A new resource from AACTE’s Professional Education Data System (PEDS) shows that although minority-serving institutions collectively represent a small percentage of AACTE members, they are responsible for the preparation of a disproportionately large number of minority teachers.
Today, AACTE released model state legislation to recruit high-achieving students into the teaching profession and incentivize them to teach in our neediest schools.
The Teaching Fellows bill is the first released by AACTE in its initiative to develop model state legislation that is aligned with AACTE’s state policy priorities and with the recommendations from “Excellent Teachers for Each and Every Child: A Guide for State Policy,” a joint effort by AACTE and several partner organizations that was released in December 2013. The initiative reflects AACTE’s goal of promoting sound education policies—grounded in research and practice—that will strengthen the teaching profession and will have a positive impact on students.
This post also appears on the AACTE Annual Meeting site.
AACTE and TeachingWorks are collaborating on a strand of sessions at the 66th Annual Meeting that will examine the challenges of preparing novice teachers for practice and explore potential solutions. This strand will provide a forum for sharing ideas and learning from programs that are taking on the challenges of building practice-based teacher education. It will also address implications of the Common Core State Standards for teacher preparation.
Last week, President Obama signed an omnibus spending bill funding the government through the end of the fiscal year. This $1.1 trillion plan restores approximately two thirds ($1.6 billion) of the cuts made to the U.S. Department of Education in last year’s sequestration.
Perhaps most important to educator preparation programs, the omnibus maintains funding for Teacher Quality Partnership (TQP) grants, which fund partnerships between institutions of higher education and high-need school districts to create clinical and/or residency programs at the prebaccalaureate or graduate level. This means that the U.S. Department of Education will fund a new round of grants to partnerships seeking to reform teacher preparation programs. Stay tuned for more updates from AACTE on how to apply for this grant funding.
The authors are members of AACTE’s topical action group on Teacher Education as a Moral Community. The views expressed in this post do not necessarily reflect the views of AACTE.
A recent National Council on Teacher Quality (NCTQ) report evaluates teacher preparation programs for their attention to an important element of preparation: classroom management. Unfortunately, the report’s few helpful suggestions get lost in the slough of misguided assumptions and questionable claims by the report’s authors.
The pace of change is quickening as educator preparation programs engage in a variety of reform efforts. Are you interested in learning more about how they are taking charge of change? A major forum at AACTE’s Annual Meeting in Indianapolis will highlight reforms in several programs and the ways they are working with PK-16 partners and communities to meet emerging challenges.
During this forum, the following panelists will share their efforts and partnership work to reinvent programs at their institutions:
AACTE invites institutions to participate in a job fair for AACTE Holmes Scholars® to be held Sunday, March 2, at the 2014 Annual Meeting in Indianapolis.
AACTE proudly continues to host the Holmes Scholars® Program, one of the great benefits of AACTE membership. This unique program provides mentorship, peer support, and rich professional development opportunities to doctoral students from traditionally underrepresented backgrounds who are pursuing careers in education.
On January 30, from 2:00 to 3:00 p.m. EST, AACTE will host a free webinar for members called “Assessing School Leader Preparation Program Quality: An Update on the Quality Measures Tool.”
Presenter Cheryl King, director of leadership for learning innovation at the Education Development Center (EDC), will explain how the EDC’s Quality Measures™ tool has helped school leader preparation programs assess their strengths and weaknesses and improve the quality of their curriculum, pedagogy, and clinical components. This webinar is available to AACTE members courtesy of a grant from the Wallace Foundation as part of its Principal Pipeline Initiative.
If you are interested in international education and in preparing globally competent teachers, here are some resources and opportunities to consider:
Summer 2014 Fulbright-Hays Seminars Abroad Program in China
The Fulbright-Hays Seminars Abroad Program provides opportunities for overseas experiences to teachers and other PK-12 personnel, teacher educators, and administrators with responsibilities for program or curriculum development in fields related to humanities, languages, and area studies. Seminars are designed to provide a broad and introductory cultural orientation to a particular country. The program is geared toward educators with little or no experience in the host country who demonstrate the need to develop and enhance their curriculum through short-term study and travel abroad.
The Education Task Force of the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) met in Washington, DC, last month, considering two new model state bills: the “Student Achievement Backpack Act” and the “Course Choice Act.”
The “Student Achievement Backpack Act” creates a data “backpack” for each K-12 student in the state that would include an electronic learning profile as well as information on the student’s prior teachers, including teachers’ years of experience and licensure information. The act would also authorize parents and K-12 district employees to access these backpacks, which would be transferable between schools and districts. The bill does include provisions to safeguard students’ privacy.
The National Association of Holmes Scholars Alumni (NAHSA) invites early-career faculty in education-related fields, particularly AACTE Holmes Scholars® starting their careers and early-career NAHSA members, to participate in a Tenure Academy this spring.
The academy will be held April 2-3 as a preconference event prior to the annual meeting of the American Educational Research Association (AERA) in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. The AERA conference runs April 3-7.
A major forum at AACTE’s 2014 Annual Meeting will highlight lessons for transforming education in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) and for bridging the STEM achievement gap. To advance STEM education in PK-12 and improve access for disadvantaged students, educator preparation programs will have to produce career-ready teachers who have deep content knowledge in mathematics and science and pedagogical skills to teach to the differing needs of students to improve their achievement.
At the forum, a panel of education researchers, teacher educators, and practitioners will identify social and cultural barriers that contribute to persistent education inequities. Additionally, they will discuss effective education policies and innovative initiatives that promote progress in narrowing educational disparities in STEM.
The views expressed in this post do not necessarily reflect the views of AACTE.
The latest release of international test results has once again stirred the controversy of whether or not American students can successfully compete academically in a global context. Before we condemn our educational system, however, we must first understand exactly what the Program for International Student Assessment (PISA) reveals about student performance and whether a fair comparison can be made between American 15-year-olds and those in other countries.
AACTE’s 2014 Speaker Spotlight Session will feature Kris Gutiérrez, professor of literacy and learning sciences at the University of Colorado at Boulder.
Gutiérrez uses her expertise to improve the educational condition of immigrant and other underserved students, in both school-based and community settings, and to design effective models for teacher preparation. For more than 15 years, Gutiérrez served as the principal investigator and director of an after-school computer learning club for low-income and immigrant children. She also spent over a decade directing the UCLA Migrant Scholars Leadership Program, a residential summer academic program for high school students from migrant-farmworker backgrounds.
The 2014 AACTE Professional Education Data System (PEDS) data collection will open February 3 and close at the end of April. The 2014 survey incorporates recommendations made by an ad-hoc task force convened by AACTE in 2013 to help identify changes needed and to improve the quality and usefulness of the data.
The following changes have been made throughout all forms in Parts A and B:
Other changes to Part A include the following:
