01 Jun2015
By Linda McKee
Educator preparation faculty at Nazareth College in Rochester, NY, like to meet with faculty in other departments to compare notes about how their teacher candidates are doing and how best to support them across study areas.
“That’s just the environment we work in. They are all of our students, as they major in education and an area of the liberal arts and sciences,” explains Kate DaBoll-Lavoie, professor and immediate past chair of the Department of Inclusive Childhood Education at Nazareth. “We want them to succeed. We support our colleagues.”
For the past 2 years, DaBoll-Lavoie and her colleagues have brought to the table new data that have enriched the conversations and helped to focus them on specific needs of students.
26 May2015
By Mark LaCelle-Peterson
I am delighted to announce AACTE’s new Quality Support Initiative, which is designed to provide resources and support to educators interested in assessment and accreditation. Starting next month, we will offer Online Professional Seminars (OPSs) for faculty at AACTE member and nonmember institutions, undergraduate and graduate students, PK-12 teachers—or anyone involved in educator preparation.
As part of our mission to advocate and build capacity for high-quality educator preparation, AACTE has established this initiative to support the profession’s work in continuous improvement and accreditation. The OPSs provide professional development for individuals and promote organizational development for institutions in a convenient, flexible format.
11 May2015
By Linda McKee
Since the launch of the edTPA National Academy consulting service in January, dozens of consultants have been trained and deployed across the country to lead workshops and provide other support for edTPA implementation. In addition, once a consultant is requested through the “Seek Support” feature, a new searchable database is now available to help programs make the right match. AACTE and the Stanford Center for Assessment, Learning, and Equity recently announced the official launch of the service in a press release:
01 May2015
By Mark Ginsberg
I am honored to assume the role of chair of AACTE’s Board of Directors at such an exciting time for the organization and the profession as a whole. Nine weeks into my yearlong term, I’m eager to share my excitement with you about the work we’re doing together.
Most visible so far is our focus on accreditation, particularly our efforts to initiate a collaborative dialogue with the Council for the Accreditation of Educator Preparation (CAEP). This dialogue aims to address concerns expressed by many AACTE members while continuing our support for CAEP as the field’s unified accrediting body.
Although important—in fact, critical—for our field, our work with CAEP is but one of a large portfolio of topics on AACTE’s agenda.
30 Apr2015
By Linda McKee
What a difference a year makes.
Last spring, Phil Munkvold was in his final months of college at Minnesota State University (MSU) Mankato, finishing his clinical experience and preparing his edTPA portfolio.
Thanks to a strong partnership between the MSU Mankato program and the school where Munkvold student taught, he was exposed to the edTPA process as well as the school’s staff and its students shortly after he moved to Minnesota from another state to continue his teacher preparation.
16 Apr2015
By Nancy Zimpher
Editor’s Note: Former AACTE Board member and education dean Nancy Zimpher reminds readers of the important purpose of standardized testing, which has been overshadowed by recent political battles and opt-out campaigns. This essay originally appeared on the State University of New York’s Big Ideas blog and is reposted with permission. The opinions expressed in this essay do not necessarily reflect the position of AACTE.
When it comes to whether students should opt out of standardized testing, no one is actually talking about what’s best for our kids. Standardized tests have become a pawn in political debates about teacher evaluations and we have lost sight of what they are: a way to measure what students know so we can help them improve.
13 Apr2015
By Tracy Spesia
Editor’s Note: Tracy Spesia, a nationally trained edTPA scorer, is the recent recipient of an innovation award from the University of Saint Francis for her work on edTPA at the College of Education. According to the university, Spesia’s “creative and successful efforts with the implementation of edTPA have positioned USF as a leader in the state” and have helped enhance “the quality of USF students’ application of theory into practice during their field experiences.” In recognition of her leadership, she was appointed to the Illinois Association for Teacher Education in Private Colleges as the edTPA liaison. Spesia also serves on the executive board of the Illinois Association of Colleges for Teacher Education. Click here for information about becoming an edTPA scorer.
This year I became an official edTPA scorer, and it is one of the most rewarding professional experiences I have had since I started working in the area of teacher preparation.
26 Mar2015
AACTE Breakfast Was Forum for Discussion
By Linda McKee
Nearly 300 educators from around the country packed a February 28 breakfast session at the AACTE Annual Meeting in Atlanta to get updates and ask questions about edTPA. The conversation addressed questions about regional scoring, the line between helping students and coaching them on their edTPA portfolios, and other issues.
First, though, teacher educators were congratulated for their role in edTPA’s progress. They also were reminded that for edTPA to be a meaningful assessment for educator preparation programs and teacher candidates, it must be about more than compliance.
25 Mar2015
By Nicole Merino
A Conversation With Harriet “Niki” Fayne, Dean of Education at Lehman College
Harriet “Niki” Fayne, dean of education at Lehman College (City University of New York) in the Bronx, isn’t about to say that edTPA was easy for her faculty and students, or that it is the final answer for teacher preparation. But she does say this: edTPA moves the profession in the direction of strengthening the skills of beginning teachers.
24 Mar2015
By Kristin McCabe
The AACTE Learning Center now includes recordings of all six major forums from the 67th AACTE Annual Meeting in Atlanta. Anyone who was registered for the conference may log in to the Learning Center to view the videos and slides from the forums:
23 Mar2015
By Donna Sacco, Amanda Bush and Christine DeGregory
In the three decades since A Nation at Risk was released, the state of America’s education system relative to other countries’ has been a matter of heated debate. Along the way, public opinion has placed the onus for our schools’ perceived failure on teachers and their preparation, and education policy has echoed this assumption through an array of accountability measures for teachers and preparation programs.
One driver of the continued misconception about U.S. teacher quality is the highly publicized results of international large-scale education assessments (ILSAs) that suggest America’s students are performing far below other nations. At January’s press briefing for the report The Iceberg Effect, lead researcher and report author James Harvey explained that ILSAs have been misused and that the science behind them is highly questionable, akin to comparing apples to oranges.
16 Mar2015
By Amanda Bush
The discussion about developing and integrating high-quality teacher performance assessments across the continuum of teacher preparation was the highlight of several sessions offered at AACTE’s recent Annual Meeting in Atlanta, Georgia.
An audience poll during the AACTE Town Hall Meeting illustrated that most of us work in states that either have policies regarding performance assessments in place or are considering implementing such policies in the near future. It’s no wonder, then, that related sessions were well attended.
25 Feb2015
By Sharon Robinson
The following letter to the editor was published in the Washington Post February 23, in response to the February 20 commentary by the University of Virginia’s Robert C. Pianta, “Teacher Prep Programs Need to Be Accountable, Too.”
Robert C. Pianta vastly oversimplified the narrative about accountability among those who prepare educators.
Educator preparation programs should indeed be accountable, and the profession has been busy creating data tools and processes for accountability. States such as Louisiana, California, and Georgia are working to determine the best ways to use data collected through existing assessments and surveys to document program impact. These systems rely on access to K-12 student achievement data as one indicator.
10 Feb2015
By Andrea Whittaker
The Stanford Center for Assessment, Learning, and Equity (SCALE) is excited to share the edTPA Review of Research on Teacher Education, developed by SCALE with input from educators and researchers to identify foundational research literature that informs the development of edTPA.
The literature cited provides a research foundation for the role of assessment in teacher education, for the common edTPA architecture, and for each of the 15 shared rubric constructs.
10 Feb2015
By Sharon Robinson
This post also appears in the Public School Insights blog of the Learning First Alliance.
It’s an insidious message embedded in the American psyche: Those who can’t, teach. For years, report after report has banged the drum for raising admission standards into teacher preparation programs, citing international comparisons and championing cost-prohibitive recruitment policies.
In reality, the talent pool now entering teacher preparation programs is rich. Our programs are, in fact, attracting their share of high achievers—defined by any number of criteria.
