Freakonomics Features Relay in Podcast
In a wide-ranging Freakonomics podcast on educational reform, Relay Graduate School of Education co-founder David Levin joined Freakonomics co-author Stephen J. Dubner this month to discuss teacher training in the United States.
“The way we train teachers is fundamentally broken in this country,” Levin told Dubner. He explained that teacher training is too focused on theory; that it’s biased toward mastery of content rather than mastery of instructional techniques; and that it’s designed for preparing teachers of the past rather than teachers of the future.
Levin, also co-founder of KIPP, one of the nation’s leading charter networks, discussed how Relay grew from a shared vision to connect teachers’ training to their performance in the classroom. Levin, Achievement First Co-CEO and President Dacia Toll, and Relay President Norman Atkins, founder of Uncommon Schools, saw a gap between the theory-heavy curriculum in schools of education and the reality of challenges in urban classrooms.
“We basically felt that there was a disconnect between the way our teachers were getting trained in the graduate schools … and their performance in the classroom,” Levin told Dubner. “What we thought is that you could create a more productive union between theory and practice, and that you could have people who are teaching teachers who are still connected to students, either as teachers or as principals.”
That vision has enabled Relay to grow from a small program for new teachers in New York to a replicable model spanning five U.S. states and counting. Relay now serves about 1,400 students per year across the nation.
The full podcast features more from Levin and fellow guests, including: Joel Klein, the former New York City schools chancellor; John Friedman, an economist who works on public policy at the Harvard Kennedy School; and Dana Goldstein, author of The Teacher Wars: A History of America’s Most Embattled Profession.
Readers can find more information about the history of Relay here.
