01 Sep2020
By Weade James
AACTE’s Washington Week virtual conference is quickly approaching. This year’s event will feature the Holmes Advanced Policy Short Course, Holmes Policy Institute, AACTE’s Day on the Hill, and the State Leader’s Institute.
Joining the Holmes Policy Institute this year is Congressman Robert C. “Bobby” Scott, chairman of the Committee on Education and Labor. Congressman Scott will deliver the closing keynote address at this year’s Holmes Policy Institute on Thursday, September 10.
Throughout his 14 terms representing Virginia’s third congressional district, Congressman Scott has been a champion on issues of diversity, equity and inclusion. He has advanced policies to address the equity gaps in education, employment, and healthcare. In 1993, Chairman Scott became the first African American elected to Congress from the Commonwealth of Virginia since Reconstruction and only the second African American elected to Congress in the history of Virginia. Congressman Scott continues to break barriers and create opportunities for future generations of African American and minority leaders.
Following his keynote remarks, the Congressman will engage in an interactive discussion with the Holmes Scholars about the state of public education, educator preparation, and the importance of diversifying the educator workforce.
To learn more about the AACTE Holmes Program, contact me at wjames@aacte.org.
19 Aug2020
By Jacqueline Rodriguez
At Day on the Hill, AACTE’s premiere advocacy event during Washington Week, education leaders and students from around the country convene to advocate for teacher preparation. With the recent impact of the coronavirus and other societal trends on education, congressional leaders need to hear and learn about your successful strategies to advance the profession and ways to best address the challenges you face at your institution. Join the AACTE community for this year’s virtual event offered over a two-week period, and take advantage of the opportunity to build your advocacy skills and toolkit. Advocacy training sessions will take place September 9-10, and virtual congressional visits will be held September 15-16.
Day on the Hill: September 9-10
The first week of Day on the Hill offers attendees two tracks to choose from for part of the day that support differing advocacy skill levels. During these lively breakout sessions, you will develop and augment your skills, and learn from peers, colleagues, and government relations professionals. You will also learn about key legislations impacting education today and how to advocate for the profession with congressional leaders in a virtual environment. Congressional staff will provide special presentations on how policy is shaped and effective ways to advocate during AACTE’s virtual Hill visits that will take place the second week.
Virtual Congressional Visits: September 15-16
During the second week of Day on the Hill, attendees will join colleagues within their local state for virtual meetings with congressional leaders. Participants will be prepared with talking points, strategies to hold a congressional meeting, and key messages about how COVID-19 has impacted educator preparation programs to present to legislators. You will hear riveting greetings from invited guest politicians who will encourage your efforts in advocating for meaningful and equitable education policies.
Don’t miss this opportunity to connect with friends and colleagues, learn of national trends in education, share or discover best practices on common challenges, or develop your advocacy skills! Register now for AACTE’s Day on the Hill.
Visit aacte.org for more details about the AACTE 2020 Washington Week.
17 Aug2020
By Barbara McKenna
Learning Policy Institute’s (LPI) new study, Measuring Student Socioeconomic Status: Toward a Comprehensive Approach, discusses the limitations of the popular measure and examines alternatives for state policymakers who are seeking to accurately count students from low-income families.
“Changing how we measure and address student poverty is more important than ever,” said LPI Senior Researcher Peter Cookson, who authored the study. “A shift away from the [federal Free and Reduced-Price Lunch] FRPL [program] measure was already long overdue and taking place in some states. This takes on deeper urgency now as learning for a generation of students has been upheaved by the COVID-19 pandemic. Accurately measuring family incomes is necessary if policymakers are to allocate school resources that meet the educational needs of students.”
15 Jun2020
By Linda Darling-Hammond and Janel George
This article originally appeared on the Learning Policy Institute Blog and is reprinted with permission.
The protests now enveloping our nation are, in one sense, long overdue. The recent police killings of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, and Tony McDade are not isolated incidents: Every year in the United States, more than 1,000 civilians are killed by police, and Black people are disproportionately harmed. These murders and the lack of justice that has routinely accompanied them are, in turn, part of a pattern of institutionalized racism that limits the opportunities of African Americans and other people of color in every aspect of society: employment, housing, health care, and, yes, education.
14 May2020
By Deborah Koolbeck
On May 6, 2020, the U.S Department of Education, under the leadership of Secretary Betsy DeVos, released the final rule for the Title IX regulations—also known as the final regulation. Built from the law that prohibits sexual discrimination at federally funded institutions, this update to the Code of Federal Regulations (CFR) has been contentious since the process started in November 2018. AACTE joined nearly 60 organizations on a letter led by the American Council on Education pointing out challenges and questions with the proposal during the public comment period in January 2019. Overall, the Department received over 124,000 public comments that were reviewed prior to the determination of the final rule.
The review and update of the regulations were initiated due to a response to guidance issued by the Obama Administration in 2011 leading to an increase in civil lawsuits, mostly from men who were accused of sexual misconduct alleging their rights were violated under the Title IX procedures. The updated regulations are purported to be fair to both the accuser and the accused.
14 Jan2020
By Jacqueline Rodriguez
AACTE and partner, Educator Preparation Laboratory (EdPrepLab), an initiative of the Learning Policy Institute (LPI) and Bank Street College of Education, will host the second of a series of four webinars, Preparing educators for diverse, equitable, and inclusive classrooms, on January 30.
This collaborative webinar focuses on strategies to increase the preparation of both teachers and leaders. AACTE and EdPrepLab are excited to provide you with an opportunity to learn from and with our dynamic webinar leaders. Four dynamic experts who are advancing diversity, equity, and inclusion in their practice, research, and daily interactions with teachers, leaders, and community stakeholders will present during the webinar:
03 Dec2019
By Lynn M. Gangone
On November 21, the U.S. Department of Education announced that new data on federal student loan debt and earnings of recent graduates by institution, degree program, and field of study had been added to the College Scorecard consumer website. In addition, the Department of Education made these data available to the public at collegescorecard.ed.gov/data.
As a service to members, AACTE has excerpted the data on education graduates, along with documentation about the data, and provided instructions on how to search for your institution in this large database. Log in and access these resources.
The Department of Education Data suppressed results for smaller programs to safeguard the privacy of graduates. Our review of the data revealed that privacy suppression affects a considerable portion of the database. At larger institutions, data are only available for sizable programs and at smaller institutions, no information may be available. Despite this considerable limitation, AACTE is sharing these data because it is rare to have access to student loan debt and earnings information for recent graduates by field of study.
To provide members with a much richer understanding of how students in education programs are paying for college—and the potential implications for recruiting students to become teachers—we are also preparing a new data brief that will be available at the upcoming Annual Meeting. This report is one in a series of briefs summarizing important data on our profession that we will be releasing early next year. More to come as the AACTE 2020 Annual Meeting approaches!
If you have questions about the College Scorecard data, please contact Jacqueline King at jking@aacte.org.
20 Nov2019
By Maria Hyler
On November 14, I had the privilege of moderating the first in a series of webinars produced through a partnership of AACTE and the Educator Preparation Laboratory (EdPrepLab). This webinar, “Social and Emotional Learning, Cultural Competence, and Equity in Teacher Preparation,” will be followed by three others focusing on transformative research and practice in educator preparation.
Joining me for the webinar were Nancy Markowitz of the Center for Reaching and Teaching the Whole Child, Patty Swanson from San Jose State University, Pat Norman from Trinity University, and Mari Jones from the HighTech High Graduate School of Education.
Both Trinity and High Tech High, where Norman and Jones teach, are members of the EdPrepLab network. EdPrepLab, which launched this year, is an initiative of the Learning Policy Institute and the Bank Street College of Education that aims to strengthen educator preparation in the United States by linking research, policy, and practice and by supporting and expanding preparation that is equity-focused, student-centered, and grounded in the science of learning and development.
19 Nov2019
By Jane E. West
This blog post is written by AACTE consultant Jane West and is intended to provide update information. The views expressed in this post do not necessarily reflect the views of AACTE.
Congress Still Working to Avoid that Government Shutdown
The current continuing resolution—a bill that keeps the government temporarily funded – expires next week, on November 21. Congressional leaders have been scrambling this week to find a way to keep government funding extended beyond that time, and thus avoid a government shutdown. They appear to be closing in on another temporary funding extension—through December 20—predicated on progress on the big obstacle, which is agreeing on top line totals for each of the 12 funding bills. Since the House and Senate did not agree on those totals before they wrote their bills, there are significant discrepancies which can only be resolved by a House/Senate agreement on one figure for each bill. This is critical for the bill that funds education, as the House bill is about $5 billion more generous for education than the Senate draft bill.
29 Oct2019
By Jacqueline Rodriguez
AACTE is excited to partner with the Educator Preparation Laboratory (EdPrepLab), an initiative of the Learning Policy Institute (LPI) and Bank Street College of Education, to bring a series of webinars to members. Educator preparation programs across the country can access AACTE and EdPrepLab resources to support their teaching, research, and policy in higher education.
In this series of webinars, our members will hear from member institutions, stakeholders, scholars, practitioners, and policymakers as presenters dive into topics that will include addressing social emotional learning, cultural competence, creating inclusive classroom and school environments, and teacher residency models.
We hope you will register for our first webinar on Social and Emotional Learning, Cultural Competence, and Equity in Teacher Preparation that will take place on November 14 at 3:00 p.m ET. The panel of experts include:
18 Sep2019
By Danny Ryan
The Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development’s (OECD) work on education helps individuals and nations to identify and develop the knowledge and skills that drive better jobs and better lives, generate prosperity, and promote social inclusion.
Access to OECD Education data
Through the OECD data portal, educators can cross-reference data on teacher’s salaries, graduation rates, education spending, and much more. All data is available to download for free.
For example, are you curious about how education policies support students, teachers, and principals? The OECD’s new Education Policy Outlook reports on the progress of over 200 school improvement policies implemented over the last 10 years.
School and University leaders will find a treasure trove of information within the OECD Teaching and Learning International Survey (TALIS), which asks teachers and school leaders about working conditions and learning environments at their schools to help countries face diverse challenges.
For those wanting further OECD insight, the OECD iLibrary contains nearly 20,000 content items related to education. Content on the platform is accessible to all by clicking the READ or WEB icon. Certain features and access is restricted to intuitions that have a subscription. Find out if your institution is an existing subscriber.
26 Aug2019
By Ward Cummings
State of the States Legislative Roundup
As AACTE director of government relations, I will guide attendees through this members only webinar, a brief overview of the recent legislative trends in education policymaking emerging around the country. The 2018-19 legislative session was active and productive, with many states introducing and passing bills on a range of issues that directly impact the education profession. Please join us for a rundown of some of the more noteworthy legislative proposals advanced by state legislatures over the past year.
Register now for the AACTE members only webinar, taking place Wednesday, September 18 from 11am to Noon, EST.
Introducing AACTE’s New Legislative Resource Webpage
Join Allen Clarkson, Western Governors University government relations manager and AACTE Government Relations Committee member, as he leads a webinar describing the features of AACTE’s new legislative resource webpage. The new webpage will include links to three legislative search engines as well as other useful resources that AACTE members can use to pursue their research and advocacy goals. Clarkson will guide participants through the features of the new webpage and invite you to ask questions afterward. The webinar is open to all and will be recorded and posted on the AACTE Advocacy Center state page.
Please join us on Thursday, September 26 from 11am to Noon, EST. Register now.
