Congratulations to Diana Gallardo Holmes Scholar of the Month for September 2021. Gallardo is currently a doctoral student in the counselor education and supervision program at The Pennsylvania State University. She is an alumna of Northwestern University where she obtained her master’s in Mental Health Counseling. She has extensive experience in bilingual therapy, leadership, and psychodynamic oriented group work.
The New York Association of Colleges for Teacher Education (NYACTE) is hosting its annual conference jointly with the New York State Association of Teacher Education. The 2021 conference is entitled Educational Innovation for Equity and Excellence. Progressively delivered in a virtual format September 30 through November 2, all events are free of charge. It is not too late to join us for an interactive member presentation that will take place on October 21 from 1:00-3:00 p.m. EST. In addition, asynchronous (pre-recorded) paper presentations are also available.
The conference highlights the ways in which New York educator preparation programs (EPPs) and PK-12 engage in partnerships and innovations for advancing educational equity. The conference addresses ways in which state level policy and local practices address programming for greater outcomes among diverse student populations and school communities. The conference concludes with our keynote speaker Elaine Gross, who will challenge the profession in its efforts for racial justice.
Many of you have admitted to being “all zoomed out” by attending virtual meetings over the past year and half. AACTE is looking forward to seeing you in person next year for the 74th Annual Meeting in New Orleans, March 4-6. Please know that we are continually following the COVID protocols and guidelines set by the CDC, as well as the state of Louisiana. All safety measures will be put into place during the meeting to ensure safety so that you may enjoy the conference sessions, connect with friends and colleagues, and grow your professional knowledge and network.
This blog post is written by AACTE consultant Jane West and is intended to provide updated information. The views expressed in this post do not necessarily reflect the views of AACTE.
Congress has been working hard this week, even though they are out of session. Negotiations on the reconciliation bill continue intensely behind the scenes, and next week promises to be action packed when they return.
Default Averted: President Biden Signs into Law Short-Term Measure to Raise the Debt Ceiling
On Thursday, President Biden signed into a law a bill to raise the debt ceiling, averting a default on the nation’s financial obligations through at least December 3. The House interrupted their scheduled recess and voted on the Senate passed measure earlier in the day. As you recall, last week the Senate passed the short-term debt ceiling extension with a party line 50-48 vote–though 11 Republicans ultimately joined with Democrats to get the required 60 votes to overcome the legislative filibuster.
When Mildred Boveda, associate professor of special education at Penn State University, was filling out some basic forms required for an academic appointment, she came to a question that made her pause:
Which of these best describes your race/ethnicity?
The list went on.
Boveda, an Afro-Latina woman of Dominican descent and complex intersecting identities, had always felt more at home in the Black community. But the erasure of her Latina roots, even just through a checkmark, was not something she could reconcile with.
She checked Hispanic.
This blog post is written by AACTE consultant Jane West and is intended to provide updated information. The views expressed in this post do not necessarily reflect the views of AACTE.
It’s been a tense week in Washington as a vote to save the nation from default hovered on the horizon. With a temporary solution in place, the rest of the year promises to be a continued set of cliff hangers.
First Log Jam Broken in Congress—More to Come
Last week, President Biden signed into a law a Continuing Resolution to fund the government through December 3, thus avoiding a government shutdown. The stopgap measure was the first of four major pieces of legislation on Congress’s agenda. At the start of this week the other three—bi-partisan infrastructure, reconciliation, and legislation to raise the debt ceiling—remained in limbo. But, on Thursday evening 11 Senate Republicans joined with all Democrats to pass a short term solution to the debt ceiling.
Phi Delta Kappan (PDK) recently released a special report about teacher workforce diversity, Building a more ethnoracially diverse teaching force: New directions in research, policy, and practice, guest edited by AACTE members Conra Gist (University of Houston) and Travis Bristol (University of California, Berkeley). The special report highlights the forthcoming Handbook of Research on Teachers of Color (AERA, 2022) by Gist and Bristol, featuring research by Black, Indigenous, and People of Color (BIPOC) educators on developing a more diverse teacher workforce.
The Kappan report provides brief overviews of the 11 domains of inquiry that are explored in greater length in the handbook by Gist and Bristol, along with a wide range of contributors. To bring Teachers of Color, Indigenous Teachers, and other educators into the conversation about how best to diversify the teaching profession, each domain pairs research briefs with teacher-written testimonies. The domains of inquiry include the following:
This fall, the Missouri Association of Colleges for Teacher Education (MACTE) conference will take place under the theme, Rediscovering the Joy in Teaching: Recharging and Rebuilding, on October 25-26. To maximize opportunities to engage, session times will vary by day, from 12:00-5:00 p.m. each day.
This op-ed originally appeared in District Administration and is reprinted with permission.
Unprecedented times call for unprecedented responses. For the first time, much of the country appears to have the same goal: getting both students and teachers back into schools. To that end, there has never been a more critical time to advocate for educator preparation and policies than now.
COVID-19 drastically changed the world, and its impact continues to influence opinions, strategies, and even political policies. The pandemic shined a spotlight on the importance of education for both students and educators alike. Everyone could finally see the existing deficits in the education system. The absence of education in the physical classroom revealed the importance of educating our children and ensuring quality learning environments.
Connect360 is your new, members-only, virtual platform that brings together AACTE’s community of over 15,000 individuals in a collaborative way. It’s your opportunity to share best practices, connect with colleagues, and engage in ongoing conversations.
With over 20 communities to join, there is a home for everyone. Check out the newest communities:
As of September 25, 2021, there are 11 states—Arizona, Florida, Georgia, Idaho, Iowa, New Hampshire, Oklahoma, South Carolina, Texas, Tennessee, Utah—that have passed restrictions on racial justice education in public K-12 schools. As programs that prepare educators to enter classrooms during this current onslaught of education censorship, it is imperative to ensure they are prepared to balance the harsh realities of these bills with their abilities to affirm student identities by teaching a curriculum that is a full and accurate representation of our nation’s history across disciplines.
AACTE invites you to join “Black Lives Matter at School ‘Year of Purpose’” in a national day of action to #TeachTruth about structural oppression on George Floyd’s birthday, Thursday, October 14. This day of action is co-sponsored by the African American Policy Forum and is supported and endorsed by the Zinn Education Project (a project of Rethinking Schools and Teaching for Change), National Education Association, Alliance for Quality Education, NYU Metropolitan Center for Research on Equity and the Transformation of Schools, and NYC Coalition for Educational Justice.
The Department of Education announced today changes to the Public Service Loan Forgiveness Program (PSLF) that will allow thousands of students to qualify for the program and see their debts forgiven.
The Public Service Loan Forgiveness Program was designed to allow student loan borrowers, who pay down their debts for 10 years while working at a public-sector or nonprofit job, to have any remaining debt forgiven at the end of that decade. However, only a small number of borrowers benefited from the program because they had taken out the wrong type of federal loan or had been enrolled in an ineligible repayment plan. In come cases, the debt was not forgiven because of minor clerical errors.
AACTE’s virtual 2021 Leadership Academy Series is almost sold out! Secure your spot now for the second Session, “When Thinking Wrong is Right: Purposeful Disruption of the Status Quo,” on Wednesday, October 20, from 2:00-3:30 p.m. ET.
This blog post is written by AACTE consultant Jane West and is intended to provide updated information. The views expressed in this post do not necessarily reflect the views of AACTE.
Congress Struggles to Move Forward
Since returning from the August recess Members of Congress have been scrambling to get four major pieces of legislation passed and ultimately to keep the government running. As you will recall, the big four are: a continuing resolution to avoid a government shutdown, legislation to raise the debt ceiling to avoid the government from heading into default on its obligations, the bi-partisan infrastructure bill and the reconciliation bill. Last week we reported that the four trains appeared to be moving down the track and were poised to avoid a collision after all—this week, we’re on standby.
The Evaluating and Improving Teacher Preparation Programs commissioned paper series is part of the Evaluating and Improving Teacher Preparation Programs project by the National Academy of Education (NAEd) that aims to identify best practices among existing models of evaluation tools and provide recommendations for the development of new models.
The commissioned papers will be published on a rolling basis, and the first two papers are released now.
