Month: August 2017

GLOBAL
Association For Teacher Education In Europe. Annual Conf. Dubrovnik, Croatia from 23 to 25 October 2017.

LiveMint. Govt plans to build content depository for improving teaching standards  [India] “Beyond content, it will allow education authorities and regulators to assess what kind of training is required for teachers,”

MyanmarTimes. Students protest against unfair appointing system  In this academic year, there are only a little over 7,000 teachers who graduated from 24 University of Educations and Education Colleges around the country …

Uni Reviews. Best Teacher Education Universities in Australia

UNITED STATES
AACTE. Advancing High-Quality Learning Through Clinical Teacher Preparation  Teacher candidates, like everyone else, learn best when they take an active rather than passive role in their education, and clinical preparation empowers them to engage actively.

Chronicle. A Profile of Freshmen at 4-Year Colleges, Fall 2016  Intended major … professional-school aspirations: Education-4.6%

CNN. Schools throughout the country are grappling with teacher shortage, data show  Goldhaber cites some solutions… Make teacher certification national instead of state by state.

EducationNC. UNC-Chapel Hill, NC State collaborating to help lateral entry teachers  As traditional teacher preparation enrollments drop nationwide, local school districts are increasingly hiring lateral entry teachers who meet content requirements but lack teacher preparation.

EdWeek.
1) Districts Turn to Emergency Measures for Hard-to-Staff Teaching Posts In May, Arizona Gov. Doug Ducey, a Republican, signed a law that allows districts to hire people without formal teacher training—similar to recent changes in Oklahoma and Utah.
2) Here’s What States Are Doing With Their ESSA Block Grant Money  Hawaii…is planning to roll the money into Title II, the main federal program dealing with teacher quality.
3) Some combat veterans finding new lives as Texas teachers  The U.S. Department of Defense program helps recent veterans navigate teacher certification processes
4) Survey shows more than 530 teacher vacancies in Oklahoma   … about 1,400 emergency certificates are expected to be issued for the upcoming year for teachers teaching outside their area of expertise.

Hechinger Report. Rural schools turn to high-tech teacher training solutions  A collective of schools in Kentucky decided to make its own training model for teachers

NYTimes.
1) Even With Affirmative Action, Blacks and Hispanics Are More Underrepresented at Top Colleges Than 35 Years Ago  Elementary and secondary schools with large numbers of black and Hispanic students are less likely to have experienced teachers, …
2) Reader Idea | Using Times Education Articles With Aspiring Teachers in China  The idea below explains how Lindsey Russo and Sarah Elia use New York Times articles with their students as they prepare to travel from China to New York to complete their studies in early childhood education.
3) Student Loan Company Accused of Mismanaging Debt Forgiveness Program  The company, based in Harrisburg, Pa., holds an exclusive contract with the Education Department to service all loans enrolled in the public service loan forgiveness program and the Teacher Education Assistance for College and Higher Education Grant program, or TEACH, which offers assistance to those who teach in high-need areas.

Policy Innovators in Education. The Power of Data Makes Educators “Learner Ready”  The report examines the challenges of lack of access to information—felt by educators, preparation programs, policymakers, and families as they try to navigate important decisions without a complete picture.

Stanford Center for Assessment, Learning & Equity. Deadline for proposals extended until August 26 [edTPA Conf. Nov. 3-7; San Jose]

NEW YORK STATE
City and State New York. [OnEducation Event 8/16/2017]
1) Elia, Fariña and Milliken address equity and ESSA at On Education
2) Fireside Chat with Betty Rosa & MaryEllen Elia

SUNY Charter Schools Institute. Public Comment Period Now Open: Alternative Teacher Certification Compliance Pathways for SUNY

United University Professions. Public comment period on SUNY charter school proposal

NEW YORK CITY
Chalkbeat. NYC announces it will subsidize hiring from Absent Teacher Reserve — and sheds light on who is in the pool  The largest share of teachers in the ATR — 27 percent — are licensed to teach in early childhood or elementary school grades. Another 11 percent are licensed social studies teachers, 9 percent are math teachers and 8 percent are English teachers.

NY1. Early Head Start offers full-time school for two-year-olds by training parents to teach  …so the city started a second new program, a partnership between Children’s Services and CUNY paying for the parents of Head Start students to go back to school and become accredited teachers.

NYPost. Making kids suffer for teachers no one wants  Then again, many aren’t too valuable: A 2010 report by Chalkbeat found that nearly a quarter of ATRs were only licensed to teach specialized classes like swimming, jewelry-making and accounting.

NYTimes. City Will Move Sidelined Teachers From Limbo to Classrooms  …better for students to have a permanent teacher with the appropriate license than to have a rotation of substitutes.

Teachers College. First, Peace – Now, Music: A new program funded by the Jaffe family brings music to city schools  Through the program, Returned Peace Corps Volunteers earn master’s degrees at TC while teaching in high-needs New York City public schools. More than 850 of these Jaffe Fellows have become teachers during the program’s 32 years of teacher support and preparation.

 NOTE: Teacher Ed News will resume the week of September 4

GLOBAL
NCEE. Empowered Educators Webinar Series: Recruitment and Preparation [Aug. 24, 3-4pm]

International Ed News. Promoting Social Justice in Physical Education Around the World

UNITED STATES
AACTE.
1) Collaboration and Compromise: The Key to Good Policy Making  Fortunately for teacher preparation in North Carolina, NCACTE was involved in the development of this and many other bills proposed.  We’re grateful to Senator Barefoot for seeing past the negative rhetoric around teacher preparation and seeing us as a viable partner.
2) JTE Author on Helping Candidates Address Academic Language

Argus Leader. Can Sioux Falls Schools close its teacher diversity gap?  More than 50 high school students are enrolled in high school classes that feed into a college program that’s helped 15 students so far pursue teaching degrees.

Chalkbeat.
1) 5 key anti-racism resources for teachers, courtesy of #CharlottesvilleCurriculum
2) A Queens teacher on Charlottesville: ‘It can’t just be teachers of color’ offering lessons on race  Hilton Kelly, a professor of education at Davidson College in North Carolina told the site, the coursework isn’t giving future teachers the training they need to talk about race.

Dothan Eagle [AL]. From retail to ‘rithmetic: Second-career teachers bring new perspective to classroom  Purvee, a former Wal-Mart manager, went back to school a few years ago to earn a teaching degree.

EdSource. Undergraduate education major, banned for 56 years, returns  …Gov. Jerry Brown has reversed a half-century-old law that prevented aspiring teachers in California from majoring in education and required them to pursue a teaching credential only after earning a bachelor’s degree.

EdWeek.
1) 4 Tips for Awesome Eclipse Teaching
2) Have You Experienced or Witnessed a Hate Crime or Bias Incident? If you’ve got an incident or experience to share, please use this form…
3) Immigrant Influxes Put U.S. Schools to the Test  Finding and attracting Somali-speaking teaching candidates has proved challenging.
4) Teaching Force Growing Faster Than Student Enrollment Once Again  Are teacher education programs rebounding, and is that easing hiring?
5) The Nation’s Teaching Force Is Still Mostly White and Female  … the new survey, which includes the same questions as well as some new sections on teachers’ preparation and their influence over school policies, will operate on a two-year cycle.

Hechinger Report. DEBT WITHOUT DEGREE: The human cost of college debt that becomes “purgatory”  Nonetheless, he made it through the rest of high school, and kept his GPA high enough to be accepted at Georgia State University, where he wanted to study to be a history teacher.

NEA Today. Keeping the Promise of Public Service Loan Forgiveness for Educators  PSLF is an important incentive to attracting teachers to the profession, and keeping them there…

Washington Post.
1) The first thing teachers should do when school starts is talk about hatred in America. Here’s help.
2) U-Va. professor: ‘What good is education in the face of someone who closes their mind to facts?’  So if you’re an educator, don’t lose heart. If you think your curriculum needs to do a better job on the history of the KKK, or Nazism, or the Constitution, or whatever, then work for that change.

WUNC. Enrollment At NC Teaching Programs Inches Back Up  The University of North Carolina system saw a 16 percent uptick in education degree-seekers last year. 

NEW YORK STATE
Chalkbeat. State ed officials rip into ‘insulting’ SUNY charter proposal and ‘outrageous’ Success Academy chair  “I could go into a fast food restaurant and get more training than that,” Elia said about the proposal, which would require 30 hours of classroom instruction for prospective teachers.

City and State New York
1) “Instant” teacher licensing is a threat to charter students and the teaching profession
2) Trump, racism controversies on the syllabus at On Education event There were other signs of tension involving charter schools. Last month, the State University of New York introduced a proposal that would let some charter schools hire uncertified teachers and instead develop their own in-house certification that was less arduous.

DNA info. Charter Schools Could Get to Hire Teachers With Only 30 Hours of Training  Under a plan now open for public comment, charter school teachers will be able to get a license to teach without a master’s degree after finishing a mere 30 hours of instruction and working 100 hours in a classroom.

NY Daily News. New York education leaders blast charter school teacher certification plan  The state’s top education officials ripped a controversial plan Wednesday to allow charter schools to certify their own teachers.

SUNY Charter Schools Institute. Public Comment Period Now Open – Alternative Teacher Certification Compliance Pathways for SUNY

NEW YORK CITY
Chalkbeat. Bank Street heads to East New York to help child care providers play to their strengths  Site evaluations and teacher training have been a centerpiece of the city’s free pre-K program, which now serves 70,000 4-year-olds and is expanding to enroll 3-year-olds, too.

Hechinger Report. A school where you can’t fail — it just takes you longer to learn  A third of the school’s students require special education assistance; …. Even with two teachers (one trained for special education), it was difficult to engage everyone.

Village Voice.
1) How Medgar Evers College Is Raising Up Brooklyn and the Caribbean  Brooklyn’s Medgar Evers College is trying a novel approach: a teaching program that will train educators both at their Crown Heights campus and at colleges in the Caribbean, where they’re hoping to incubate a new generation of K–12 teachers for the borough and those countries.
2)  To Fight Institutional Racism, Teachers Are Going Back to School  The workshop was part of Teachers College’s four-day Reimagining Education Summer Institute, a conference organized in response to what Amy Stuart Wells, the conference’s lead organizer, calls the “systematic way our educational system has tried to ignore the central role of race and culture” in solving the ills of American schools.

GLOBAL
BBC. How Canada became an education superpower  Another distinguishing feature is that Canada’s teachers are well paid by international standards – and entry into teaching is highly selective.

Chalkbeat. Some Top U.S. Educators Went to Finland. Their Big Takeaway: Empower Teachers  Teacher preparation programs are rigorous and selective, and there’s only about a 10 percent acceptance rate, Nelson said. Because of that, teachers are not evaluated through standardized test scores. 

Commonwealth of Learning. A call to empower teachers to lead the next wave of the OER movement  We will need to rethink learning resources completely and empower teachers, through their initial training and through ongoing professional development, to contribute to curriculum and resource improvement as members of a learning community. 

European Conference on Educational Research, August 22-25, 2017; Copenhagen, Denmark. Online programme.

UNITED STATES
AACTE.
1) Dissertation Award Entries Due Aug. 18
2) Louisiana Tech Leads Transformation of Student Teaching With TEAM Model

Bridge Magazine. Fewer college students want to be teachers, and why it matters (searchable database)

Chalkbeat. A new study shows why it’s so hard to improve teacher preparation  It’s a difficult task, since there are two degrees of separation between a teacher training program and students taking state tests, and researchers use complex value-added models to control for a number of factors.

Chronicle. Award-Winning Teachers Reflect on Their Training

Data Quality Campaign. Using Data to Ensure That Teachers Are Learner Ready on Day One [calls attention to current data challenges faced by educator preparation providers (EPPs) and offers suggestions and examples for states to improve the situation.]

Detroit Free Press. Badly wanted in Detroit: Teachers for the upcoming school year  The vacancies are a symptom of a larger problem. Across the country, the number of people entering teacher preparation programs is down significantly. So is the number of people receiving teaching certificates.

EducationWeek.
1) Idaho schools try new tactics to combat teacher shortage  In Shoshone, there’s a relatively new partnership with Eastern Oregon University’s teaching preparation satellite program in Ontario, Ore., just across the state border.
2) Trump Ed. Dept. to Michigan: Your ESSA Plan Is Missing Major Details  It’s seeking a more complete explanation of how the state will train teachers to work with gifted students.

Educators Rising. Smyrna High School Seniors Train with Micro-credentials for Careers in Teaching

Hechinger Report. Will a one-year residency better prepare aspiring educators for a new style of teaching?  Summit charter school network in California will certify its own teachers so they’re steeped in the school’s culture

KQED. For Teachers Who Dread Math, Finding a Better Way  These words aligned with what Zager had observed in her job mentoring student teachers who expressed similar reservations about math. Teachers’ sentiment toward math is noteworthy because research has shown that adults can transfer anxiety to kids.

NYTimes.
1) Professors as Targets of Internet Outrage  The Professor Watch List, for one, created last year by the conservative group Turning Point USA, is helping drive a new level of scrutiny of professors who, it says, “discriminate against conservative students and advance leftist propaganda in the classroom.” [Education faculty incl. Jenn Adair, Univ. of Texas; Bill Ayers, Univ. of Ill-Chicago; Sara Goldrick-Rab, Temple Univ.]
2) Seeing Hope for Flagging Economy, West Virginia Revamps Vocational Track  … the four-course sequence for which teachers were training at Marshall University, require math and physics instruction as rigorous as in the College Board’s Advanced Placement track. 

Washington Post. Why immigration proposal would have barred best teacher in America   It took him 10 years of study to learn the language and acquire California versions of the teaching credentials he had already earned in Bolivia.

NEW YORK STATE
Chalkbeat. Amid concerns about plan to let charter schools certify their own teachers, changes could be on the way

HuffPost [Blog]. How Charter Schools Buy Political Support  Cuomo’s political appointees who serve as trustees of the State University of New York (SUNY) are considering a proposal to exempt charter schools from the public school teacher certification requirements they approved less than two months ago.

Politico New York. How New York stopped being the nation’s education reform capital  After the evaluation deal collapsed, other dominoes fell: earlier this year, the Board of Regents, led by opt-out ally Betty Rosa, did away with a rule requiring potential New York teachers pass a literacy test. [Academic Literacy Skills Test: ALST]

NEW YORK CITY
Chalkbeat.
1) New York City to bring high-profile Teaching Fellows program in-house, ending role for nonprofit TNTP  …the fellowship program was conceived to quickly place professionals from other fields into the city’s classrooms, skirting the traditional certification process.
2) Teach for America is sending more teachers into NYC this year — and it might have Donald Trump to thank  The summer institute also now counts as credit toward a master’s degree, offered through the Relay Graduate School of Education, which for the first time helped run its summer training program.
3) What New York City students learned about Christopher Columbus when their own classroom was ‘discovered’  In order to truly integrate, advocates say educators need to take a close look at the lessons they teach. In other words, schools need to be adept in culturally relevant teaching — making sure students of all identities are reflected in what is taught and how it’s taught.

Kings County Politics. Uncommon Schools Creating Pipeline of Teachers of Color in Brooklyn  …155 rising college seniors who are trying out their teaching skills at Uncommon Schools this summer in various locations, including Brooklyn.

NYPost. DOE fails to provide Harlem schools with librarians: activists  The DOE suggested Friday that there’s a shortage of certified librarians to staff city schools.

 

 

GLOBAL
BizCommunity [South Africa]. R3.5m bursaries for teacher education in 2018  The bursaries apply to students wanting to study full-time towards a Bachelor of Education in Foundation Phase Teaching or a Bachelor of Education in Intermediate Phase Teaching from 2018 to 2021. 

British Educational Research Assoc. How do we support beginner teachers to develop awareness and understanding of issues of social justice?  …our work is concerned with the complex intersectionality in England between poverty, social class, disadvantage and educational attainment and in particular thinking about how we, as teacher educators, can develop student-teachers’ awareness and understanding…

Int’l Society for Music Education. My Music Education Life: Milca de Paula  It is necessary to have discussions to face the difficulties in the conditions of the teaching work at schools and face the challenges in the formation of the licensed teacher in music, so the reality of the schools of Basic Education can really change. [cf. IJME, Vol. 35/1, New legislation in Brazilian music education: Studying the law and its implementation]

LiveMint. The sordid tale of teacher education in India

NYTimes.
1) Clooneys to Help 3,000 Syrian Refugees Go to School in Lebanon  A $3.25 million donation from the Clooney Foundation for Justice, Google and HP will pay for transportation, school supplies, computers, content, curriculum and teacher training.
2) High-Profile Lawyers Targeted in Mexico Spyware Scandal … the government’s probe into the 2014 disappearance of 43 students from a rural teachers college.

UNITED STATES
AACTE. Multimodal Explorations in Language, Identity, Culture Inform Development of Bilingual Teachers  This interview features insights from the article “Preparing Bilingual Teachers: Mediating Belonging With Multimodal Explorations in Language, Identity, and Culture” written by Patricia Martinez-Álvarez, Isabel Cuevas, and María Torres-Guzmán.

A.I.R. Fostering a New Approach to Research on Teacher Preparation: Results of the First Convening of Researchers, Practitioners, and K–12 Educators

Atlanta Journal Constitution. Teaching method wins Ron Clark Academy math instructor hero status  Jones figured there had to be something to mixing the arts and math. She decided to find out and in 2007 applied to a doctoral program at Columbia University Teachers College, where in addition to being taught the facts, candidates were taught how to teach them.

Chronicle.  Training Graduate Students to Be Effective Teachers  More colleges are making it a priority to teach future faculty members how to teach

CBSDenver. Not Enough Teachers To Go Around In Colorado Since 2010, there has been a nearly 25 percent drop in graduates from teacher preparation programs, according to the CDHE.

Deans for Impact. Seventeen deans awarded Impact Academy fellowship  Together, the fellows’ programs enrolled about 7,400 teacher-candidates in 2013-2014.

EdWeek.
1) Can a High School Course Help to Solve a State’s Teacher Shortage?  This fall, two high schools in Provo, Utah will offer students in grades 10 through 12 an introductory course called Careers in Education I, with the aim of enticing young people into the teaching profession.
2) The Next Generation Science Standards’ Next Big Challenge: Finding Curricula  It’s tempting to assume that teachers can just develop curricula on their own and learn to teach it—after all, lesson planning is a huge part of preservice teacher-preparation programs.
3) Nearly Two-Thirds of New Science Educators Lack Training in Their Subjects  …almost two-thirds of new science teachers (64 percent) taught at least one course outside of their field in their first five years in the classroom, while 40 percent taught mostly or entirely out of field during that period.
4) Performance Pay Law Not Paying Off for Top-Rated Teachers, According to Report  …the report argues that the discrepancy between salary awards for advanced degrees and “highly effective” ratings flies in the face of decades of research that has concluded that teachers with master’s degrees are no more effective than teachers without one.
5) Skip Coding, Teach Data Science  They find the certification processes deeply flawed and (not surprisingly) want a lot more certified CS teachers with multiple roots to the classroom.

Hechinger Report. Rising popularity of dual-language education could leave Latinos behind  … DCPS is competing with the rest of the nation to hire highly qualified teachers who are not only trained in specific subjects, but also capable of running a classroom in Spanish.

NYTimes. A Wakeup Call on Writing Instruction (Now, What’s an Adverb?)  The Common Core has provided a much-needed “wakeup call” on the importance of rigorous writing, said Lucy M. Calkins, founding director of the Reading and Writing Project at Teachers College, Columbia University… But policy makers “blew it in the implementation,” she said. “We need massive teacher education.”

Tulsa World.
1) Oklahoma approves nearly 900 emergency teacher certificates
2) State of education in Tulsa draws Teach for America members and alums passionate about fixing schools

WNYC. Tens Of Thousands More Women And Minorities Are Taking Computer Science  The College Board, Code.org and other authorized providers are also training teachers to facilitate the course… “We are by far the largest player in creating new computer science teachers…

NEW YORK STATE
Chalkbeat. Among NY students seeking new Excelsior scholarship, potentially many who aren’t qualified or could pay a price later  …TEACH, a federal grant program aimed at encouraging aspiring teachers to enter high-needs subject areas and schools. But, like Excelsior, it places restrictions on the jobs that prospective teachers can take once they leave school…

Education and Teacher Education Today. Letter from the SUNY Deans of Education to the Board of Trustees of the State University of New York  We, the Deans and Directors of Education Programs in the State University of New York (SUNY) system, write to strenuously object to the SUNY Charter Schools Institute’s recent action to virtually eliminate teacher certification requirements for charter school teachers. 

InsideSources. New York Has Nation’s Highest Per Pupil Expenditure; But Is it Enough?  Michael Rebell, …a professor at the Teacher’s College at Columbia University…at the time of the 2006 lawsuit, Rebell said that about 17 percent of teachers in the state were uncertified—now that number is down to under one percent, which he considers to be a major victory.

NYSED. Office of Higher Education Newsletter. The Office of Higher Education (OHE) is pleased to launch a monthly newsletter to inform the education community of current and upcoming activities related to higher education. To subscribe to our monthly newsletter, please sign up on the OHE website at https://listserv.nysed.gov/cgi-bin/wa?SUBED1=ohenewsletter&A=1%20.

NYSED Regents
1) July meeting. Higher Education Committee Consent Agenda
Selected items from the July 2017 Higher Education Committee Consent Agenda are below. To view the entire list and the items’ supporting materials, go to: http://www.regents.nysed.gov/node/8712

• RE: Establishment of a Residency Certificate for Students Enrolled in a Classroom Academy Residency Pilot Program
• RE: Pathways for Candidates to Pursue Transitional A, Initial, and/or Professional Career and Technical Education Certificates
• RE: Permanent Extension of the Option for Certain Out-of-State Candidates to be Eligible for a Conditional Initial Certificate

2) Arts Content Specialty Tests (CSTs) Test Development Experts Needed
Seeking educators to participate in test development activities for the New York State Teacher Certification Examinations (NYSTCE) Content Specialty Tests (CSTs) in the Arts. These certification exams are for teacher candidates seeking certification in Dance, Music, Theatre, and Visual Arts. Certified educators, including those from higher education, who have extensive content expertise in the area of one or more of the four arts are encouraged to apply to participate in the test development process.

SUNY Charter School Institute. Proposal that SUNY charter schools be able to establish their own teacher preparation programs and “certification” system. The public comment period ends on September 9. Submit comments to: Ralph A. Rossi II, SUNY Charter Schools Institute, 41 State Street, Suite 700, Albany, New York 12207, (518) 455-4250. E-mail: [email protected]

TimesUnion. SUNY deans speak out against teacher hiring plan  The deans of education programs at 18 State University of New York schools are condemning a proposal they say would lead to unqualified teachers in New York classrooms.

 Washington Post. What’s the link between charter schools, political donations and teacher certification in New York?  SUNY’s requirements call for clinical experiences that are “diverse and immersive, ideally over a full school year.” The SUNY-proposed regulation for charter schools, in contrast, is less than three weeks (100 hours) of field experience under the supervision of an experienced teacher who may even be uncertified herself.

NEW YORK CITY
Teachers College. NY Daily News. Manhattan principal builds successful high school with diverse students  [Kate Burch holds a master’s degree from Teachers College, Columbia University in International Educational Development, with a focus on Peace Education]