08 May2020
By Lynn M. Gangone
You, like many AACTE members, are likely facing pauses and interruptions to the clinical practice partnerships in your educator preparation program due to COVID-19. AACTE wants to provide you with solutions, and as such, I am excited to announce our collaboration with Mursion to provide our members access to virtual reality classrooms. This technology enables teacher candidates to receive experiential learning to continue their career development in virtual settings. View the complete details at aacte.org/vrclassrooms.
Please take a few minutes to watch the video and learn more about this special member-only benefit and other ways to engage with your Association this month. Stay positive and rest assured that AACTE is here to support you through this difficult time.
09 Apr2020
AACTE Responds to COVID-19
By Lynn M. Gangone
To help AACTE better understand and help members respond to the unprecedented challenges that COVID-19 has created for educator preparation, AACTE distributed a survey today to targeted members. The member survey was sent to senior leaders with responsibility for a school, college, or department of education such as deans, associate deans, vice presidents, or department chairs.
If you received this survey, AACTE needs to hear from you and will use your responses to
- determine the support members need;
- inform the public and policy makers about how the coronavirus is affecting educator preparation; and
- share aggregated information with members to help you benchmark your experience against your peers.
07 Apr2020
AACTE Responds to COVID-19
By Lynn M. Gangone and Jacqueline Rodriguez
With the onset of the coronavirus (COVID-19), school districts, institutions of higher education, and educators are finding themselves in uncharted territory. As schools across the nation are forced to shut their doors, finding ways to best serve all students equitably has never been more urgent. This is especially true for our most vulnerable students—those with disabilities.
COVID-19 hit hard and fast. And with that, so did the shift from in-school instruction to online learning. We know that special education students receive, consume, and apply information differently in face-to-face settings versus online environments. However, the rapid onset of COVID-19 did not give educators, parents, or students time to adequately prepare for the transition.
06 Apr2020
AACTE Responds to COVID-19
By Lynn M. Gangone
During this unprecedented time, AACTE’s number one concern is you, your loved ones, your colleagues, and your institutions. We will get through this together! While we all navigate the impact of the coronavirus, AACTE is working to provide you support through its COVID-19 Resource Hub and collaborations with key stakeholders from the field. Please take a few minutes to watch the video above and learn more.
24 Mar2020
By Lynn M. Gangone
The AACTE national office team is thinking of everyone in our community during this uncertain time. While we also are experiencing the upheaval resulting from this pandemic, our primary goal is to continue to serve all of our members. To that end, AACTE is engaging in a number of efforts to support our members at this time.
To empower you to continue to access critical support and resources, AACTE is extending the membership renewal deadline to April 30, 2020. We want to ensure members remain informed as matters related to COVID-19 continue to develop.
13 Mar2020
AACTE Responds to COVID-19
By Lynn M. Gangone
AACTE has been closely monitoring information on the coronavirus (COVID-19) and is deeply concerned about the safety and well-being of the faculty, staff, and students within Colleges of Education. AACTE stands ready to support the educator preparation community as we all cope with this global crisis.
We have received notifications that some universities are transitioning classes to an online platform while others have canceled all classes for the remaining semester to ensure the safety of their students. We realize that this will impact clinical practice requirements and other criteria teacher candidates must complete for graduation. This is indeed a challenging time.
20 Jan2020
By Lynn M. Gangone
Happy New Year! Today we celebrate the life and legacy of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. I encourage you take a moment today to reflect upon Dr. King’s work and consider what each of us can do to further his vision. AACTE is committed to keeping his dream alive by elevating social justice, equity, and diversity in education.
Join us in Atlanta next month, as we work together to disrupt inequities at the 2020 Annual Meeting. Please take a few minutes to watch the above video and learn more about what the conference has to offer.
03 Dec2019
By Lynn M. Gangone
On November 21, the U.S. Department of Education announced that new data on federal student loan debt and earnings of recent graduates by institution, degree program, and field of study had been added to the College Scorecard consumer website. In addition, the Department of Education made these data available to the public at collegescorecard.ed.gov/data.
As a service to members, AACTE has excerpted the data on education graduates, along with documentation about the data, and provided instructions on how to search for your institution in this large database. Log in and access these resources.
The Department of Education Data suppressed results for smaller programs to safeguard the privacy of graduates. Our review of the data revealed that privacy suppression affects a considerable portion of the database. At larger institutions, data are only available for sizable programs and at smaller institutions, no information may be available. Despite this considerable limitation, AACTE is sharing these data because it is rare to have access to student loan debt and earnings information for recent graduates by field of study.
To provide members with a much richer understanding of how students in education programs are paying for college—and the potential implications for recruiting students to become teachers—we are also preparing a new data brief that will be available at the upcoming Annual Meeting. This report is one in a series of briefs summarizing important data on our profession that we will be releasing early next year. More to come as the AACTE 2020 Annual Meeting approaches!
If you have questions about the College Scorecard data, please contact Jacqueline King at jking@aacte.org.
18 Nov2019
By Lynn M. Gangone
The AACTE National Office Staff and I wish you a peaceful holiday and are grateful for your active involvement in AACTE. In this video, I share updates about what’s happening in the Association as we near the end of the year, including the latest details on the 2019 AACTE Board of Directors Election. Remember to cast your vote by November 29.
Please take a moment to watch the video message below (or read the transcript) to discover how you can stay involved with AACTE this holiday season.
18 Oct2019
By Lynn M. Gangone
Last month, the AACTE Board of Directors approved the Association’s new strategic priorities. Along with our new vision, mission, and core values, these priorities will guide AACTE’s work. Our values of diversity, equity, and inclusion; inquiry and innovation; and quality and impact will permeate all of our initiatives. Please take a few minutes to watch the video (or read the transcript) to learn more.
AACTE collaborates with its members and partners to revolutionize education for all learners. Learn more at aacte.org. And stay tuned for our November Board of Directors elections!
P.S. Secure your spot for AACTE’s 2020 Annual Meeting at the early bird rate by October 30!
20 Sep2019
By Lynn M. Gangone
America is a country of immigrants. Through each wave of immigration, our public schools incorporate immigrant children into the fabric of our country. Our public schools serve as a cultural incubator to aid and nurture acceptance of diversity. Our local classrooms should be a microcosm of a global demographic. We, as educators, need to harness that belief for our teachers and the students they teach and guide.
How do America’s immigration challenges impact schools?
The challenge is that there are undocumented students entering U.S. schools, colleges, and universities who were not given the option to decide for themselves whether they wanted to come to this country. They have been incorporated into society, but are affected by current practices that impact their safety and security. It is projected that by the year 2040, one in every three children in the United States will grow up in an immigrant household (Suárez-Orozco, Suárez-Orozco, & Todorova, 2008). It begs the question: How do we work with those students?
Educators, school support staff, and service providers are often the first individuals in whom a student and/or family confides and reveals that they are undocumented. Recent efforts to identify undocumented parents and children in the United States challenge public schools in their efforts to meet the needs of all children residing within their school districts. Public schools are often embroiled in politically and legally sensitive situations, in which they must balance their responsibilities to serve immigrant and undocumented children, while meeting the expectations of local authorities to identify undocumented individuals.
What role do educators play in supporting immigrant children and their families?
05 Sep2019
By Lynn M. Gangone
Earlier this week, I published an article about the recent PDK Poll results, which depict teachers’ opinions and the realities of what is happening in our public schools. In the face of challenging times, AACTE members remain committed to educating students to become teachers, as well as change agents, wherever they serve. Our work includes developing teacher leaders to be role models and mentors so they can affect the change we need in our schools and communities.
Please take a few minutes to watch the video below (or read the transcript) and discover more about AACTE’s work to promote teacher leaders. We would like to hear from you! I invite you to share how your educator preparation program is working to produce teacher leaders. Email us at communications@aacte.org.
30 Aug2019
By Lynn M. Gangone
While serving on this year’s (Phi Delta Kappan) PDK Poll Advisory Board, I listened and collaborated with scores of thought leaders in the education ecosystem—The National Education Association, The Learning Policy Institute, The Learning First Alliance, The Gay, Lesbian and Straight Education Network, among others. We determined what approaches to take to quantify, understand, and disseminate the vast amount of information and data garnered from this extremely worthwhile and useful poll. We discussed the results and how they could be utilized to advance 21st century classrooms, its students, and those who lead them.
What is the importance of the PDK Poll?
This year’s PDK Poll was entitled, “Frustration in The Schools: Teachers Speak Out on Pay, Funding, and Feeling Valued.” The new release is one of several polls PDK has conducted to examine opinions on public education for more than 50 years. The poll, according to PDK, is “a steady reflection of U.S. opinion about public education.” Its results are meaningful because they offer an annual review of one of the most important parts of our society—public schools, and focuses on of some our nation’s most crucial people—teachers. The poll measures opinions on the value of a public-school education and its teachers while giving us a sense of how our schools are supported, or more importantly, how they are not supported. It gives us a hypothetical picture of what the future of the educational world might hold and enlightens us about current issues from the perspective of the public. It informs and helps us contemplate how students are changing and what we, as educators, need to do to support and foster
16 Aug2019
By Lynn M. Gangone
Educators and students are facing unprecedented times. The challenges both students and their teachers confront today vastly affects the efficacy of even the best educator’s efforts to create and foster students’ zeal for learning and to contribute to the society they will one day shape. Yet, educators must stay committed to fulfilling their social responsibility now more than ever before.
What Should Social Responsibility Look Like in the Teaching Profession?
This varies from educator to educator, so the answer to this question is complicated and multi-faceted.
Education is about opening minds, creating new knowledge. It is an expansive endeavor. In theory, education should provide us with the understanding and capacity of what it means to be a citizen of this nation and the world. Our nation’s founders understood the importance of an educated citizenry. Today, I believe that we need educators to support both a students’ academic development and citizen development.
16 Aug2019
By Lynn M. Gangone
As today’s leaders in educator preparation, we must address the persistent problems and inequities of access, discrimination, and bias that plague our schools and communities. It has long been the work of educators to embrace their social responsibility and instill in children the importance of making a difference in the world. We must continue to tackle social justice issues, including the underrepresentation of culturally and linguistically diverse populations among educators. Please take a few minutes to watch the video below (or read the transcript) to learn how you can engage with AACTE to promote the social responsibility of educators.
