06 Oct2022
By Michael Rose
A federal district court recently ruled against the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program, saying that President Obama overstepped his authority to create the program in 2012.
The ruling legally strips Dreamers of their ability to live and work in the United States, but the appellate judges prohibited immigration officials from deporting anyone that was granted legal status until the US Supreme Court makes a final ruling on the program.
04 Oct2022
By Kaitlyn Brennan
The new “In the States” feature by Kaitlyn Brennan is a weekly update to keep members informed on state-level activities impacting the education and educator preparation community.
Arizona: Peoria Unified School District to Remedy Discriminatory Harassment of Students
This week, the Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights (OCR) announced the resolution of a complaint of racial harassment filed against Peoria Unified School District in Arizona. Following an investigation, OCR determined that the district failed to address harassment of students on the basis of race, color, and national origin, in violation of Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and its implementing regulations.
04 Oct2022
By AACTE
Education systems must adapt and tailor its programming to meet the needs of every learner. The Collaboration for Effective Educator Development, Accountability, and Reform (CEEDAR), a technical assistance center, aims to successfully educate and train educator and leader preparation programs to support inclusive education. The center’s aim is to create quality education for every student — with a focus on preparing students with disabilities to achieve college and career-ready standards. This is done by implementing evidence-based practices within multi-tiered systems of support.
CEEDAR, an AACTE partner organization, recently announced two new resources based on evidence-based practices:
28 Sep2022
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.
This week, Washington, D.C. welcomed more than 2,000 in-person participants and 1,500 virtual attendees for the annual National HBCU Week Conference. This year’s conference focused on the work the federal government is doing to meet President Biden’s executive order that directed federal agencies to increase their engagement with HBCUs. Under the order, federal agencies must submit plans each year that describe how they are working to increase HBCU participation in their programs. The conference also comes as a group of Florida A&M University students announced they are suing the state’s university system in federal court alleging that the HBCU has not been receiving its fair share of funding for years.
23 Sep2022
By U.S. Department of Education
The U.S. Department of Education has announced new awards to help recruit, prepare, develop, and retain a strong, effective and diverse teacher workforce for classrooms across the country through the Teacher Quality Partnership (TQP) grant program. This year’s investment includes 22 new five-year grants totaling $24.8 million through its TQP program. The award recipients represent IHEs and national nonprofits, including three HBCUs and one MSI.
15 Sep2022
In 74 Interview, author Leslie T. Fenwick said the effects were so damaging that ‘the nation’s public schools still have not recovered’
By Greg Toppo
This story was produced by The 74, a non-profit, independent news organization focused on education in America.
American students have attended school for nearly 70 years under the U.S. Supreme Court’s historic 1954 Brown v. Board of Education decision, which outlawed racial segregation in public schools. But a new book uncovers a little-known by-product of the case: Educators and policymakers in at least 17 states that operated separate “dual systems” of schools defied the spirit of Brown by closing schools that served Black students and demoting or firing an estimated 100,000 highly credentialed Black principals and teachers.
In Jim Crow’s Pink Slip, scholar Leslie T. Fenwick, tapping seldom-seen transcripts from a series of 1971 U.S. Senate hearings on the topic, writes that the loss of Black educators post-Brown was “the most significant brain drain from the U.S. public education system that the nation has ever seen. It was so pervasive and destabilizing that, even more than half-century later, the nation’s public schools still have not recovered.”
06 Sep2022
By Jill McGranahan
This article originally appeared on MSU Denver RED.
With the psychological and economic pressures of Covid-19, increased gun violence, systemic racism, political polarization and, most recently, the financial stresses of inflation, many adults are struggling with their mental and emotional health. It’s no wonder that children, too, are experiencing more trauma than ever.
Last fall, the American Academy of Pediatrics, the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry and the Children’s Hospital Association jointly declared a national emergency in child and adolescent mental health due to “soaring rates of depression, anxiety, trauma, loneliness and suicidality” caused by Covid-19 and other factors. Trauma such as physical abuse, bullying and witnessing violence will often contribute to higher anxiety and negatively impact attention, memory, cognition, problem solving, reading ability and academic performance, according to the National Child Traumatic Stress Network.
23 Aug2022
By Nicole Dunn
AACTE has teamed up with the leaders of Digital Promise’s Learner Variability Project to address systems-level transformation that directly addresses the challenges students face by using the Learner Variability Navigator (LVN); a free open-source tool to make learning sciences research accessible to educators. Earlier this year, a representative group of AACTE members were introduced to the project and navigation tools, and using their feedback, AACTE is pleased to bring you the webinar series that lifts up tools and practices with the Learner Variability Project most relevant to the educator preparation field.
22 Aug2022
By Owen Wachter
The Partnership for People with Disabilities in the School of Education is collaborating with the School of Education’s Office of Strategic Engagement to lead a six-session online training course on diversity, equity and inclusion this fall, aimed primarily at employees of Medicaid home- and community-based organizations.
22 Aug2022
By Prairie View A&M University
Prairie View A&M University students, faculty and staff were on hand bright and early to help welcome students to the first day of school at Aldine ISD’s Impact Leadership Academy (ILA), the district’s first all-boys school. PVAMU is partnering with the ILA to cultivate learning experiences rooted in identity, leadership, community, and activism, all designed to address academic achievement and support social and emotional needs for young Black and Latino male students.
11 Aug2022
By Kristen Cuthrell
Schools are a microcosm, reproducing the inequities seen in American society. As educator preparation faculty in this context, it is imperative to put equity at the forefront of programming and mission. In this volume, we position co-teaching as an innovation that can mitigate inequities in classrooms. Co-teaching is typically associated with special education or inclusion classrooms; however, more recently it is being used in general education classrooms at BK-12 level and in educator preparation.
26 Jul2022
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.
Time is winding down in Congress as Members prepare for the summer recess. While there is always much to be done- we don’t expect much movement on FY2023 appropriations until the fall. As always, your voice at the table is imperative to ensuring investments in the special educator and specialized instructional support personnel workforce remain at the forefront.
22 Jul2022
By Teresa Monaco Burnett
This May, a group of students in the Texas Christian University’s College of Education took a week-long trip to the Holocaust Museum of Houston as part of the Warren Fellowship program. The trip was a culmination of studying the Holocaust and antisemitism in Jan Lacina’s Literacy Leadership class. Lacina is the Bezos Family Foundation Endowed Chair in Early Childhood Education and associate dean of graduate studies in the TCU College of Education.
“I was compelled to integrate course goals, readings, and discussions about the Holocaust into my Literacy Leadership class because of recent antisemitic acts that took place in Texas,” Lacina said.
19 Jul2022
By Natalie Khairallah
Educational institutions must engage with their communities to illuminate the systemic injustices experienced by those hypermarginalized, including people and communities of color.
In the Spring 2022 issue of AAC&U’ magazine, Liberal Education, AACTE member Tania Mitchell reflects on the killing of George Floyd to highlight these structural inequities. She urges those in higher education to rethink how community can be created and how to engage differently within the context of racism, economic inequality, and COVID 19:
“Our community engagement work of colleges and universities should be revealing. It should illuminate the systemic injustices that reify and deepen the marginalization already experienced. Moreover, it should focus on the policies, practices, conditions, and experiences that shape the everyday realities of the poor and people of color.”
15 Jul2022
By Mike Wolterbeek
In collaboration with the Incline Education Fund, the Nevada First-Gen Network offers a free summer pilot program to engage and inspire rising 6th and 7th graders from Incline Middle School. The program will expose students to various STEM activities, leadership building, art and culture in a fun and inclusive University-based environment.
