ASU dean explains merits of new educational model to congressional committee
Carole Basile (center), dean of Mary Lou Fulton Teachers College at Arizona State University, speaks to the House Committee on Education and the Workforce in September 2024. Courtesy photo
Building a world-leading teacher workforce will require policymakers to solve a challenging problem: convincing teachers to stay in the profession.
“The reality is that too many teachers leave the profession because they don’t feel supported and valued,” said U.S. Rep. Aaron Bean at the opening of a recent Subcommittee on Early Childhood, Elementary, and Secondary Education congressional hearing. Rep. Bean chairs the subcommittee.
According to the National Center for Education Statistics, 86% of public schools reported difficulties in hiring teachers for the 2023–24 school year.
For Carole Basile, dean of Mary Lou Fulton Teachers College at Arizona State University, the root cause of this crisis is quite deep.
“Teacher shortage is a downstream effect of a workforce design problem. It’s bigger than pipeline building,” Basile told the subcommittee during her testimony on Sept. 25. “A potential solution to that problem is an education workforce comprised of professionals with varying sets of skills, different areas of content knowledge and multiple modes of pedagogical expertise.”
View hearing
Watch the livestream of the hearing online.
Basile went on to describe what is known as the Next Education Workforce’s team-based staffing model, which started at ASU. The model embraces purposefully designed teams with at least two teachers per roster of students. This design means a team can consist of different educators — from special education teachers to STEM experts.
Students report to multiple teachers specializing in a single content area, rather than the standard “one teacher in one classroom” approach. Learning spaces are also redesigned so that students are not confined to the same classroom.
According to Basile, in the 2024–25 school year, the Mary Lou Fulton Teachers College anticipates working across 40 school systems in 15 states to implement team-based models.
As Basile addressed Rep. Bean, U.S.. Rep. Suzanne Bonamici, Committee Chairwoman Virginia Foxx and other committee members, she urged members to support workforce design innovations and teacher preparation, reward school systems and create new certification pathways.
Here are some key components about the Next Education Workforce that were discussed at the hearing:
Teachers provide “distributed expertise” to personalize learning for students.
An effective educational workforce is made up of various professionals with diverse backgrounds.
“One of those teachers might be a brand-new teacher. ... One of them might be an emergency teacher,” Basile said. “One might be somebody who came in who was an engineer coming back. ... Somebody might have 15 years of experience. So, how do you look at kids, the variants of those kids, the needs of those kids, and now build teams of adults around those kids that address the needs?”
Policymakers should support innovative teacher preparation and certification pathways, so long as those programs focus on the needs of teacher candidates.
Basile said that while teacher preparation programs offer residencies, alternative certification pathways, and apprenticeship models that allow teacher candidates to be paid, they need to get the professional experience right.
“Programs often create another problem by asking teacher candidates to perform the roles of experienced teachers,” Basile said. “But they are not experienced teachers, and it is not reasonable to expect to retain people that are hired to perform tasks they are not prepared to do.”
Sharif El-Mekki, CEO of the Center for Black Educator Development, said that teachers should not go into debt to lead a classroom. Since 2019, his organization has focused on helping teacher candidates overcome the financial obstacles to certification.
“Teachers should not be isolated," El-Mekki said. "Salaries, loan forgiveness, paid student teaching ... all of these things ... as well as better-designed working environments — that takes investment; it costs money to create.”
The Next Education Workforce leverages the power of having a team.
Chairwoman Foxx’s visit to Tempe earlier this year gave her the opportunity to see the next education workforce model in action. She recalled how exciting and intentional the focus was on a local level and asked Basile about moving schools away from the "one teacher, one classroom" model.
“Change moves at the speed of trust,” Basile said. “Start with one team. Find a really good teacher. By the end of the year, everybody's in teams, because people look in and say, ‘I want to work that way as well.’”
Greg Mendez couldn’t agree more. Mendez, a principal at Skyline High School in Mesa, testified about the experiences of his school, which is currently piloting the Next Education Workforce initiative. The school, which currently has a team for ninth, 10th and 11th graders, is now working on the model for its seniors in 12th grade.
“When you allow them the agency to work together and really hone in on their skills and their passions for education, the possibilities are endless,” Mendez said.
Bottom line: The government needs to give schools permission to be innovative
Basile said the government should not hold schools back from making structural and systemic changes.
In an interview following Basile’s remarks, Whitney Riggs, ASU’s executive director of federal relations, said the hearing shows there is energy in Washington to change the status quo.
“This is an issue that resonates with lawmakers on both sides of the aisle,” Riggs said. “ASU’s Teachers College is reimagining the classroom setting with the Next Education Workforce initiative. The team-teaching model helps teachers feel supported in their work environment and allows them to thrive in the classroom, which is a win-win for students.”
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