09 Oct2014
By Kristin McCabe
Recognizing the fact that students in many high-need schools continue to have disproportionately low access to great educators, on Tuesday the Coalition for Teaching Quality (CTQ) released Excellent Educators for Each and Every Child: A Policy Roadmap for Transforming the Teaching and Principal Professions. The Coalition also held House and Senate briefings on Capitol Hill with practitioners to help explain the importance of these strategies to address the inequity of opportunity.
In the policy roadmap, CTQ—which comprises more than 100 civil rights, disability, rural, youth, higher education, principal, and education advocacy organizations, including AACTE, dedicated to ensuring that every child has fully prepared and effective educators—presents a vision for a continuum of the teaching and principal professions to ensure every child has well-prepared and effective educators.
03 Oct2014
By Sharon Robinson
What will it take to build a better teacher? That’s the question that was recently discussed in a PBS NewsHour report featuring Elizabeth Green, cofounder and CEO of Chalkbeat and author of the new book Building a Better Teacher: How Teaching Works (And How to Teach It to Everyone).
In her book, Green explores the qualities and experiences that impact a teacher’s effectiveness in the classroom, underscoring one of the most important factors in performance: their preparation. She emphasizes that effective teaching requires not only intellect, but also a strong set of skills developed through rigorous instruction and clinical experience. Green’s book pierces through the complexities surrounding program quality to ask fundamental questions about how teachers become great and how schools of education can best support that process.
30 Sep2014
By Deborah Koolbeck
AACTE is thrilled that the U.S. Department of Education last week announced the awarding of a new round of Teacher Quality Partnership (TQP) grants, the federal government’s only investment in reforming teacher preparation. With grants totaling more than $35 million to 24 partnerships in the first year alone, these awards will assist to recruit, train, and support more than 11,000 educators in the science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) fields.
AACTE is pleased by the administration’s recognition of the value of continued federal investment in higher education-based teacher preparation programs. Many AACTE member institutions have benefited from TQP funding since the program’s inception in 2009, and the new round of grants expands the reach to more institutions and their partner schools.
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.
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.
05 Aug2014
By Julie Underwood
Accountability is a core value of AACTE and its membership. Although the current trend toward measuring teacher preparation programs’ outcomes rather than inputs is a clear step in the right direction, it is often difficult to produce meaningful evidence of program impact amid the wide-ranging ideas of what such evidence might be. Still, our profession is ahead of the game in dealing with the performance expectations and reporting demands that now face higher education in general.
02 Jul2014
By Deborah Koolbeck
It’s an election year – the full U.S. House of Representatives and one third of the U.S. Senate are up for re-election – which makes for interesting legislative times. Elections are just 4 months out, and we have about 7 legislative weeks left in the 113th Congress.
The primary season has essentially ended, and we’ve seen some shockers – including Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-VA) losing his primary election and subsequently resigning his leadership position. As we approach the August recess and fall election season, some important work is under way in both the House and the Senate.
23 Jun2014
By AACTE
AACTE President/CEO Sharon P. Robinson announced Friday that Mark LaCelle-Peterson, senior vice president of the Council for the Accreditation of Educator Preparation (CAEP), will join AACTE’s staff as vice president for policy and programs July 1.
“We are delighted to welcome Mark to AACTE,” Robinson said. “He knows the work of our membership very well, and we are eager to bring his expertise to the Association’s programs.”
LaCelle-Peterson will provide strategic and operational leadership for AACTE’s Policy and Programs Department. The position is a member of the senior management team that is instrumental in developing and executing the overall strategic goals of the Association. Managing a team consisting of staff and consultants, LaCelle-Peterson will provide program and policy leadership and will develop high-level activities to showcase and support the work of the Association.
02 Jun2014
By Aaron Goldstein
Updated to reflect new application deadline.
Applications are now available for a new slate of Teacher Quality Partnership (TQP) grants, the federal government’s only investment in reforming teacher preparation in institutions of higher education. Interested applicants will have to act quickly, though—the deadline for letters of intent is June 27, and full applications are due July 15.
Last week, in the Federal Register, the U.S. Department of Education (ED) announced the availability of approximately $35 million in new awards for fiscal year 2014 under the TQP grant program.
28 Apr2014
By Jane E. West
On Friday at Dunbar High School in Washington, DC, Secretary of Education Arne Duncan and White House Domestic Policy Council Director Cecilia Muñoz announced movement on long-overdue teacher preparation regulations. These regulations are the successor to the spring 2012 negotiated rule making held by the Department of Education, which failed to reach consensus after several tumultuous sessions.
Joined on a panel at Friday’s event by Jim Cibulka (Council for the Accreditation of Educator Preparation), Camilla Benbow (Vanderbilt University, TN), Chris Minnich (Council of Chief State School Officers), Kaya Henderson (District of Columbia Public Schools), Elisa Villanueva Beard (Teach For America), and Secretary Duncan, Muñoz said the regulations are “something that the president has a real sense of urgency about.”
17 Apr2014
By Jane E. West
Tomorrow, April 18, is the deadline for public comment on the proposed “highly qualified teacher” (HQT) data collection by the U.S. Department of Education. A detailed letter submitted yesterday by the Coalition for Teaching Quality hails the proposed collection as “an important first step towards meeting the legislative intent” of Congress’ directive to report on the extent to which students in certain high-need categories are taught by teachers who are labeled as “highly qualified,” but who are actually teachers-in-training in alternative routes.
17 Apr2014
By Kristin McCabe
Sam Miller and Marcie Rock (UNC-Greensboro), Gliset Colón (U. at Buffalo), and Mel Sullivan (UNC-Greensboro) with Chris Toppings, staffer for Senator Richard Burr (NC).
Have you considered bringing your graduate students to Washington, DC, for AACTE’s Day on the Hill? Last year, Marcia Rock, associate professor and director of doctoral studies in special education at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro, did just that with a cadre of graduate students in special education fields. Here is what they had to say about the experience:
Carly Roberts, Doctoral Scholar, University of Wisconsin-Madison:
I was fortunate to be able to attend five meetings on the Hill. I had never realized how accessible our congressman and senators were to constituents. These visits showed me what a powerful force lobbyists and individuals passionate about education can have in Washington. Seeing AACTE’s dedicated staff and all of the university representatives, teachers, and graduate students prepare for their visits with such fervor and passion was inspiring. The gains we’ve made in special education in the past 40 years would not have been possible without such inspired groups and individuals.
I realize now more than ever how important being an advocate for public education and for individuals with exceptionalities is, because I’ve seen firsthand how such advocacy really can have an impact.
31 Mar2014
By Jane E. West
On March 25, Senator Tom Harkin (D-IA) convened the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions (HELP) to consider changes to Title II of the Higher Education Act (HEA), the portion of the law that addresses teacher preparation. This was the seventh hearing in a series in the Senate on HEA reauthorization.
The predominant theme of the hearing was concern that the Title II data reporting requirements for teacher preparation programs are out of date, onerous, and not useful for program improvement. All five witnesses agreed on this point and offered recommendations for change.
10 Mar2014
By Sarah Pinsky
On February 27, the U.S. House subcommittee on elementary and secondary education and the subcommittee on higher education held a hearing titled “Exploring Efforts to Strengthen the Teaching Profession.”
Witnesses included Marcy Singer-Gabella, professor of the Practice of Education at Vanderbilt University (TN), along with two officials from state departments of education and the director of an alternative-route program.
