12 Apr2019
By Jane E. West
This blog post is written by AACTE consultant Jane West and is intended to provide update information. The views expressed in this post do not necessarily reflect the views of AACTE.
Congress was busy this week trying to wrap a few things up as they enter an extended recess period. With the timeline for the election pressing, the momentum will continue. Remember the first Democratic presidential candidate debate is in June—just two months away! So the pressure is on.
- House Makes Magic Move on Budget!
The Budget Control Act, as it stands now, would require dramatic cuts for education and other programs for FY 2020, which begins October 1. In order to avoid significant cuts to education and other programs, the Budget Control Act needs to be amended to increase the spending caps. While the House Budget Committee adopted new spending caps this week, Democrats were unable to find consensus and bring that provision to the House floor.
But do not despair! Where there is a will there is a way! On Wednesday the House adopted something called a “deeming resolution” which provides for $1.3 trillion for the 12 spending bills in FY 2020. The “non-defense discretionary” portion (which includes education) will be $34 billion over the FY 2019 spending level. This deeming resolution paves the way for Appropriations Chair, Rep. Nita Lowey (D-NY), to divvy up the funding into 12 pots—one for each of the appropriations bills.
12 Apr2019
By Brandon R.T. Frost
Research indicates that effective school leadership is associated with better outcomes for students and schools. A high-quality school leader affects their teachers and students for many years. School districts are also instrumental in affecting teacher and student outcomes by playing a pivotal role in supporting their school leaders.
The Wallace Foundation partnered with six large and urban school districts across the nation to study the effects of Principal Pipelines from 2011 to 2016. The purpose was to examine whether a comprehensive principal pipeline would be more effective than business-as-usual approaches to the preparation and management of school leaders. The term, principal pipeline, encompasses the following components: 1) leader standards that guide all pipeline activities, 2) preservice preparation opportunities for assistant principals and principals, 3) selective hiring and placement, and 4) on-the-job induction, evaluation, and support. School districts were also required to produce and implement systems to further develop and sustain the principal pipeline outside of the study’s original time frame.
12 Apr2019
By JTE Insider
Check out the latest JTE Insider blog interview by the Journal of Teacher Education (JTE) editorial team. This blog is available to the public, and AACTE members have free access to the articles in the JTE online archives—just log in with your AACTE profile.
This author interview features Servet Altan’s insights from the article “Using Habits of Mind, Intelligent Behaviors, and Educational Theories to Create a Conceptual Framework for Developing Effective Teaching Disposition.” Altan co-authored the article with Jennie F. Lane, and Erskine Dottin. This article was published in the March/April 2019 issue of the Journal of Teacher Education.
Q1: What motivated you to pursue this particular research topic?
I have always admired talented teachers. Being a K-12 teacher myself, I have had the chance to work with a variety of teachers from different backgrounds and varying degrees of experience. I have always wondered what makes effective educators think and act the way they do. Furthermore, I was curious whether there are certain experiences that could help pre-service teachers develop desired characteristics. A responsibility of mine is teacher education and one of the aims of professional development is to understand teachers’ ways of knowing and acting. Additionally, it is worthwhile to know how these ways of knowing and acting reflect themselves in a teacher’s practice.
11 Apr2019
By Katrina Norfleet
TeachingWorks at the University of Michigan is presenting its second annual Practice-Based Teacher Education Workshop, an opportunity for teacher educators to examine and try out practice-based teacher education pedagogies. The workshop, will take place on July 8-10, 2019 at the University of Michigan School of Education, in Ann Arbor, Michigan.
The presentations will include artifacts of practice such as videos and transcripts to create more time for teacher educators to practice teacher education pedagogies.
11 Apr2019
By Ken Futernick
Those who prepare future generations of classroom teachers are well-positioned to promote equity, inclusion, and social justice, but in doing so they must address two significant challenges.
First, they must adopt targeted recruitment strategies to ensure that all PK-12 schools have adequate pools of new teachers from which to choose. This, along with equally important efforts within the PK-12 community to reduce turnover of existing teachers, will eliminate the persistent shortages of well-qualified teachers that deprive many students, especially the most vulnerable ones, of a quality education. In addition to boosting enrollments, teacher educators must also ensure that their candidates resemble the demographics of the PK-12 students they will teach. Over time, this will close the widening diversity gap that exists between students and their teachers in many of the nation’s public schools. As research has shown, this will help close the achievement gap, reduce high school dropout rates, and lead more students to pursue college degrees.[1]
11 Apr2019
By Linda Minor
Every year, AACTE’s Washington Week attracts attendees from all over the nation. “Your Voice Matters” is this year’s theme and will feature three events:
The State Leaders Institute, June 2-3, is for current leaders of AACTE’s state chapters. This program is the forum to discuss important trends in state policies related to educator preparation. Attendees interact with other leaders from across the United States, learning strategies and collaborating to increase their state chapters’ capacity and advocate for the profession.
The Holmes Scholars Summer Policy Institute, June 3, is for current AACTE Holmes Doctoral Scholars. This allows attendees to have an insider experience in the world of education policy. Students will learn about the implications of current policy on research and programming that focus on minority populations.
05 Apr2019
By Katrina Norfleet
In a recent podcast interview for JTE Insider blog, author Dan Goldhaber from the University of Washington offers an overview of his article, Evidence-Based Teacher Preparation: Policy Context and What We Know, during a talk with Graduate Assistant Mary Neville. The article was published in the March/April 2019 issue of the Journal of Teacher Education.
Goldhaber shares that the article is intended to do two thing: Describe what is known about teacher education and what happens once a teacher candidate becomes an in-service teacher, and secondly, to make observations about some of the structures that might be needed for state teacher preparation programs to learn more about what constitutes effective teaching.
05 Apr2019
By Brandon R.T. Frost
AACTE identified and documented two exemplary teacher preparation programs that ensure all of their candidates are ready to work with all students, including students with disabilities. We are pleased to feature a set of videos from each program documenting how they implement curriculum for dual certification (general education and special education) and feature extensive clinical preparation.
Bowling Green State University’s undergraduate Inclusive Early Childhood Program and Portland State University’s Secondary Dual Education Program support new and beginning teachers in teaching in inclusive classrooms. Both programs lead to certifications in general and special education. “These institutions ensure that all educators have the skills to work with students with disabilities in the 21st century,” said AACTE Consultant Jane West, “School districts scramble to hire these outstanding students, as they come with the mindset and the skillset to be effective with all students.”
05 Apr2019
By Matthew Wales
Are you ready to take the next step in your academic career, but uncertain where to begin? Learn what it takes to be an effective and authentic administrator and advocate during AACTE’s Leadership Academy this summer. Register today for this premier educator preparation training in Pittsburgh, PA, June 23-27.
In just the first 24 hours of AACTE’s Leadership Academy, you will
- Explore the concept of who you are as a leader.
- Examine who it is you may lead, and how you effectively lead them.
- Identify elements of leadership that are critical to your current or aspirational academic leadership position.
- Practice the concepts learned in a unique, hands-on simulation that will put your newly-acquired skills to the test.
05 Apr2019
By Deborah Koolbeck
The U.S. Department of Education has released its Notice of Inviting Applications for the Fiscal Year 2019 Teacher Quality Partnership (TQP) Grants in the Federal Register. TQP is the only federal initiative dedicated to strengthening and transforming educator preparation at institutions of higher education and to meet the workforce needs of high need school districts and schools.
05 Apr2019
By Shanett Dean
Data is a central and essential element in the work of scholar-researchers. Big data or data sets with information too sizeable or intricate for traditional statistical software, can be particularly challenging to analyze. Some students may be yet unaware of the nuances of big data and how it can inform their research. Additionally, others may wonder where to start or find sources for big data that can yield helpful insights for their work.
If you would like to increase your working knowledge of what big data is, where to find it, and how it can grow your analysis, Florida Atlantic University’s (FAU) Holmes Scholars invites you to attend “The Story of BIG DATA with All the Small Details” presented by Charles Dukes. This dynamic presentation on the mammoth data sources that are ubiquitous to our lives will not only provide participants with context and approaches for understanding big data, attendees will leave with a viable research agenda useful for their careers as social science researchers.
The presentation will take place on April 10, 2019 at 2:30 p.m. EST. If you are interested in video-conference attendance please RSVP for access to join us via Skype at http://bit.ly/HolFAU.
For more information, please contact me at sdean13@fau.edu.
05 Apr2019
By Bryan S. Zugelder
As co-editors, we are seeking chapter authors for a book we are publishing with IGI Global for release in 2020 titled Handbook of Research on Leadership and Advocacy for Children and Families in Rural Poverty. This interdisciplinary book will address issues related to education, counseling, social work, public policy, health, and leadership.
Education researchers and practitioners are invited to submit a 1,000 to 2,000 word chapter proposal by April 25, 2019. All submitted chapters will undergo a double-blind review.
02 Apr2019
By Katrina Norfleet
During the “Disrupting the Persistence of Oppression” Deeper Dive session, panelists explored the question: How does knowing content matter for disrupting the persistence of oppression? The panel discussion was moderated by Deborah Ball, director of TeachingWorks at the University of Michigan and included Maisha Winn, Chancellor’s Leadership Professor in the School of Education and co-director of the Transformative Justice in Education (TJE) Center at the University of California, Davis; Sylvia Celedon-Pattichis, senior associate dean for research and community engagement and professor of bilingual and mathematics education at the University of New Mexico; Abby Reisman, assistant professor of teacher education at the University of Pennsylvania; and Carol Lee, former Edwina S. Tarry Professor of Education, School of Education, of Social Policy and African-American Studies at Northwestern University.
Winn began the panel discussion with a scholarly presentation focused on restorative justice and shared a narrative framework she developed for teachers to consider when seeking justice in the school setting. The framework is based on four pedagogical stances: history matters, race matters, justice matters, and language matters. She presented the framework and shared her desire to add a fifth stance: futures matter.
02 Apr2019
By Ward Cummings
The “AACTE Initiatives toward Increasing Diversity, Equity and Inclusion in Colleges of Teacher Education” Deeper Dive session was held during the 2019 Annual Meeting. The session highlighted the association’s current, ongoing, and future commitments in these areas in a discussion moderated by Jennifer Robinson of Montclair State University and included panelists Lillian Sharon Leathers of William Paterson University of New Jersey and AACTE’s Jacqueline King, Jacqueline Rodriguez, and Jane West.
King, author of AACTE’s recently published Education Students and Diversity: A Review of New Evidence report, described the findings, which showed that education is the least diverse in bachelor’s degree fields. King shared other important data such as 50% of African American education students and 40% of Hispanic education students are independent; 30% of African American students and 20% Hispanic students had children; and 20% African American students were single parents. She emphasized that child care, for example, is an issue that cannot be ignored when considering the matter of diversity. In addition, 4% of Hispanic students are first generation students and 22% do not have a parent that has graduated from high school. The study revealed that one in five African American students work full-time and that the median family income of white, dependent students is more than double of their African American and Hispanic peers.
02 Apr2019
By Jerrica Thurman
Annual Meeting Closing keynote speakers Mary Dilworth, editor of Millennial Teachers of Color, and Leslie Fenwick, dean emerita of Howard University, presented the topic, “Millennial Teachers of Color: Follow Their Lead, They Know Where We Need To Be,” on Sunday, February 24. During the session, the educators explored millennial teachers through a new lens by examining the intersection of race ethnicity and generation.
Dilworth has centered her career on teacher quality and preparation, with a keen focus on racial/ethnic and linguistic diversity and equity issues. Recently, she was a co-principal investigator for the National Science Foundation (NSF-DR12) project designed to recruit, prepare, license, and employ middle and high school science teachers from underrepresented groups. In addition, she served as a visiting professor and director of the Center for Urban Education at the University of the District of Columbia. Earlier in her career, she was a research fellow with Howard University’s Institute for the Study of Educational Policy (ISEP) and became widely recognized for heightening the national discourse on the disparate impact of licensing tests on underrepresented groups.
