Curry School gets $10 million for preschool center

What makes a good preschool teacher? That’s the $10 million question now in the hands of UVA’s Curry School of Education, thanks to a five-year grant for a national preschool education center. The grant—possibly the largest ever for the Curry School—comes from the Institute of Education Sciences, a division of the U.S. Department of Education.
    Education and psychology Professor Robert Pianta leads the program, which is part teacher training and part experiment. In order to determine what teaching methods are most effective, some students will receive a specially designed course while studying to become preschool teachers; some will receive extensive oversight during their first year in the classroom; some will receive both; and a control group will receive only traditional training. Pianta and his colleagues (some from other universities) will measure effectiveness based on how well their preschool students score on literacy and social skills tests.
    “Our way of identifying good interactions has been validated in thousands of classrooms across the country as a factor that predicts student learning,” says Pianta. “There’s a scientific basis to know that we’re providing a lens that matters.”
    Those getting the ongoing training will videotape their classes and upload the footage to a private website, where a consulting professor will critique their methods and discuss them online. Already this year Pianta has experimented with this training model in 40 Virginia schools. (He would not comment about whether local schools have participated.)
    As for what makes a good preschool teacher, Pianta says they’re “wonderful opportunists.” “Good teachers know how to enter into play with kids and stimulate learning through that. It can occur in activities that look like lessons—or when sitting around the sand table or playing house.”
    The grant is huge for a school that received $12.2 million in grants in the 2005-06 fiscal year. Pianta particularly has drawn lucrative grants—$22 million since 1989, excluding the new award. But the sum is still small compared, for instance, to UVA’s School of Medicine, which in 2005-06 year brought in approximately $173 million.