29 Apr2022
By Kaitlyn Brennan
This weekly Washington Update is intended to keep members informed on Capitol Hill activities impacting the educator preparation community. The views expressed in this post do not necessarily reflect the views of AACTE.
Congress may have been on recess for the past two weeks, but it certainly did not feel like that behind the scenes. There has been a flurry of activity surrounding the President’s FY2023 Budget Request. Education advocates are working diligently to get their appropriations requests to Members — hopeful to see historic increases for education funding making it across the finish line.
The Debate over Student Loan Forgiveness Continues as the Department Cancels $238 Million in Debt for 28,000 Borrowers
On Thursday, President Biden confirmed reports that he is considering canceling “some” amount of federal student loan debt. “I am considering dealing with some debt reduction,” The President said in remarks at the White House. “I am not considering $50,000 debt reduction.”
11 Apr2022
By Kaitlyn Brennan
This weekly Washington Update is intended to keep members informed on Capitol Hill activities impacting the educator preparation community. The views expressed in this post do not necessarily reflect the views of AACTE.
It was a busy and historic week in Washington as Members of Congress prepare to head back to home states and districts for the upcoming two-week spring recess. On Thursday, the Senate confirmed the Honorable Ketanji Brown Jackson to serve on the United States Supreme Court. Justice Jackson is the first Black woman in United States history to serve in such a role. Earlier this week, the National Education Association (NEA) joined a coalition of 27 labor unions calling for the confirmation of Justice Jackson to the Supreme Court. In a statement the coalition notes:
03 Feb2022
By Jacqueline Rodriguez
The growing interest by policymakers to provide early childhood education to learners across the country has been met with celebration by parents and families, and support from education organizations, including AACTE. The National Association for the Education of Young Children (NAEYC) recently released a groundbreaking report addressing the future of the early childhood profession, Preparing a Profession: Perspectives of Higher Education Leaders on the Future of the Early Childhood Education Workforce. The report synthesizes interviews with key education stakeholders, including AACTE President and CEO Lynn M. Gangone, focused on two key areas: What is the status of the early childhood profession? and What can education institutions be doing to strengthen the preparation of early childhood educators?
14 Dec2021
By Caron Blanton
Mississippi Public Universities support the state’s children and K-12 schools across the state in numerous ways. In addition to preparing the teaching workforce through the education academic degree programs, the universities support teachers, students, and schools through outreach efforts ranging from a partnership school for middle school students located on a university campus to a clinic housed at a high school to help teens stay well so they can perform at their best in the classroom and beyond.
The Mississippi Excellence in Teaching Program (METP) is a collaboration between the University of Mississippi and Mississippi State University to attract top-performing students into the education profession with full financial support, travel abroad opportunities and invaluable professional incentives. METP aims to increase the import—and reduce the export—of talented educators to create a pipeline of new teachers committed to Mississippi’s future. All students who enter the program make a five-year commitment to teach in Mississippi after graduation. Funded by the Robert M. Hearin Support Foundation of Jackson, METP is designed to create a unique “honors college-style” learning experience for high-achieving education students and promote collaboration between students and faculty at both universities.
07 Dec2021
By Katrina Norfleet
CNN’s Katie Lobosco recently reported on President’s Biden’s universal pre-K plan that would make preschool available and affordable for six million more children and the resulting challenge of hiring “tens of thousands” of new teachers. In referring to the teaching shortage, Lobosco writes, “The average number of college graduates who completed teacher preparation programs fell 24% between the 2009-10 and 2018-19 academic years, according to the American Association of Colleges for Teacher Education.”
06 Dec2021
By Jacqueline Rodriguez
The Center for Innovation, Design, and Digital Learning (CIDDL) is inviting you to join a community of higher education faculty members focused on sharing tips and tricks, research-based practices, and strategies for innovative use of educational technology in educator or leadership preparation programs. CIDDL’s mission is to influence change that supports the appropriate use of educational technology in all early intervention/early childhood special education (EI/ECSE), related services, and K-12 learning environments to improve outcomes for all students, especially those with disabilities.
16 Nov2021
By Katrina Norfleet
In a recent Washington Post article, AACTE Dean in Residence Leslie Fenwick and two corporate CEOs explore the research that confirms early childhood education programs advance cognitive development and academic achievement that reduces the long-term attainment gaps and produces functioning, responsible adults. Moreover, the authors underscore the critical need to counter the current historic setbacks to high-quality child care—for working mothers and their families and for the U.S. economy at large.
Fenwick, along with Roger W. Crandall, chairman, president and CEO of MassMutual, and JD Chesloff, president and chief executive officer of the Massachusetts Business Roundtable, share a perspective that the business community has a critical role to play to make universal child care and Pre-K a reality.
The article focuses on three primary areas: an evolving American workforce and caregiver model, promoting economic growth and equity in education, and advocating for a solution.
To read the full article, “The business case for public investment in early-childhood programs,” visit the Washington Post website.
03 Nov2021
By Jacqueline Rodriguez
Higher education is a critical part of the early childhood education (ECE) profession as it serves as the primary pipeline for the early childhood education workforce. And, like early childhood educators, most ECE higher education programs find themselves under-resourced and under-valued. As such, the Unifying Framework for the Early Childhood Education Profession calls for a significant investment in ECE higher education programs to shore up the ECE workforce pipeline and to ensure that practitioners are equipped with the necessary knowledge and skills to effectively support the development and education of young children.
17 Sep2021
By Reginald H. Williams
As a former early childhood public school prekindergarten teacher in rural South Carolina, I have always engaged in advocacy for better educational policies. I have been engrossed in issues such as reduced recess, teacher professional development policies, parent access, and teacher training since I was in the classroom. I continue to serve as a point of inspiration as a 13-year veteran teacher educator at a historically black college and university (HBCU). Such personal connections and identified issues led me not only to serve on the AACTE Committee on Government Relations and Advocacy but also to engage in AACTE’s “Day on the Hill.”
AACTE’s Government Relations and Advocacy Committee is as way for me to provide support, experience, and advice in an area that I feel honored to have some expertise in—early childhood teacher education—to affect change at the highest level of the United States Government through the AACTE community. I have always said, “I trust my leaders, but they always need to have access to all of the information and the right information to make a comprehensively informed decision.” I lay that same claim to politicians and other policy makers and enforcers. This committee has given me much additional excitement because I not only see changes happening, but also, I believe that my small, humble contributions help make a difference.
01 Jun2021
By Jane E. West and Kaitlyn Brennan
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.
Biden- Harris Administration Unveils Massive Budget with Historic Investments in Education
On the Friday before the long-awaited Memorial Day holiday, just as Members of Congress were headed home and the rest of us were finalizing our plans for the long weekend, the White House unveiled the complete version of the Biden-Harris Administration’s full budget proposal for FY 2022.
The budget proposal calls for $102.8 billion for the Department of Education—a $29.8 billion or 41% increase to the Department’s current spending levels. This increase in funding would be the largest increase the Department has seen since its inception in 1979.
24 May2021
By Michael Rose
President Biden signed into law the American Rescue Plan Act (ARP) in March, which includes $122 billion for the ARP Elementary and Secondary School Emergency Relief (ARP ESSER) Fund. The ARP ESSER funds are intended to help state educational agencies and school districts safely reopen and address the impact of COVID-19 on the nation’s students. AACTE has developed the Educating the Future, Today toolkit to help members navigate conversations with state or local education leaders, encouraging them to use ESSER funds to staff classrooms with teacher candidates.
These funds provide a unique opportunity for school districts and educator preparation programs to address the teacher pipeline. As the U.S. Department of Education’s noted in its COVID-19 Handbook, Volume 2: Roadmap to Reopening Safely and Meeting All Students’ Needs, ARP ESSER funds can be used to staff classrooms with teacher candidates, thereby providing them with practical experience while helping alleviate the challenges teachers are encountering with the transition back to in person teaching.
06 May2021
By Jasmine Estes
AACTE congratulates 2021 National Teacher of the Year Juliana Urtubey and AACTE member Institution The University of Arizona (UArizona) for preparing her for a distinguished teaching career. Urtubey holds a bachelor of arts in bilingual elementary education and a master’s degree in special bilingual education from UArizona.
The Council of Chief State School Officers (CCSSO) today announced that Juliana Urtubey, an elementary school special education teacher, is the 2021 National Teacher of the Year.
Urtubey, an educator for 11 years, teaches at Kermit R. Booker, Sr. Innovative Elementary School in Las Vegas, where she serves as a co-teacher in pre-kindergarten through fifth-grade special education settings and as an instructional strategist developing supports to meet students’ differing academic, social-emotional, and behavioral needs.
Known as “Ms. Earth” for her efforts to beautify schools and unify the community through murals and gardens, Urtubey has helped raise funds for garden programs at two Las Vegas schools. In one program, the garden was tended to by the student “Garden Gnomies” club and offered opportunities for innovative student learning and intergenerational learning and connections to the wider community.
17 Dec2020
By Ruth Campbell
This article originally appeared in Odessa American and is reprinted with permission.
University of Texas Permian Basin’s new certification program in early childhood prekindergarten through third grade education has one semester in the books.
Dean of the College of Education Larry Daniel said they have 11 to 12 students in that major.
“It’s our first semester this fall, so we’re expecting that program to continue to grow. I know we’ve had a lot of inquiries but I don’t have a precise figure. … We are expecting that program to continue to grow and having teachers certified, particularly with the early childhood area,” Daniel said during a Zoom Early Childhood Action Network meeting this week.
ECAN is a committee of the Education Partnership of the Permian Basin. The Education Partnership of the Permian Basin is a nonprofit organization focused on supporting and improving the quality of education throughout the Permian Basin from cradle to career, its website said.
30 Nov2020
By Caitlin Wilson
Last month, AACTE partnered with CCSSO, the Center on Great Teachers and Leaders at the American Institutes for Research, and the CEEDAR Center to discuss how teacher candidates can be leveraged as assets for PK-12 districts navigating online learning and uncertainty during the pandemic. During the webisode hosted by CCSSO, Loretta Mason-Williams from Binghamton University, Jacqueline Rodriguez from AACTE, and Christian Rodgers from AASA set the stage for how the needs of teacher candidates, schools, and families are changing in 2020. With this shift in needs comes opportunities for both schools and teacher candidates.
This webisode also featured faculty and staff from AACTE member institution, Boston University, and Boston public schools, along with Lindsey Decker, a current teacher candidate. Decker shared her experiences supporting her mentor teacher in an online environment and noted “teachers are looking for additional adults to be in the classrooms.” In the virtual environment, Decker said she works with learners in small breakout groups and “one-on-one to lessen the gap that we’re seeing from the pandemic.”
16 Nov2020
By Jane E. West
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.
Welcome to the world of President-elect Joe Biden and VP-elect Kamala Harris.
What Might a Biden Presidency Mean for Education?
When President-elect Joe Biden told the nation that educators will have “one of their own” in the White House, a sigh of relief and a whiff of optimism were palpable among the education community. Referring to his wife, Jill Biden—a long time community college professor—he also said that “teaching isn’t just what she does, it’s who she is.” Thus, the president-elect sets the tone for the next four years of one of the most pro-education administrations in our lifetimes.
Biden named his transition teams this week, including the one for education. Led by Linda Darling-Hammond, president of the Learning Policy Institute and former head of the Obama Administration education transition team, the group is comprised of a number of former Obama appointees as well as union leaders. The team is working on compiling both potential nominees for political positions in the Department of Education as well as fleshing out policy priorities and a timeline.
