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OPINION

Lieberman: Program leveraging ASU’s expertise to help Arizona teachers

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One of the surprising things that I’ve learned while serving in the legislature over the last two years is that sometimes the most important actions we can take have nothing to do with a vote on the floor of the State House.

About a month ago, I started to work with senior staff at the Arizona Department of Education and senior leaders at ASU Prep Digital to see if there was some way that ASU could provide Arizona teachers with the professional development they need to engage their students in high-quality distance learning. The nationally recognized ASU Digital Education team has worked with hundreds of teachers throughout the state and across the country to help improve distance learning.

My goal was simple: was there any way we could leverage ASU’s expertise to make high-quality digital professional development available for every teacher in Arizona who needed it? Senior leaders at ADE and I met with ASU’s senior team and I even got President Crow involved directly. In part, through his involvement, the team at ASU sharpened their pencils to figure out how to reduce the cost of the training, while making sure their offering could scale to impact teachers throughout Arizona.

Superintendent Kathy Hoffman’s senior team at the Arizona Department of Education were incredible partners right from the start. After a few rounds of feedback with ASU, we had a workable proposal that could get high-quality professional development to nearly every teacher in the state for $7.5 million.

ADE identified $2.5 million of their CARES Act funding to get the ball rolling. I was able to have a conversation with senior leaders at the Helios Foundation and describe our statewide ambitions for this work. They were particularly interested because they had funded a pilot program over the summer that they saw was very impactful.

Then things really got interesting. ADE started speaking with the governor’s office and the Helios Foundation. Ultimately all three partners agreed to contribute $2.5 million each to create a $7.5 million effort that has the potential to impact teachers all over Arizona. These high-quality resources will be available to school districts and teachers at no cost to the schools.

We all wish that these resources had been in place earlier in the summer so that every school could have benefited from them before they started online instruction. However, ongoing professional development will be available throughout the year and can be customized to meet the needs of individual schools and districts.

I am thrilled about the statewide impact of this important initiative and thankful for the support of the ADE, the governor’s office and the Helios Foundation. It was a true collaboration and shows how much we can get done when we focus on improving the lives of Arizonans, rather than worrying about who gets the credit.

Editor’s note: State Rep. Aaron Lieberman is a member of the House Education and Appropriations Committee.