SFSU Associate Professor & Co-Founder of the Teaching Excellence Network Named NCTAF Commissioner

WASHINGTON - May 27, 2015 - PRLog -- The National Commission on Teaching & America’s Future is pleased to announce that Dr. Jeff Duncan-Andrade has joined the organization as a Commissioner. Duncan-Andrade is an Associate Professor of Raza Studies and Education at San Francisco State University, Co-Founder of the Teaching Excellence Network, and Director of the Educational Equity Initiative at the Institute for Sustainable Economic, Educational, and Environmental Design.

“We are delighted that Jeff is bringing his expertise to the Commission,” said Geneviève DeBose, a NCTAF Commissioner and National Board Certified Teacher. “He is a masterful teacher whose focus on relationships, culturally relevant pedagogy, and social justice will help inform the Commission’s work as NCTAF makes recommendations around equitable access to great teaching.”

For 21 years, Duncan-Andrade has been a classroom teacher in East Oakland. He recently founded the Roses in Concrete Community School in East Oakland, a lab school committed to the development and study of community responsive teaching and teacher training. Duncan-Andrade lectures around the world about the elements of effective teaching. He also works closely with teachers, school site leaders, and school district officials nationally, and as far abroad as Sweden and New Zealand, to help them develop classroom practices and school cultures that foster self-confidence, esteem, and academic success among all students.

“It is a pleasure to welcome Jeff to the Commission. His commitment to closing the opportunity gap for all students and his hands-on experience in developing strategies to reach all students, particularly in urban schools, is invaluable,” said Melinda George, President of NCTAF. “He is a teacher of teachers, and we are excited to engage him in the Commission’s work to support great teaching for all students.”

Duncan-Andrade has authored numerous journal articles and book chapters on the conditions of urban education, urban teacher support and development, and effective pedagogy in urban settings that have been published in leading journals such as Harvard Educational Review and Qualitative Studies in Education. He has published two books, The Art of Critical Pedagogy: Possibilities for Moving from Theory to Practice in Urban Schools and What a Coach Can Teach a Teacher. He is currently working on a third book on the core competencies of highly effective urban educators with Rutledge Press.

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The National Commission on Teaching & America’s Future (NCTAF) was founded in 1994 as a bipartisan effort to engage education policymakers and practitioners to address the entrenched national challenge of recruiting, developing, and retaining great teachers in order to ensure that all students have access to quality teaching in schools organized for success. For 20 years, NCTAF has worked to drive and inform the national dialogue about the importance of great teaching, especially in hard-to-staff schools. NCTAF’s research and recommendations inform innovations and improvements in teaching quality nationwide, focus attention on the importance of equitable distribution and retention of teachers, and promote promising practices for the development of teachers’ skills and career pathways.

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