24 May2016
By Deborah Koolbeck
The U.S. Department of Education has announced a new competition for the Teacher Quality Partnership (TQP) grant program. After consultations with tribal communities and officials, the Department has designed this grant cycle to focus on improving the outcomes of students in tribal and rural populations.
For this competition, the Department expects to award three to five grants averaging $1 million each. Interested parties have until June 22 to submit their notice of intent to apply; completed applications are due by July 7.
24 May2016
By Zachary VanHouten
AACTE’s Day on the Hill is just around the corner, offering plenty of opportunities for members to improve and apply their advocacy skills during our 2016 Washington Week. Please join us June 7-8 in the nation’s capital!
For the first time ever, the Day on the Hill orientation will feature a full day of activities designed to increase your advocacy capacity both in Washington, DC, and at home. Together with other AACTE members from around the country, you will learn how the Association collaborates with colleague organizations in Washington to drive the narrative on teacher preparation, hear from reporters with national news outlets about how to cultivate your relationship with the media, and develop strategies to build and grow relationships back home with district office congressional staff.
23 May2016
By Rodrick Lucero
I am excited to announce that this year’s Leadership Academy will feature new programming related to preparing teachers for exceptional learners. Enhancing an already robust leadership curriculum being offered June 26-30 in Portland, Oregon, we’ve planned a special set of new sessions to engage participants on how to lead programs that prepare teachers to educate every child.
Members of the Collaboration for Effective Educator Development, Accountability, and Reform (CEEDAR) Center at the University of Florida and the Ohio Deans Compact on Exceptional Children are collaborating with AACTE to bring this new dimension to the Leadership Academy. Together, we hope to elevate awareness and interest in serving exceptional learners among decision-makers in teacher preparation. The presentations and conversations with guest experts will create a space in which new and aspiring leaders can learn and gather ideas that can be operationalized in their home colleges and programs.
23 May2016
By JTE Insider
Have you seen the JTE Insider blog managed by the Journal of Teacher Education editorial team? Check out the latest entry below.
In the editorial of the May/June 2016 issue of the Journal of Teacher Education, Carter Andrews, Bartell, and Richmond bring awareness to the recent teacher sick-outs in Detroit Public Schools as a way to illustrate the continued resistance to elements that serve to dehumanize the teaching profession. They write:
We are calling attention to the teacher sick-outs in Detroit and the factors leading up to them in these pages, because they represent one of the numerous examples throughout the country of educators’ resistance to the continued de-professionalization of teachers and teaching and the institutional and structural forms of dehumanization that teachers experience regularly. Furthermore, we believe teachers’ professional self-concept is negatively impacted by inequitable working conditions in many high-need schools and communities that are not present in schools that are resource-rich. (p. 170)
23 May2016
By Yupin Bae and Michelle Kotek
Editor’s note: This is the second of six blog articles exploring data on program entry and exit requirements from the latest available (2014) federal collection mandated by Title II of the Higher Education Act. The data include 1,497 providers of “traditional” programs based in institutions of higher education (IHEs), 472 providers of IHE-based alternative programs, and 201 providers of non-IHE-based alternative programs.
This is the second of six blog articles that explore federal data on educator preparation program entry and exit requirements. Taking a different angle from the last blog, this article looks at admissions requirements by frequency to identify which ones are most common.
The annual Title II collection asks providers about 15 common admission requirements, including the applicant’s subject area, transcript, overall grade-point average (GPA), content GPA, professional GPA, credits, scores on ACT/SAT/basic-skills tests, essays, interviews, recommendations, fingerprint and background checks, and “other.”
19 May2016
By Keyonna Summers
This article originally appeared in the University of Nevada Las Vegas (UNLV) News Center and is reposted with permission.
Urban Leadership Development graduates Diana Gomez, left, Dawn King and Benjamin Feinstein. (Josh Hawkins/UNLV Photo Services)
Diana Gomez always felt a pull toward a teaching career.
Even as a child, her heart was happiest when she was supervising her sisters’ and cousins’ cursive writing and math lessons, recess sessions, and lunch duty during games of “school.” She spent 5 years post-college exploring an accounting career, but the passion for her first love — education — remained.
Gomez returned to school to obtain her teaching credential, moved to Las Vegas because of vast job openings, and might have been content to teach first grade forever. But one fateful day, a mentor, whose “growing our own” mantra had encouraged Gomez to spend the last several years moving up the ranks, urged her to attend an informational meeting about the University of Nevada Las Vegas Urban Leadership Development (ULD) program.
19 May2016
By Charlotte Danielson
Danielson Group Founder Charlotte Danielson was a featured speaker at last month’s National edTPA Implementation Conference in Savannah, Georgia. The views expressed in this post do not necessarily reflect the views of AACTE.
edTPA, in a few short years, has made an important contribution to what it means to be a professional educator, by focusing not only on the work of teaching, but on the thinking that underlies all professionalism.
The three tasks of edTPA reflect the essential work of teaching: planning, teaching lessons to students, and incorporating assessment strategies into that endeavor. edTPA requires prospective teachers to engage in those essential activities of teaching, and to submit evidence in portfolio tasks. But as important (some would argue more important), edTPA requires prospective teachers to not only engage in these essential tasks of teaching, but also reflect on what they do, and explain their reasoning.
17 May2016
By Gail Bozeman
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.”
17 May2016
By Zachary VanHouten
Join AACTE Government Relations Director Deborah Koolbeck for an update on the latest developments in Washington, DC, at one of two free webinars this month exclusively for AACTE members.
Learn about the state of the appropriations process, action on the proposed regulations on teacher preparation programs, ESSA implementation, and movement on other important legislation.
The webinars will be offered on separate dates and at two times of day to accommodate different time zones. A recording will be made available after the events on AACTE’s Resource Library in case you’re unable to attend either session. Click on your preferred session below to register:
Tuesday, May 24, 5:00 – 6:00 PM EDT
Wednesday, May 25, 10:00 – 11:00 AM EDT
17 May2016
By Katrina Sheffield
A new set of brief videos in AACTE’s Research-to-Practice Spotlight Series focuses on operationalizing clinical practice through the award-winning partnerships of Ohio University’s Patton College of Education (see this article introducing the series and this overview of the first three videos). Today’s article highlights messages from the next four segments, which feature students and leaders from the college as well as from its partner schools.
The Patton College of Education at Ohio University and its partner schools nurture future teachers with extensive and hands-on experience in classrooms. Teacher candidates play an active role from early in their college years, actively participating and working closely with veteran educators to develop their own proficiency.
17 May2016
By Yupin Bae and Michelle Kotek
Editor’s note: As AACTE moves from collecting information through the Professional Education Data System (PEDS) to tapping other nationally available data sources on educator preparation, we will be providing periodic data snapshots from these sources. The following article presents data from the latest available (2014) federal collection mandated by Title II of the Higher Education Act, which includes 1,497 providers of “traditional” programs based in institutions of higher education (IHEs), 472 providers of IHE-based alternative programs, and 201 providers of non-IHE-based alternative programs.
This is the first of six blog articles that will explore the Title II data on educator preparation program admission and completion requirements. Teacher quality is an ongoing concern, and the field of teacher preparation plays an important role as the profession’s entry point. Contrary to some beliefs that preparation programs have few or no requirements for entry and exit, the data show that most providers have many and varied criteria for prospective educators at the beginning and end of their preparation programs. This blog series aims to help affirm the common criteria and explore others that are not as well-known.
16 May2016
By Alicia Okpareke and Cris Chacon
Lisa LaDonna Cooper and Linda Mitchell of State Farm present funds to the ACI Center to support Project LEAD during the spring summit in Chicago.
In April, faculty and teacher candidate “ambassadors” representing institutions in the Associated Colleges of Illinois (ACI) convened in Chicago to take part in the Project LEAD (Leaders in Education Advocating for Diversity) Spring Summit. The summit, conducted by the ACI Center for Success in High-Need Schools, followed up on the inaugural Project LEAD meeting that took place last fall. (Read more about that meeting here.)
The day began with a welcome and celebration of the ACI Center and the initial successes of Project LEAD by its sponsor, State Farm. This included a brief talk by Community Relations Specialist Lisa LaDonna Cooper as well as an exciting presentation of funds to support participating institutions.
16 May2016
By Melvin Bogard
Ed Prep Matters is featuring “Stories of Impact” to showcase AACTE member institutions with educator preparation programs that are making a positive impact in their communities and beyond through innovative practices. We are committed to sharing members’ success stories and encourage you to do the same.
The clinical practice partnership between Georgia’s Albany State University (ASU) College of Education and nearby Live Oak Elementary is bringing mutual benefit to the elementary students and the ASU teacher candidates. The field-based preparation model they have cultivated around the school’s learning goals promotes growth for all involved.
The hands-on assistance and dedication of the teacher candidates are helping to close literacy achievement gaps for Live Oak second-graders, for example, through the partners’ remedial reading practicum in the early childhood education program.
16 May2016
By Anna E. McEwan
Chapter leaders listen intently at the 2015 State Leaders Institute
In 2015, I participated for the first time in AACTE’s State Leaders Institute (SLI). In thinking about what I gained from participation, the phrase that comes to mind again and again is a sense of connection.
Psychological research suggests that those who feel consciously connected with others—or with their environment, or with anything that is larger than themselves—tend to be more physically and mentally healthy than others. Perhaps it’s too lofty to suggest that your participation in SLI will improve your overall well-being, but I can testify to several practical benefits!
16 May2016
By Ena Shelley, Kandi Hill-Clarke and Judy Sheese
Members of the IACTE Executive Committee at the chapter’s inaugural Day at the Statehouse in February
Last year, the Indiana Association of Colleges for Teacher Education (IACTE) received an AACTE State Chapter Support Grant to fund the creation of a statewide advocacy consortium. In order to disrupt the dominant discourse that negatively portrays teacher education programs, educators, and schools, IACTE sought to collaborate with “partners in practice” to tell positive stories and create a unified message of the education profession. We held a series of productive conversations and meetings, culminating in the capstone experience of the first IACTE “Day at the Statehouse” event in February.
Our partners in this work included the Indiana Association of Public School Superintendents, the Indiana Association of School Principals, the Indiana State Teachers Association, the Indiana School Boards Association, and the education honorary, Kappa Delta Pi.
