Arthur Levine, a prominent expert on teacher education, announced today that he will be leaving his current position as president of the Woodrow Wilson National Fellowship Foundation in July 2019.
Well-known for his critiques of teacher-education programs, Levine has spent his tenure at the foundation advocating for attracting nontraditional candidates to the profession and improving the quality of teacher preparation.
Levine oversaw the creation of the Woodrow Wilson Teaching Fellowship in 2007, a selective program designed to attract recent college graduates as well as professionals in science, technology, engineering, and math fields to teach in high-needs areas. The fellowship has worked with 31 universities in six states.
He also spearheaded the founding of the Woodrow Wilson Academy of Teaching and Learning, a graduate teacher-education program run in partnership with the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. The competency-based program offers most of its coursework through open-source, online resources.
“Basically, the reason for doing it is that today’s programs, even the top programs, are outdated. They were built for different times,” Levine told Education Week in 2015.
Levine made waves in the teacher-preparation community when he released a series of sharply critical reports the mid-2000s describing the U.S. teacher-education field as “unruly and chaotic.” The institutions preparing most of the nation’s teachers were under-resourced and maintained low admissions standards, and they didn’t adequately prepare educators to enter the classroom, he argued.
After he steps down, Levine will become a senior fellow at the foundation. He will remain on the board of the Woodrow Wilson Academy. Levine is the foundation’s sixth president.
“Under Arthur Levine’s leadership, the Woodrow Wilson Foundation became a true leader in education innovation, instituting new programs that have had a direct impact on teaching and learning throughout the country,” said Thomas C. Hudnut, chairman of the Woodrow Wilson Foundation Board of Trustees, in a statement.
Before becoming the president of the Woodrow Wilson Foundation in 2006, Levine was the longtime president of Teachers College at Columbia University. He has also served as the chair of the higher education program and the Institute for Educational Management at Harvard Graduate School of Education.
Photo: Arthur Levine, president of the Woodrow Wilson Foundation, addresses a gathering of Woodrow Wilson teaching fellows Wednesday, June 15, 2016, in Trenton, N.J. —Mel Evans/AP