The Rant Podcast
A bi-weekly podcast focused on pulling back the curtain on the American higher education system and breaking down the people, the policies and the politics. The podcast host, Eloy Ortiz Oakley, is a known innovator and leader in higher education. The podcast will not pull any punches as it delves into tough questions about the culture, politics and policies of our higher education system.
The Rant Podcast
Reimagining Teacher Education with Dr. Mallory Palish
Discover a groundbreaking approach to teacher education as Dr. Mallory Palish, former chancellor of REACH University and CEO of Craft Education, unveils her innovative solutions to the pressing challenges in academia. This episode promises to enlighten listeners on how REACH University’s apprenticeship model is bridging the gap between higher education and the teacher labor market. Learn how this model enables future educators to earn their degrees through a combination of evening and weekend Zoom classes and practical on-the-job experience, all while minimizing student loan debt.
Gain insights into how REACH University’s flexible schedule and affordable structure are empowering students to balance work, childcare, and studies seamlessly. The discussion also touches on the critical role of schools in nominating students for teaching positions upon graduation, drastically improving retention and job placement rates.
Explore the broader implications of teaching apprenticeships in the U.S., as Dr. Palish highlights both the triumphs and obstacles faced by different states. From the economic mobility offered to mid-career paraprofessionals and recent high school graduates to the systemic issues of teacher pay and support, this episode addresses the multifaceted nature of teacher education reform. Through engaging anecdotes and professional insights, Dr. Palish underscores the necessity for adaptable and experienced educators in shaping the future of our education system.
Hi, this is Hilo Ortiz-Oakley. Welcome back to the RAND Podcast, the podcast that pulls back the curtain and breaks down the people, the policies and the politics of our higher education system. Welcome back. In this episode I sit down with Dr Mallory Palash, former chancellor of REACH University and CEO and co-founder of Kraft Education. Since we recorded this episode, there's been some new developments. Kraft Education has been acquired by Western Governors University, so Dr Palash and her team will team up with the WGU team and bring a new emphasis of apprenticeship and workplace learning models to Western Governors University. This is an exciting new development because, as you'll hear from my interview with Dr Palish, her and her team have specialized in bringing apprenticeship and work-based learning models to teacher education and, as many of you know, WGU provides a teacher education pipeline. So the two combined should be an exciting new development for adult learners throughout the country. And with that backdrop, please enjoy my conversation with Dr Mallory Palish.
Speaker 1:Hi, this is Eloy Ortiz-Oakley, and welcome back to the Rant, the podcast where we pull back the curtain and break down the people, the policies and the politics of our higher education system. In this episode, I get to sit down with the Chancellor of REACH University and the co-founder of Craft Education System, Mallory Dwinnell-Pallish. I talk with Mallory about how REACH University is innovating in the teacher education space and using an apprenticeship model to support more learners. I also get to get Mallory's thoughts on the state of teacher education today. So with that quick introduction, Mallory, welcome to the Rant.
Speaker 2:Eloy, it's great to be here. Thanks for having me.
Speaker 1:Well, it's great to have you Appreciate you taking the time out of your busy schedule. I know you have a lot going on and we have a lot to talk about. I think REACH University is doing a lot of great work and I know our listeners would like to learn more about what you're doing. So let's start there. Why don't you tell us about REACH University and the craft education system, and what inspired you to get these teacher education pathways started?
Speaker 2:So what could be more inspirational than a PhD program? She said very sarcastically. I started out as an academic. I did my.
Speaker 2:PhD in teacher labor market modeling and I saw two big challenges came up that over and over again that led to the launch of Reach and DeCraft today. The first was that higher education itself was fundamentally misaligned with what the teacher labor market required. Teacher labor is highly localized. It is not fungible by subject area, by geography, from where there'll be teachers to go get trained in a specific subject area or credential, without any feedback from the labor market as to whether that is the credential that they will need and then travel back, hope they find a match and that then somehow the state set pay scale which is very modest for teachers will pay off ever appreciating student loans. There was a fundamental mismatch between higher education and the workforce labor market there, and so that was the first big challenge. The second big challenge that came up over and over again was and to the degree that we're ever on track, how do we even know? Because the data around these systems was such a black box that trying to do any meaningful modeling or analysis for policymakers around supply and demand mismatch, around incentives that were getting the ROI that they wanted, we were completely shooting in the dark and hoping that we hit the bullseye. And so that was many, many years ago. I, after that, left and became a teacher, became a school leader and felt those exact same strains over and over again, from the lens of being a classroom teacher and then as a school principal, trying to hire my classroom teachers, and so ultimately launched Reach University, which is now a regionally accredited nonprofit university that operates in four states in America, serving about 2,000 apprentices. And there's only one thing we do, which is we take adults who want to become teachers and who have the ability to work in a school with students that they will eventually become the teachers to and to turn that job into an apprenticeship that confers college credits and allows them to graduate not only not taking on student loan debt, but getting paid to earn that degree, working with the students, the faculty and the leadership that they will ultimately become colleagues to and to do all of that knowing the whole time that they're getting trained in the exact subject area, in the exact grade level that that school will need them to be once they graduate. So that's what REACH does.
Speaker 2:The last thing I'll say is where CRAFT comes in is as we started this work, we saw we were going to have a very challenging issue ahead of us, which came back to this data piece. The Department of Education that oversees higher ed has one very particular set of reporting requirements to remain an accredited institution, as do state teacher credentialing boards. But if you're going to become an apprenticeship provider, you now also have to report out more or less the same content, but in structurally different ways to the Department of Labor, and anyone out here has ever wondered if government bureaucracies and silos are efficient and integrated. I'm here to tell you definitively they're not, and so Craft was our tool that we built first in-house for us, but that is now available to any institution that wants to offer apprenticeship degrees. That basically serves as the translator of collecting that data and then translating it to Department of Ed language and to Department of Labor language, so that we don't have to waste our time doing that and we can focus on building great teachers.
Speaker 1:That's a great backdrop to some of our other questions. So you talked a lot about finding adults, getting adults into the right program, getting them aligned in the labor market, helping schools find those teachers. Where do you find your learners and how do they find you at REACH University?
Speaker 2:Oh, this is foundational to our model, so where we find our learners.
Speaker 2:Actually, your second question answers it it's first they find us, but it's not your normal B2C university right, business to consumer, where someone says I want to be a teacher, so I'm going to go to Reach University and that's how I enroll. Reach University is a B2B partner, so we partner with school districts business to business, okay. And we ask them to tell us two things. One, what are the vacancies that you're perpetually struggling to fill Right, maybe now, but maybe also over the next few years? And they usually come up with a list of these five special education positions, these 10 STEM positions, and it comes to a total list of however many students.
Speaker 2:Let's say, it comes to 25 vacancies that they perpetually struggle to fill. The second thing we ask them is great, tell me the 25 people working in your building right now as tutor, as a classroom aid, as an after-school instructional volunteer, who are working with your kids every day, who you've seen in action, who you know could be great teachers if they had a college degree. They tell us those two things right, the vacancies they need filled and the people already working in their building who they think could do a great job filling them. We then notify those individuals you've been nominated to come to this institution. That is more or less the beginning and the end of our application process.
Speaker 1:They have to have a.
Speaker 2:GED or a high school degree equivalent, and they have to be over the age of 18, and they have to submit two writing samples that we can use to figure out how much support they need, but not whether or not to admit them.
Speaker 2:That's it, that's our entire application process, and what we see is that when those individuals are nominated by their school because their school says not just I think you could be a teacher, but says I have a position that I am waiting for you to come fill, those folks come flocking in.
Speaker 2:And I think the last thing I would say about this that's important to know is the order of magnitudes here. So, on any given year, we need about 160,000 to 300,000, depending whose stats you use of classroom vacancies where a classroom is being led by someone who's not appropriately credentialed or qualified. There are 1.3 million people currently serving as paraprofessionals in our schools, and when you include that broader lens of tutors, dedicated aides, et cetera, that number about doubles. And so, just as an order of magnitude, if we take just the top 10 to 20% of those people working in those roles whose school leaders are saying I have watched this person go in and just light kids up, get them excited about learning. Support them. I want them to be a teacher. We take that cream of the crop and we upskill them to fill the specific vacancies that those school leaders are struggling with, and you have a recipe to end teacher shortages at scale.
Speaker 1:You clearly identified one of the challenges that we see across the country with regard to teacher education this misalignment between the kind of credentials that a school might need and the kind of credentials that teachers have in those schools. Where does that problem stem from, and do you see states that are improving that alignment?
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, the problem does arise from this mismatch of how we think about higher education versus what we know about the labor workforce. And over half of these people are teaching within 20 miles of where they grew up and where they went to school themselves. So when you take those things together, what you're looking at is people who are going to go to going to go teach near where they grew up and who are not going to move for new job opportunities because they're not the primary breadwinner. So let's talk about the challenge that creates. What we know is that which zip code you were born in dramatically predicts the likelihood of you going to college, which is a requirement to the teacher, and so we see this sort of never-ending quicksand and cycle of communities that don't produce large numbers of college graduates, especially in urban and in rural areas. There is a massive challenge with being able to develop their own local teacher labor supply, and it is equally challenging to attract people who are not from that community to come in and be teachers. So that is the challenge of what the workforce needs, for teacher labor is fundamentally different than what universities want, right? Right, teacher labor requires a very decentralized, localized approach. Universities until recently. With the rise of online learning, had this idea of you're going to come from wherever you are, come in, live in residence with us, far removed from that community, and then what you do afterwards is your business. Those two things live orthogonal to one another. That does not work.
Speaker 2:So now to your question of so what are states doing around this that we're seeing get the best results? States that are investing. Every single state in America has a structural teacher shortage right now. So there's no state that is completely out of the woods, and states that are especially rural are struggling the most. From there, the states that are making the most headway are the ones that are investing in these. Grow your own approaches, whether it's through apprenticeship, whether it is through sending students from Educators, rising or other high school programs away on the promise that if they come back they'll pay for college, on the promise that if they come back they'll pay for college. Those strategies that are meant to address that localized market are doing the most, though no state is out of the woods yet and every state is looking at a structural shortage.
Speaker 1:Wow. So let's talk about specifically the REACH University approach. You mentioned apprenticeships. You mentioned the apprenticeship model as you talk about teacher education. That's not something we're used to hearing about when we think about teacher education. How does your model work? How do you get a student from coming in to reach university to that credential and to being placed in that position in a school district?
Speaker 2:So there are five defining features of the apprenticeship degree that distinguish it from the traditional experience. So, as mentioned from the beginning, it starts as a B2B experience. Right A district says to someone that they have already seen up close in person, as culture fit has the raw potential, they enroll that student in REACH University, that apprentice in REACH University, from there. Those five defining features are number one flexibility, so this idea that they don't have to compete with work or with school. We have a rule that student for us classes are held online on Zoom on evenings and weekends so that students are to arrange childcare. They never have to miss work and don't need private transportation.
Speaker 2:Number two for us is efficiency. So those classes they have to take, they're actually only 50 percent of the full degree. Our learners actually get another 50 percent of their credits and their credit hours from the job itself, from going and working every day on the job as a para, which means that they can work full-time, they can go to school full-time and they can do those things at the same time without conflict between them in terms of time of day or total hours required. Thing number three for us is relevance. So when they go into their online Zoom classes. They are taught by an expert educator, so all of our instructors are people who've been K-12 teachers themselves. About a quarter of our instructors have been teachers of the year or principal of the year in their respective state.
Speaker 2:So, incredibly high caliber instructors bring together people in this setting and say, hey, we're talking about childhood development. And today you went and worked in a classroom of first and second graders, a first and second grader split. What was the same with what we hear in our theory should be happening? What was different from what theory would predict? And why does that matter? How is that going to change what you go do tomorrow? So there's this constant, immediate, real-time feedback between theory and practice that is navigated by people who have a track record of success in that same setting as a classroom teacher. Number four for us is affordability. So we braid together Pell, registered apprenticeship dollars and then any other funding that a state might have towards its teacher shortage mechanisms, so that we can make the promise that there's no cost to the district other than it continuing to pay the salary it was already paying that individual.
Speaker 2:And our students paid $75 a month. What that means for our students is that they're not only not taking on student loan debt, but they're actually getting paid to earn their college degree without us ever charging big fines or fees to employers or any other partners. And then the fifth and final piece kind of brings us back from where we started, which is professional capital and in particular, this idea that we are not just bringing someone in to train them to become a teacher and hope they find a job. These apprentices are going through our program knowing that their school nominated them so that when they graduate they fill a specific position in the building. So those are the five differentiating features for us of flexibility, efficiency, relevance, affordability and professional capital that we see that you can't pick and choose. You have to bring all of them together. You bring all five together. We see fundamentally different outcomes in terms of the diversity of candidates who are recruited into the program, their retention through the program and their performance in the job after they graduate.
Speaker 1:You mentioned the financing model behind all this. I mean, certainly for low-income learners, there's access to Pell and you make that available since you're an accredited institution, title IV eligible. But you also mentioned being able to access dollars that are earmarked for apprenticeship. I think that opens up a whole other avenue of support for the school, for the school district, for the learner. That's really a novel approach to this. I think it's something that we all can learn from. There's so much talk about apprenticeship throughout the country and so much push to create apprenticeship models in what we would consider, in the United States, non-traditional pathways outside of the building trades or other places where we're used to seeing apprenticeship models. Do you see this idea of apprenticeship and teacher education catching on, or how do you see the teaching industry thinking about this?
Speaker 2:Absolutely. So. We're seeing massive momentum and a critical juncture where we need to decide, particularly in the higher education world, if we're going to meet the call or not. So, to start with the momentum, in 2020, when REACH University was first accredited as a full undergraduate graduate program, there was arguably one state that had any kind of teacher apprenticeships, and that was New York. But even that was sort of living at the periphery in terms of drawing funding. In 2022, tennessee came in and set up the first what's called OA Federally Registered Apprenticeship for Teaching, and if you flash forward today, there are now around 40 states that have at least one teaching apprenticeship registered in their state. So we're seeing massive momentum.
Speaker 2:Red states, blue states, urban, rural we are seeing incredible momentum because of the efficacy this approach has in filling those gaps that we mentioned before are a fundamental result of structural misalignment between the workforce and the higher education system.
Speaker 2:Here's the challenge. The majority of those apprenticeships are currently enrolling zero learners in them, and what we'll see is a state tends to be a binary Either it's like a Michigan or it's an Iowa, where it has set up its teaching apprenticeship, and there are hundreds, if not thousands, of people going through those pathways and they're making a real dent in their teacher shortages or will be in the next few years as those folks graduate. Or alternatively, it's true for most states is they've gone through all the trouble of setting up these apprenticeships and they have zero students enrolled, because at the end of the day, you have to have a university serving as the training provider you have to get a college degree teacher and if higher ed doesn't figure out how to come along and be that apprenticeship-based training provider, those states will wither on the vine and we will ultimately see teaching apprenticeships fade away.
Speaker 2:So we're really at a moment where there is appetite from districts, from state leaders, from the learners themselves, and the big question will be whether or not higher ed steps up to meet that moment.
Speaker 1:So you mentioned how the learners are identified. Schools identify people with potential in their schools and their districts and they nominate them for this apprenticeship program to reach university. Are these individuals typically staff working as staff at the schools? Are they people who interact in the school? How does the school identify these individuals?
Speaker 2:Yeah, it started with one very particular population and now we're seeing more of a bimodal distribution of two different types of groups. So where we started was the average learner at REACH University is a mom or dad in their mid to late 30s, was a student of the K-12 system that they are now teaching and are now serving as a paraprofessional. And maybe they're not a para, maybe they're a classroom aid, maybe they're a dedicated aid, but being some sort of role in that building in the town that they grew up in. They would love to be a teacher because, by the way, it would double, if not triple, their earnings, provide them a pension, provide them all sorts of great benefits. But because they've got kids, because they're working for minimum wage, they can't afford to step away from the workforce, let alone take on student loan debt and go to school for four years. So that is our average person is someone who's been working in that school usually at least five years I think the average is around seven years that they've been working in our program, are working at the school before they're nominated for our program, and that that was sort of the first group. That was who was being sent to us over and over again.
Speaker 2:These sort of tried and true, homegrown, dedicated individuals who'd been at that school for seven years or more mid-career and have kids and would love to move up, need something to work with their life.
Speaker 2:The second group we're starting to see are actually 18-year year olds who are recent graduates from their K-12 system. Who that school has said especially in a lot of our smaller rural districts where everyone knows everyone they've known that Molly wanted to be a teacher her whole life. She was always volunteering in the classrooms different classrooms when she was in high school. She loves her town, she doesn't want to leave and so, hey, rather than send Molly away, spend tens of thousands of dollars, if not more, on getting her a teaching degree and then bringing her back here. What if she never had to leave? That's sort of the second emergent group we're seeing are students who are right out of high school, who've always had an interest in teaching and working in schools and now have the opportunity to do that without having to step away from their community or the workforce, especially if they've got family they need to support.
Speaker 1:Let's talk about the economic mobility, the economics of becoming a teacher, and obviously you've pointed out a very important part of this, which is to lower the cost of becoming a teacher, to lower the borrowing cost, to allow the individual to be able to work while they're learning. So that's a big part of improving the economic mobility. The teaching profession has taken quite a few hits, particularly since, during and after COVID. There's a lot of challenges in attracting individuals to the teaching profession and, of course, the economics of it. Given the rising cost of living in places like I'm in here in California, it's becoming a bigger and bigger challenge. How do you think about, how does REACH University think about, solving that challenge and what do you say to learners about the economic mobility that they can gain by becoming a teacher?
Speaker 2:So first of all, I would say this Ecosystem problems require ecosystem solutions. Teachers are fundamentally underpaid. They are not adequately respected. There's an ecosystem of challenges that lead many people, myself included, to leave the classroom and to not be teachers anymore, and we have to address that. Reach University is not a silver bullet we are not going to address that piece is not a silver bullet. We are not going to address that piece. And one of the big things I always caution any policymaker, any school district that we work with is we can provide a financially viable quality pathway to get people into your building.
Speaker 2:If you are not thinking through retention, if you are not thinking through equity, if you are not thinking through those other things, we can't fix that for you. So I think that's the first really important caveat is that reach would never tell you that there's no need to overhaul the fundamental nature of how we support our teachers, how we compensate them, and we're just one piece of this ecosystem. And with that, let's take a look at what we know to be true about where we lose teachers when they enter the workforce as educators. It's usually in one of two places. The first spot is in their first five years of teaching and it's because a couple of things right. Typically, the biggest reason that people in that first five-year bucket will report is I was not prepared. I had no idea what I was getting into, I had no idea what the teaching profession was going to be like and I'm receiving no support. So our first opportunity is if we can provide someone a pathway to not only not have student loan debt they don't have to pay back on the other side because that pilles into their economics but that when they enter the classroom on their first day of teaching they look a lot more like a fifth-year teacher than a first-year teacher. That's our first. When we think about that ROI for teachers of how long will I use this degree and how much did it cost me to get there, we switch both of those things right. We see that. And at Reach University, 90% of our graduates are still working in a K-12 school five years after they graduate. So that's a lot different than a 40% washout for the average teacher training program. So that's piece. One is how do we train those people in those first years so that they're not taking on debt and then when they enter the building they feel prepared and like their degree gave them what they needed to succeed?
Speaker 2:The second place we lose teachers, when we think about the ways in which the ROI on this makes sense, is usually around years 10 to 12. And it's because at that point teaching starts to feel like Groundhog's Day. Your average teacher is in her early to mid 30s and I say she because it is still predominantly female and they start to have kids. They start to look around and see how much it costs to raise a family, how much money they make as a teacher, and they start to do the analysis that you know what? I'm not growing. I don't have any way to stay in the classroom and to continue to professionally develop. I'm not making enough money. I'm just going to step out and take care of my kids.
Speaker 2:For those teachers, the second piece of our model that we think is an important piece of this puzzle is that we offer those individuals the opportunity the good ones, the ones who've been expert that we really wanna keep in the classroom the opportunity to become university faculty and to teach with us, to significantly supplement their salary, but to do that without leaving the classroom. They get to do that as a part of their workday when they're working with learners in the field, as their mentor, teacher and or teaching evening courses. So that's the second way we think about. What is our piece to play in solving this ecosystem challenge is how do we make it so that you have a chance to be compensated for your expertise, to effectively have a significant increase in your pay per hour, by now being both a teacher and an on-the-ground faculty instructor for us? How do we make that possible?
Speaker 1:So in your model it sounds like you don't just forget about the teacher once you make that handoff to the school. How do you work with that school, with the school districts, with the teachers that you've trained to help them through those periods of time that you just described, to help them through retention and make sure that they're settled in and effective teachers?
Speaker 2:Up until now it has been largely informal right. We stay in touch. These are schools that we're tending to continue to educate their next generation. But, starting this fall, what I'm really excited to share is that we're realizing there's a space for REACH University to support schools and their faculty by breaking into the professional development Title II space right being able to do ongoing support, and we actually recently acquired an organization that focuses particularly on coaching and mental health for teachers that we can start making one of those professional development title two offerings title two eligible offerings. Again, the reason this matters is what we recognize is that schools are doing a lot with a little, and so we are not looking to send them a big bill. What we're looking to say is, instead, you have to spend this title two money, these professional development line item budgets on professional development, and right now, the unfortunate thing that we're seeing is that most PD get no returns whatsoever.
Speaker 2:What if the state that trained your teachers from the beginning had the continuity to continue training and upskilling them throughout the course of their development so that they can continue to receive that support without any new costs to the district.
Speaker 1:I come from the community college space, spent 30 years working in community colleges and most of the places I've worked in, and particularly in the last few years. They talked a lot about the teacher education pathway and how they can support that pathway, how they can partner with mostly regional universities who had teacher credentialing programs. How do you work with other education providers like community colleges? Is there an opportunity for them to work with REACH University?
Speaker 2:Yes, we love community colleges. We think community college partners, the learners who come out of those programs, graduate at higher rates than any other cohort in our model, and so we know that community colleges prepare incredibly bright, talented people, and so we've actually worked very hard as an institution to go around and set up articulation agreements with dozens of institutions, and we've set up our model where, if you come out of a community college with 60 credits with some exceptions, right For example, we had one student who specialized in mortuary sciences. We had a really hard time figuring out how that related to teaching, but by and large, any student who's come out with any Sounds like one of the programs here in California.
Speaker 2:Yeah, indeed it was. And a great program if you want to go into the funeral business, a little less so if you want to go and work with a slightly livelier bunch of kindergarteners. And so, with those few exceptions that are much more technical programs as opposed to a community college associate's degree. Our promise that is formalized both in articulation agreements and just our general approach to bringing in students from any institution is we will honor what you have. If you come in with 60 credits from a community college system, you will start as a rising junior in our program.
Speaker 2:And we have built our model to make sure that we can do that without compromising on the real world exposure and experience that we want every student.
Speaker 1:Now let me ask you one final question as we begin to wrap up, and I'll put you on the spot a little bit. Given your perspective of what's going on in states throughout the country, given that you spend a little time here in California as well, how would you describe the state of teacher education across the country and for us here in California? How would you describe what's going on in California? What are some of the challenges that you see and some of the hopeful signs?
Speaker 2:So I am hopeful, I am optimistic and I would say we have to be wide-eyed about some of the challenges. I think one of the biggest challenges we have to face is that we have the tail wagging the dog when we think about higher education has a certain level of parameters that for a long time existed completely different from teachers' colleges. They did not used to be a part of our higher education system and they operated very differently. And as they started getting folded in, higher ed has mandates around who teaches your class right. They have to have a terminal degree, irrespective of whether or not they actually know how to work with kids. What they teach right. These are things that it comes down to, things that are easily measured, as opposed to what we know really helps teachers become great teachers. That, when I think about my own daughter, I would put. Any day of the week I would have my daughter work with a veteran 20-year-old paraprofessional before I would have her work with a first-year teacher right, who's right out of college and has never been in a building before. What higher education requires and with good reason is very different from a statutory perspective, from what we know makes for good educators, and schools of ed are stuck in this between a rock and a hard place of. I have to meet all of the requirements around hiring people who do a bunch of research and have PhDs in this work and making sure the students have seat time hours where they're on my campus and doing this work, and I am stuck within the pricing system of my university, even though I know teachers are never going to make enough to make those dollars make sense. They are stuck inside of the trappings of higher ed instead of getting to be a teacher preparation program. That is our big challenge and that is the thing that keeps me up at night. What I will say gives me hope and I genuinely am optimistic are the individual leaders I see inside of those departments of education getting creative and pushing on this.
Speaker 2:You know I'll say you mentioned the CSUs.
Speaker 2:I love our CSU system and one of the ways that REACH University has been positioning itself in California is as an institution of last resort. Right, if you're working with a CSU Long Beach or a CSU East Bay and they are trying to, you know they're trying to innovate and provide this program. We're not going to try to compete with them. We will give them our resources, we'll give them our tools, everything we've learned about navigating accreditation, all of the data infrastructure they need so that they can overcome that pressure from what higher ed as a mantle means and instead have us focus on being that institution of last resort in. For example, we work in rural Northern California where there might be some two institutions but there is no CSU nearby. That's right. Future educators who are currently our students? Well, and we need to buck some of these well-intentioned but wrong-headed rules that might make sense for other parts of higher ed but do not for teacher preparation or, for that matter, quite frankly, nursing preparation or social work preparation or any of those other industries where experience and practice really matters.
Speaker 1:Well, experience and practice definitely matters, particularly to our children, people who are coming up through our education system today. Given all the challenges that we're facing as a country, as cities, as states, I can't think of a more important profession right now, along with health care and other places. I mean, these are places that we need to have the best and brightest teaching our kids. So, Mallory, thank you for coming on to the Rant podcast. I really appreciate you taking the time and I really appreciate the leadership that you're providing in teacher education.
Speaker 2:EOI. Thank you so much for the time. It was great meeting and chatting.
Speaker 1:All right. Well, you've been listening to my conversation with the Chancellor of REACH University, mallory Dwinnell-Palish. It's been great to have her on the Rant podcast. I hope you've enjoyed the interview. If you enjoyed the interview, please hit the like button, continue to subscribe to this YouTube channel and follow us on your favorite podcast platform. Thanks for joining us, everybody, and We'll be back with you soon.
