UB Urban Education Institute Reaches Out To Urban Schools

BUFFALO, N.Y. -- The Urban Education Institute at UB is reaching out to the Buffalo Public Schools, as well as other urban school districts and on-campus urban programs to create partnerships to work toward a common goal: improving urban education.

James L. Collins, the institute's director and a professor of English and literacy education in the Graduate School of Education, says the institute is on a quest to help students in city schools explore their opportunities and help teachers explore their possibilities through partnering with the university.

The mission of the institute, which resides within the Graduate School of Education, is, in part, to "encourage, coordinate, support and promote greater awareness of UB…involvement in the study and improvement of educational policies and practices in urban settings" and to identify "faculty and student interests and (link) these with research, service and professional-development opportunities."

Collins says he recently attended the annual meeting of the Council of the Great City Schools, at which a public-school official from Chicago criticized the ability of teacher-preparation programs to ready educators to work in urban schools.

"The perception of the city school district is that teacher-education programs don't do their jobs and (the schools) have to re-educate their teachers," he says. "The irony I find is that teacher educators often think that students in city school districts have problems."

Collins notes that as long as educators focus on the problems, no progress will be made "because each side misunderstands the other by reducing complex reality to a set of problems. Instead, we need to look for possibilities for collaboration.

"We have to get beyond blamestorming ," he says. "We have a tendency to point the finger and say 'it's somebody else's fault.'"

Instead, he wants to promote a collaborative spirit through the work of the institute, which was created by the late Jacquelyn Mitchell, who served as dean of the UB Graduate School of Education for two years.

"She came (to UB) with a lot of good, big, positive ideas and one of them was to turn UB into a major player in the field of urban education at the national level," Collins says.

The institute, which was established in June 1998, aims to work with the Buffalo Public Schools in the development of a Technology Staff Development and Research Institute and shared-services agreements.

Shared Services, a New York State program, offers Buffalo city schools -- considered one of the "big five" city school districts in the state -- the chance to purchase services from either universities or the Board of Cooperative Education Services (BOCES).

"Districts need to plan how much money these purchased services will cost in their current budgets, and can later apply for state aid, based on a predetermined aid ratio," says Karen Drew, coordinator of field experiences for UB's Teacher Education Institute. If the schools prove they have a need for a service, such as one provided by UB, the state will contribute additional funds to help pay for the existing project, Drew says.

Buffalo schools, for example, have identified literacy as a major need, Collins notes, a need the institute could address through such a shared-services agreement.

The Technology Staff Development and Research Institute for Buffalo teachers is another initiative on which the Urban Education Institute is collaborating. The research institute -- headed by Don Jacobs, research associate professor of education -- has several goals, including providing teacher-preparation programs, curriculum development and developing strategies that integrate the use of technology into classroom instruction and curriculum design.

Collins believes the Urban Education Institute must address the needs of both students and teachers in urban public schools. One key need is overcoming poverty as an obstacle to learning.

He is no stranger to urban education, having taught for 10 years in a Springfield, Mass., high school wrought with race riots and drug problems. "Kids don't know their possibilities are limited (in fourth or fifth grade)…And I don't think we should tell them that."

Collins points out that many people are working to move beyond the problems, which he says run deeper than simply academics. The "'forces of good' -- teachers, students and parents -- are winning the battle," he says.

"I have a great deal of admiration for kids and teachers who work in city schools and what they accomplish," says Collins, who describes his work with the institute as an effort to build on that accomplishment. "We're all in this together."

Collins adds there are a host of UB organizations with which he hopes to work, including the Center for Academic Development Services, the Center for Urban Studies, the Institute for Local Governance and Regional Growth, and the Educational Opportunity Center, as well as Upward Bound and the Science and Technology Enrichment Program (STEP), both efforts of the Office of the Vice President for Public Service and Urban Affairs.