of books for struggling readers in 1998. Terry Hayward, a seventh-grade mathematics teacher at Claremont Middle School in Claremont, used her fellowship funds in 2000 to buy mathematics software and hardware and to train teachers in how to use them to raise students’ aptitude. Both teachers also took time off to pursue advanced degrees in education.
The current fellow, Joanne Parise, is using the money to develop an interactive computer program that teaches students at seven schools in Wolfeboro about global community, habitats, oceans, birds and plants.
“It will help kids learn about science in a variety of ways,” Parise said, “through music, movement, paper pencil books, graphs and diagrams.”
Parise, whose fellowship ends in June, says the program’s elimination is “very surprising.” The McAuliffe fellowship is unique, she said, because it focuses solely on teachers and allows them to use the money, if they choose, to purchase thousands of dollars worth of materials for their schools – something most teachers only dream of doing.
She is using some of her grant to supplement her income because she reduced to part-time her hours as a gifted-education adviser to K-8 teachers at the Crescent Lake School in Wolfeboro. She has used the remainder to purchase costly supplies, including an incubator to hatch chicken eggs and a kiln.
“This program worked so well because the projects have to show that they have an impact on students’ lives,” Parise said. “I’m working in my community but have outreach efforts so that my project will reach the whole state.”
She admitted, however, that the program was not administered very well in New Hampshire. “The politics have been frustrating,” she said. “It was hard to find people at the state level to talk to.”
Claremont’s Hayward acknowledged little recognition for her fellowship in New Hampshire. “Other states made a much bigger deal out of it,” she said. “They got to meet their governor and do lots of things. Not here.”
Dr. Joanne Baker, the director of the Division of Instruction at the New Hampshire Department of Education in Concord, which handles the McAuliffe scholarship on the state level, was not available for comment.
Warfield, who said she is “really saddened” to hear that the program is being ended, said she saw projects by teachers in other states at an annual conference in Washington that were “just outstanding.” “There were people doing science projects and dropout prevention projects, drug prevention,” she said. “I couldn’t be more impressed with their level of dedication and professionalism.”
“I think it’s really too bad for the money to be reallocated,” Parise said. “My guess is that it is going to be reallocated in a way that won’t help teachers like this one does”
While Hayward suspects that interest in the program may have waned at the national level because of the push to put more money into testing initiatives, Quam said the program was cut simply because of shifting priorities.
“This is the reality in a government-run and funded program,” he said. “The funding was last approved under the old administration. New people in new positions have new ideas.”
Published in The Union Leader, in Manchester, New Hampshire
