A Conversation With Harriet “Niki” Fayne, Dean of Education at Lehman College
Harriet “Niki” Fayne, dean of education at Lehman College (City University of New York) in the Bronx, isn’t about to say that edTPA was easy for her faculty and students, or that it is the final answer for teacher preparation. But she does say this: edTPA moves the profession in the direction of strengthening the skills of beginning teachers.
AACTE is pleased to announce Michigan State University’s College of Education as the next editorial host of the Journal of Teacher Education (JTE). The editors were selected through a competitive proposal process and approved by the Association’s Board of Directors for a 3-year term.
The current editorial team at Pennsylvania State University, which has served the JTE since August 2010, will continue work on the journal through June 2015 to complete Volume 66; however, the Michigan State team will receive all new manuscript submissions effective March 1.
AACTE is very pleased to welcome three new interns from George Mason University (GMU) in Fairfax, Virginia. Amanda Bush, Christine DeGregory, and Donna Sacco will be working through May 2015 with Rod Lucero, our senior director for membership engagement and support, and me, AACTE’s senior director for performance measurement and assessment policy.
Over the next semester, the GMU interns will learn the dynamics of performance measurements, assessment policies, and clinical practice in the setting of a national association focused on continuous improvement and support. This is an exciting time for AACTE to guide the field while advocating for and building capacity for high-quality preparation programs. Cooperating with our member institutions to employ education interns has long been a goal for AACTE, and we are excited to see this aim realized.
Academic leaders in teacher education are currently faced with unprecedented policy pressures related to collecting, reporting, and acting on an intensifying array of program outcome measures. Moreover, many of the state and federal policies driving these pressures are saturated with paradox, attempting to address multiple and often contradictory goals. Perhaps the most fundamental of these is related to the essential tension between policy goals related to identifying and eliminating “low-performing programs,” and those related to “program improvement.” Coping with contradictory discourses and policies related to accountability, program improvement, and “data use” has become one of the facts of life experienced by virtually all contemporary teacher educators.
On Friday, January 2, AACTE submitted formal comments to the U.S. Office of Management and Budget (OMB) regarding the burden and cost estimates that were provided in the proposed federal teacher preparation regulations. The extensive 38-page analysis echoes many of the concerns raised by AACTE members and colleague organizations.
A version of this post also appears on the edTPA web site.
A team of teacher preparation experts experienced with edTPA will be available beginning in January 2015 to support the implementation of edTPA by teacher preparation programs across the country.
The National Academy consultants will be recruited and trained by the Stanford Center for Assessment, Learning, and Equity (SCALE) in partnership with AACTE.
AACTE has hired two new senior directors in the Department of Policy and Programs. Linda S. McKee is the Association’s senior director for performance measurement and assessment policy, and Rodrick S. Lucero will be senior director for member engagement and support.
“We are delighted to welcome Linda and Rod to AACTE,” said Mark LaCelle-Peterson, AACTE vice president for policy and programs. “Each of them brings extensive experience in education, from public schools and higher education to work with associations. They’ll add to our ability to respond to the needs of our members in an immense way.”
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:
Did you need extra time to submit your 2015 AACTE award application? You’re in luck!
The submission deadline for the 2015 Best Practice and Professional Achievement Awards has been extended until Friday, October 24.
Act now and nominate the innovative and exemplary program at your institution for a Best Practice Award! These awards highlight the work members are doing each day to improve the field of educator preparation:
Recognizing the fact that students in many high-need schools continue to have disproportionately low access to great educators, on Tuesday the Coalition for Teaching Quality (CTQ) released Excellent Educators for Each and Every Child: A Policy Roadmap for Transforming the Teaching and Principal Professions. The Coalition also held House and Senate briefings on Capitol Hill with practitioners to help explain the importance of these strategies to address the inequity of opportunity.
In the policy roadmap, CTQ—which comprises more than 100 civil rights, disability, rural, youth, higher education, principal, and education advocacy organizations, including AACTE, dedicated to ensuring that every child has fully prepared and effective educators—presents a vision for a continuum of the teaching and principal professions to ensure every child has well-prepared and effective educators.
Nominations for all of the 2015 AACTE awards close FRIDAY, October 10! Submit an entry now at AACTE’s online submission site. To read detailed submission information, please refer to the official Call for Entries.
The following awards are still accepting nominations:
The Innovations Inventory of AACTE’s Innovation Exchange is an online database highlighting members’ pioneering practices in educator preparation that have shown a positive impact on issues of student learning, preparation program advancement, or educator workforce needs. This blog post is one in a series highlighting entries from the inventory. For more information, contact Zach VanHouten at zvanhouten@aacte.org.
The award-winning Professional Development School (PDS) Consortium based at the State University of New York College at Buffalo (Buffalo State) offers a supportive cohort community for teacher candidates, minigrants for action research in the schools, and even international partner settings. This clinically rich network, founded in 1991, has evolved in alignment with frameworks including the 2001 NCATE PDS Standards, the National Association of Professional Development Schools Nine Essentials, and the 2012 NCATE Blue Ribbon Panel report.
The Innovations Inventory of AACTE’s Innovation Exchange is an online database highlighting members’ pioneering practices in educator preparation that have shown a positive impact on issues of student learning, preparation program advancement, or educator workforce needs. This blog post is one in a series highlighting entries from the inventory. For more information, contact Zach VanHouten at zvanhouten@aacte.org.
The AACTE Committee on Research and Dissemination invites proposals for a campus-based team to edit the Journal of Teacher Education (JTE) for a 3-year term, commencing with Volume 67, Issue 1 (January/February 2016). Proposals must be submitted online by November 7. Qualified individuals from schools, colleges, and departments of education at AACTE member institutions may apply.
Click here to download the complete request for proposals, or click here to enter the online submission site.
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.
