Author Archive

Gail Bozeman

Chief of Staff, AACTE

National Summit Explores Diversity in Teaching Workforce

Several members of AACTE’s Member Engagement team attended the U.S. Department of Education’s May 6 National Summit on Teacher Diversity. The event, held at the conclusion of Teacher Appreciation Week, provided a forum to examine the need for a more diverse teaching workforce and to share best practices for recruiting, supporting, and retaining teachers of color.

Secretary of Education John B. King, Jr., offered opening remarks about the importance of diversifying the educator pipeline. “Students of color would benefit from having more educators and role models who look like them,” he said. “And White students would benefit from seeing more people of color in leadership positions in their schools.”

AACTE Board Election Results

Congratulations to the future members of AACTE’s Board of Directors! In a recent online election, AACTE members chose several of their colleagues to serve a 3-year term beginning March 1:

Wanda Blanchett, Rutgers University – New Brunswick (CADREI)
M. Christopher Brown II, Southern University System (NAFEO)
Kim Metcalf, University of Nevada, Las Vegas (At-Large)
Beth Quick, University of Alabama Huntsville (At-Large)
Monika Shealey , Rowan University (At-Large)

AACTE Receives NSF Grant for International STEM Conference

The National Science Foundation has awarded AACTE $72,820 to support a conference in 2015 on closing the student achievement gap in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM). The event will help participants address the following objectives:

  • To review current research on the achievement gap in mathematics and science with a focus on school-related variables that adversely affect outcomes from low-income and minority students
  • To discuss teacher quality and effective teaching in STEM
  • To identify effective strategies and models that promote equity in education and that close the STEM achievement gap
  • To build collaborative, interdisciplinary partnerships for addressing the U.S. achievement gap in STEM subjects

AACTE Continues Survey on Data Use in Programs

This summer, Chief Representatives at 400 randomly selected AACTE member institutions are participating in a survey on data use in their teacher preparation programs. If your institution has been invited but has not yet participated, please complete the survey to inform our future technical assistance and other member services around data use.

Each survey respondent receives an Amazon gift card as a token of appreciation. What’s more, some participants report a benefit from the survey itself. One dean said the survey “posed so many great, thoughtful questions and really forced me to think through our programs and how we are/are not using data effectively.