02 Oct2014
By Lucy Berrier
The AACTE Board of Directors met September 11-12 in Atlanta, Georgia. The meeting agenda, led by Chair Julie Underwood (University of Wisconsin Madison), dealt with topics from the Innovation Exchange and membership engagement to the Council for the Accreditation of Educator Preparation (CAEP), as well as information around the organization’s operations and federal and state policy updates.
President/CEO Sharon P. Robinson reported on the operations of the organization, highlighting the Innovation Exchange, growth in membership, a successful 2014 Annual Meeting, and a strong first application cycle for the Research Fellowship.
30 Sep2014
By Omar Davis
The annual National edTPA Implementation Conference will be held October 24 – 25 at the University of California, Los Angeles. Preregistration closes October 13, and space is limited!
This year’s conference, titled “Implementation for and as Learning,” will convene higher education administrators, state agency representatives, clinical supervisors, and others engaged in edTPA implementation. Lorrie Shepard of the University of Colorado at Boulder will be featured as the keynote speaker.
Come share your experiences and hear others’ perspectives of how edTPA is being used in teacher preparation programs nationwide.
Visit http://edtpa.aacte.org/events for more information and to register.
30 Sep2014
By Andrea Hajek and Kristin Hamilton
The views expressed in this post do not necessarily reflect the views of AACTE.
The National Board for Professional Teaching Standards is recruiting practicing teachers as well as undergraduate and graduate preservice teachers to participate in field tests of the revised National Board certification process. This is a great opportunity to help shape the future of the teaching profession and experience a sample of the performance-based assessment that thousands of teachers have called transformative.
19 Sep2014
By Kristin McCabe
With the school year now in full swing, we know it’s a challenge to stay on top of your professional reading. Here are a few hot assignments you won’t want to miss:
1. Journal of Teacher Education
The latest issue of AACTE’s journal offers fascinating insights into the professional development and practice of teacher educators. Based on the premise that “while research on teaching informs research on teacher education, the latter needs a specialized knowledge base of its own” (see the issue’s editorial), articles address general and specific elements of that knowledge base, professional identity, core practices, and more.
Extra credit:Read the latest research to be published in future issues of the journal! It’s posted on a rolling basis in Sage’s Online First system.
16 Sep2014
By Jerrica Thurman
AACTE Members Addressing Key Concerns Through Rigorous Programs, Partnerships, and Policy Initiatives
AACTE member institutions across the country are leading rigorous and effective teacher preparation programs that echo the priorities of those surveyed in the 46th annual PDK/Gallup Poll of the Public’s Attitudes Toward the Public Schools. The 2014 poll includes a special section released today on teacher preparation and evaluation.
The first report on the 2014 poll, released last month, showed that Americans are skeptical of federal policy influences on public schools and of the Common Core State Standards and standardized tests. The newly released second report delves into specific ways respondents think teacher quality and schools should be improved.
16 Sep2014
By Kristin McCabe
The Council of Chief State School Officers (CCSSO) and National Policy Board for Educational Administration (NPBEA) have issued the following request for public comment on their draft revision of the Interstate School Leaders Licensure Consortium standards (see this post announcing the Wallace-funded revision effort). Make your voice heard by October 10!
CCSSO is seeking feedback from the public on draft standards for education leaders that aim to ensure district and school leaders are able to improve student achievement and meet new, higher expectations.
03 Sep2014
By Dean Vogel and Cheryl Scott Williams
This post first appeared in the Sacramento Bee. View the original here. The views expressed in this post do not necessarily reflect the views of AACTE.
The new school year brings one of the biggest transitions our state’s elementary and secondary education system has ever experienced. As students settle into new classrooms, our teachers are adjusting their instruction to help students meet expectations of the new Common Core state standards. It’s our job – as parents, business leaders, students, community members, and educators – to look beyond both the hype and hysteria to ensure that students benefit from thoughtful, locally driven implementation.
26 Aug2014
By Cap Peck and Gail Bozeman
This summer, Chief Representatives at 400 randomly selected AACTE member institutions are participating in a survey on data use in their teacher preparation programs. If your institution has been invited but has not yet participated, please complete the survey to inform our future technical assistance and other member services around data use.
Each survey respondent receives an Amazon gift card as a token of appreciation. What’s more, some participants report a benefit from the survey itself. One dean said the survey “posed so many great, thoughtful questions and really forced me to think through our programs and how we are/are not using data effectively.
22 Aug2014
By Sharon Robinson
Yesterday, U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan issued a statement responding to widespread concerns about standardized testing—saying that “testing issues today are sucking the oxygen out of the room in a lot of schools” and offering to delay by a year the federal requirement that teacher evaluations include some “significant” influence from students’ performance on state assessments.
18 Aug2014
By Saroja Barnes
Last week, members of the Teacher Leader program at the College of Charleston’s School of Education, Health, and Human Performance (SC) visited Washington, DC, and met with government and nonprofit agencies and associations, including AACTE, as well as leaders from educational think tanks and policy makers.
07 Aug2014
By Tiffany S. Erickson
The views expressed in this post do not necessarily reflect the views of AACTE.
Last month, the Council for the Accreditation of Educator Preparation (CAEP) announced Angela Duckworth as the first keynote speaker for the 2014 Fall CAEP Conference in Washington, DC. We are equally excited to announce that civil rights scholar Christopher Edley will keynote on Day 2 of the conference.
Edley, former dean of the University of California-Berkeley School of Law, is currently faculty director of the Chief Justice Earl Warren Institute on Law and Social Policy, which he cofounded. He also was cofounder of the Civil Rights Project at Harvard University, where he taught law for 23 years.
21 Jul2014
By Valerie Fry
The National edTPA Implementation Conference organized by the Stanford Center for Assessment, Learning, and Equity (SCALE) and AACTE will be held October 24–25 at the University of California, Los Angeles. This annual 2-day gathering is open to higher education administrators, faculty, supervisors, and state education agency personnel who are seeking to deepen their understanding of edTPA and network within a learning community of edTPA users.
16 Jul2014
By Aaron Goldstein
What is the difference between assessment literacy and data literacy?
On Monday, July 21, at 12:30 EDT, you can learn the answer to this question in a free webinar hosted by the Data Quality Campaign (DQC). AACTE is a partner of DQC.
DQC’s Brennan McMahon Parton will moderate a discussion between two national experts on data literacy and assessment literacy: Research Scientist Ellen Mandinach of WestEd and Founding Principal Stuart Kahl of Measured Progress. Mandinach and Kahl will define data literacy and assessment literacy and discuss the ways they do—and don’t—overlap. DQC’s inaugural teacher fellow, Raquel Maya Carson, will respond from the perspective of a real classroom teacher on data and assessment use.
07 Jul2014
By Tiffany S. Erickson
The views expressed in this post do not necessarily reflect the views of AACTE.
The University of Pennsylvania’s Angela Duckworth, whose top-rated Ted Talk on “grit” has received more than 4.6 million views, will be the keynote speaker at the 2014 Fall CAEP Conference (CAEPCon) Tuesday, September 30. The conference is being held in partnership with AACTE.
Duckworth’s research on non-IQ competencies that predict achievement influenced the development of CAEP Standard 3: Recruitment and Selectivity. The topic of Duckworth’s keynote will be “True Grit.”
24 Jun2014
By Tim Finklea
AACTE has partnered with Measured Progress to provide a series of three webinars on a new requirement in the Council for the Accreditation of Educator Preparation (CAEP) accreditation standards: facilitating and measuring candidates’ assessment literacy. This webinar series, “Developing the Assessment Literacy of Teacher Candidates,” is free and open to the public.
