Month: April 2019

GLOBAL
EducationHQ. Many more entering and staying in the profession: Ministry data   But despite the projected retention rates for teachers, New Zealand Educational Institute Te Riu Roa president Lynda Stuart said there was still work to be done in making teaching a viable long-term career choice.

Global Partnership for Education. We must support our teachers   Countries have different definitions of what it means to be ‘trained’, making it difficult, if not impossible, to draw international comparisons. Some countries require an advanced university degree that can span five years of education. For others, a three-month training program seems to be enough.

Longfellow Foundation. Global Teacher Education Fellows Program [deadline: May 1]

New York Times. Artist Ai Weiwei Takes Aim at State Violence in Mexico With Legos Entitled “Reestablishing Memories,” the work also features a timeline of the 2014 abduction of the trainee-teachers from the all-boys Ayotzinapa Rural Teachers College in southern Mexico and the government’s widely disparaged investigation into the case.

 

UNITED STATES
American Association of Colleges for Teacher Education. Call for Board and Standing Committee Nominations Now Open

Association of Teacher Educators. 2019 ATE Summer Conference, Burlington VT, July 26-30. CFP: due May 15 

California State University. Recruiting and Preparing Teachers for Diverse Classrooms.

Chalkbeat. Are teachers unions helping or hurting schools? Here’s what the newest research tells us   Researcher Jason Baron compared trends in teaching degrees earned in Wisconsin after 2011’s Act 10 to those trends in nearby states. The Wisconsin law appeared to lead to a 20 percent increase in the share of college students training to become a teacher…

EducationDive. Report: Overall pre-K spending grows, but few states make gains in quality, enrollment   Especially when pre-K teachers have bachelor’s degrees and are certified to teach, they often move on to jobs in the elementary grades where they can earn more money — which contributes to high turnover rates in early-childhood programs.

EdSource. Teach for America targeted as legislation seeks to limit inexperienced teachers in California: Assemblywoman says new teachers with little training can’t adequately serve neediest students

EducationWeek.
1) More Education Studies Look at Cost-Effectiveness   The Center for Benefit-Cost Studies in Education, at Teachers College, Columbia University, looked at intervention studies supported by IES. In 2014, only two of 18 research evaluations planned to analyze the costs of their interventions. Two years later, that was up to seven of 22 funded studies, but they included few details.
2) Where Will the Next Teacher Protests Take Place?   North Carolina teachers will protest in Raleigh on May 1, calling for a 5 percent pay raise, more support staff in schools, extra pay for advanced degrees, and an expansion of Medicaid to improve student health. 

Forbes. Think You Want To Be A Teacher? Read This First   But one reason the system is broken is that teacher education programs are broken. There’s a wide gulf between what cognitive scientists have found about how children learn and what teachers—and their supervisors—have been led to believe. 

NEAToday. Public Education ‘Ground Zero’ in Radical Right’s Assault on Democracy, Says Historian  Buchanan grew up in rural Tennessee, attended public schools and went to a local teachers’ college. Why did he have such animus towards public goods and America’s existing social contract when he was a direct beneficiary of them?

NCEE. Leading High-Performance School Systems: Lessons from the World’s Best, Apr. 23 1-5pm [incl. Susan Fuhrman, Past-President, Teachers College]

The Ada News. Klaric to deliver ECU’s eighth annual Lockmiller Lecture on Wednesday   Klaric will present some of her recent findings about ECU alumnus and artist Leon Polk Smith… Born in 1906 in the Chickasaw Nation in Indian Territory, Smith attended what is now ECU and graduated in 1934 with a bachelor of arts degree in English. He began teaching primary and secondary school in Oklahoma while completing a master’s degree in art and educational psychology at Columbia University’s Teachers College.

The Atlantic. Why American Students Haven’t Gotten Better at Reading in 20 Years   While some elementary teachers have embraced the approach advocated by the NAEP panel, it’s clear that most have been trained to in methods that aren’t supported by research, and that many are resistant to change

Washington Post.
1) Teaching is a marathon for this D.C. educator. It’s her students who cross the finish line.   Harper, a native of Silver Spring, never intended to be a teacher. But after completing a few legal internships while attending Atlanta’s Spelman College, she decided the best way to help was to reach children before they became entangled in the justice system. She graduated from college in 2012 and joined the nonprofit Teach for America program in Houston.
2) Why this South Carolina teacher quit mid-year: ‘The unrealistic demands and all-consuming nature of the profession are not sustainable’   There was also bad news about future teachers: The number of South Carolina students who completed a teacher education program has declined by 32 percent since 2012-2013, it said.

 

NEW YORK CITY
Bank Street GSE.
1) Bank Street Graduate School of Education Receives Grant to Launch new TESOL Residency Program   This spring, the Bank Street Graduate School of Education received a grant from the Walton Family Foundation to help support the launch of a new Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages (TESOL) Residency Program. The two-year program aims to support accessible, high-quality teacher preparation for educators pursuing TESOL certification while increasing diversity in the profession.
2) New ONLINE Master’s Degrees in Early Childhood & Childhood Education

Center for Innovation in Teacher Education and Development (CITED). Teatro and Culture Circles: Transformative Teacher Education Pedagogies [Teachers College, Apr. 30] … underscore the particular promises of critical pedagogies, like Freirean Culture Circles and Boalian Theatre of the Oppressed, for preparing asset-oriented teacher educators, particularly given trends in teacher education to value reductive notions of teacher educator knowledge and practice.

Gotham Gazette. As Early Childhood Educators Consider Strike, New York City Must Achieve Pay Parity   CBO-based pre-K teachers with bachelor’s degrees earn significantly less than their counterparts with the Department of Education (DOE) — and often work more hours for a longer school year. A CBO-based certified teacher with five years of experience makes approximately $42,000, while DOE counterparts with the same credentials earn closer to $60,000. 

 

GLOBAL
Center on International Education Benchmarking (CIEB). Building Systems that Work for Young Children[May 16] Join world-renowned early childhood researcher Sharon Lynn Kagan for the release of The Early Advantage 2: Building Systems That Work for Young Children

Daily Mail. Teacher at Catholic London secondary school is suspended after it’s discovered he ‘CAN’T READ or write’   Faisal Ahmed was given the green light by elite teacher training program TeachFirst despite having ‘extreme difficulty with handwriting’, problems with reading and understanding ‘written tests’.

The Telegraph. How to become a teacher – what you need to know   If we have learnt anything from Matilda’s Miss Honey or Mr Keating from Dead Poets Society, it’s that teachers can have a big impact on their students’ lives. Whether you are heading to university or tired of your desk job, you can train to become a teacher and pursue a more fulfilling and active career.

Washington Post. Mexico to receive UN help in missing students case   U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights Michelle Bachelet called the case of the students from the teacher’s college in Ayotzinapa “paradigmatic.”

 

UNITED STATES
AACTE.
1) 2019 Washington Week [June 2-5]
2) Call for Proposals, Reviewers for 2020 AACTE Annual Meeting “Disrupting Inequities: Educating for Change”

Anchorage Daily News. UA regents vote to eliminate UAA’s teacher preparation programs after accreditation loss   Instead of reapplying for accreditation, which could take up to three years, UA President Jim Johnsen recommended last week that regents eliminate the seven teacher preparation programs at UAA. The UAA chancellor, the UAA Faculty Senate and the UAA student government have all supported seeking re-accreditation.

Brookings Inst. The teacher diversity gap is literally inherited.  Using nationally representative surveys of the cohorts that graduated high school in the late 1970s and early 1980s, we show that compared to other children, the children of teachers are more than twice as likely to become teachers themselves. This is true for the sons and daughters of white teachers and for the daughters of black teachers; the heritability of teaching is even stronger for the daughters of Hispanic teachers. 

BuzzFeed. Kamala Harris Wants Her Teacher Pay Raise Proposal To Bring Young Black Americans To The Profession — And To Her Campaign  “I want some young student at Morehouse or Howard who is excelling in science to be able to follow their passion and go teach in the neighborhood middle school and not worry about how they’re going to put food on their own table or pay their bills,” Harris said Friday. 

Chalkbeat. Feeling ‘cheated’ by her own schooling, this award-winning N.J. math teacher tried to become the teacher she never had   But when she decided to pursue teaching, she saw that her hardships were also an advantage. She would be able to connect with students from backgrounds similar to hers in a way that many of her peers might not be able.

Council of Great City Schools. English Language Learners in America’s Great City Schools  According to the Education Commission of States (ECS), however, fewer than 30 states have state policies or department of education guidelines requiring teachers of ELLs to have specialized certification. According to the 2014 ECS report, of the 20 states that had some type of requirement for teachers of ELLs, 14 of them required an ELL-related endorsement and only six required an ELL-related license or certification.

EducationDive. AERA ’19: Testing policies are the ‘Jim Crow of education,’ association president suggests   [TC Prof.] Wells said the test score gap, teaching to the test score gap through “dumbing down the curriculum,” and discipline policies that exclude students from school are policies that target low-income communities of color and amount to a sort of “Jim Crow of education.”

Education Week.
1) Betsy DeVos: ‘Teaching Has Gotten a Bad Beating Over the Years‘   …DeVos said that part of the reason there isn’t a huge pipeline of teachers is that the profession has “gotten a bad beating over the years.” She suggested states take steps to offer advancement to effective teachers and find ways to help teachers who “may be better in a different profession to find that profession more quickly.”
2) Democrats Seeking White House Make Teacher-Friendly Pitches  Sen. Cory Booker of New Jersey called for helping teachers by retiring their college debt… Marianne Williamson, an author, promises new investments in teacher training, early-childhood education, and more… It didn’t always seem politically smart to cozy up to teachers, said Jeffrey Henig, the director of the politics and education program at Teachers College, Columbia University. “That’s been ameliorated,” he said. “Teachers [are] more sympathetic allies, and that makes it a little bit easier for candidates to portray teachers as underpaid and underappreciated.”

New York Times. Is the U.S. a Democracy? A Social Studies Battle Turns on the Nation’s Values   Each of the 50 states can create its own learning standards. These documents are closely examined. While schools can teach material not included in them, they shape the content in standardized tests, and many educators rely heavily on the standards as they craft lesson plans. Student teachers are trained to use them.

Politico. Teach For America — except for California  Backed by powerful teachers unions, Democrats are pushing to ban Teach For America from California amid a wave of teacher’s strikes and a heated debate over charter schools in the nation’s most populous state.

University of Colorado, Colorado Springs.Understanding Remote – UCCS students explore Colorado’s smallest schools   Through an innovative two-week immersion experience, UCCS education students assisted teachers, provided instruction to elementary and secondary students, and focused on understanding the vital link between rural schools and the local communities while exploring a unique part of Colorado.

U.S. Dept. of Education. Applications for New Awards; Teacher Quality Partnership Grant Program   The purposes of the TQP program are to improve student achievement; improve the quality of prospective and new teachers by improving the preparation of prospective teachers and enhancing professional development activities for new teachers…

U.S. Dept. of Health and Human Services.The Role of Licensing in Supporting Quality Practices in Early Care and Education   Although the conceptual relationship between licensing and quality is evolving, there is little research about how licensing influences quality. This brief provides a framework to support discussion and research in this important area.

 

NEW YORK STATE
NYSED Board of Regents. April Meetings, Higher Education Sub-committee
Proposed:

• Proposed Amendments to Sections 52.21 and 80-3.7 of the Regulations of the Commissioner of Education Related to Requiring Study in Language Acquisition and Literacy Development of English Language Learners in Certain Teacher Preparation Programs and in th
• Proposed Amendment to Section 80-1.5 of the Regulations of the Commissioner of Education Relating to the Extension of the edTPA Safety Net for Candidates Who Receive a Failing Score on the Library Specialist edTPA
• Proposed Amendments to Sections 52.21, 57-2… of the Rules of the Board of Regents Relating to Professional Development Plans and Other Related Requirements for School Districts and BOCES
• Proposed Amendments to Sections 52.21, 80-2.1 80-3.1, 80-3.11, 80-3.12 and 80-5.23 and the Titles of Subparts 80-2 and 80-3 of the Commissioner’s Regulations Relating to School Counseling Program Registration, School Counselor Certification Requirements,

Voted:

• Proposed Amendments to Sections 52.21 and 80-3.7 of the Regulations of the Commissioner of Education Relating to Student Teaching Requirements for Teacher Certification and the Registration of Teacher Preparation Programs
  • VOTED: That sections 52.21 and 80-3.7 of the Regulations of the Commissioner of Education be amended, effective April 24, 2019, as submitted.
• Proposed Amendment to Section 80-1.5 of the Regulations of the Commissioner of Education Relating to the Extension of the Educational Technology Specialist Content Specialty Test Safety Net
  • VOTED: That Section 80-1.5 of the Regulations of the Commissioner of Education be adopted as an emergency action, effective July 1, 2019, to ensure that the safety net becomes effective immediately

Consent Agenda:

• Appointments and Reappointments to the New York State Teachers’ Retirement System Board 

NYSED News. State Education Department Proposes Changes to Enhance Teacher Preparation Programs to Better Serve English Language Learners  The State Education Department today proposed regulatory changes that would require teacher preparation programs in certain subject areas to dedicate at least three of the currently required six semester hours in language acquisition and literacy development to language acquisition and literacy development of English language learners (ELLs)…

NewsDay. Minimum student teaching time increased in NY  The change will take effect for students entering college education programs in fall 2022, according to John D’Agati, a deputy state education commissioner who coordinated the push for stronger requirements.

 

NEW YORK CITY

Chalkbeat. As New York City pre-K teachers weigh a strike, new estimate puts cost of pay boost at $438 million   Teachers can begin working at a community organization without certification while they earn their credentials, and operators say many of their teachers are on study plans because those with certification leave for the higher salaries offered at public schools.

New York Post. ‘Educational genocide’: NYC schools are leaving black and Hispanic students behind   Then-Mayor Mike Bloomberg changed the system citywide to require a minimum 90th-percentile score on national standardized intelligence tests. “Parents living in poverty don’t know about this test. It’s an awareness problem,” said James Borland, an education professor at Teachers College, Columbia University, who focuses on gifted issues.

Teachers College.
1) Shirley Chisholm Dissertation Award: Lisa Edstrom (Ed.D. ’18) began working at Barnard in 2006-2007 as a supervisor for student teachers in the Education Program. In 2008, she became the program’s Certification Officer, guiding students through the NYS teacher certification process.
2) Teaching Residents @ Teachers College April Newsletter

GLOBAL
CTV News. Ontario considering mandatory annual math testing for all teachers   The consideration of the annual test for all teachers comes after the government passed legislation Wednesday that will require all aspiring teachers in Ontario to pass a math test before receiving their licence.

Daily Mail. Revealed: The ridiculously easy test designed to weed out poor student teachers – but those who fail are STILL being allowed in the classroom   Student teachers have three chances to sit the LANTITE test administered by the Australian Council for Educational Research (ACER)… Students are instead trying up to five times after receiving study support and coaching from their universities who back them…

International Task Force on Teachers for Education 2030. Strategic Plan 2018 – 2021 

The Guardian. School music report reveals cuts, inequality and demoralised teachers   …an increase in GCSE courses starting in year 9, mean that music is being squeezed out of the curriculum, while the number of postgraduate students choosing to train as music teachers has shrunk by over two-thirds in the past decade.

The Times of India. 14 BEd colleges derecognized  In a major setback, at least 14 teachers’ training colleges of the state, including that of Patna Women’s College, have been derecognized by the National Council for Teacher Education (NCTE).

 

UNITED STATES
American Educational Research Association. Annual Meeting Online Program  Incl: Presidential Address, Amy Stuart Wells [TC Prof.]: “An Inconvenient Truth about the New Jim Crow of Education”

Anchorage Daily News. University of Alaska president recommends closing UAA’s School of Education in wake of accreditation loss   … a national oversight body, the Council for the Accreditation of Educator Preparation, had revoked accreditation for UAA’s seven teacher preparation programs. The programs failed to meet four of five accreditation standards, according to CAEP.

Chalkbeat.
1) Federal study finds charter middle schools didn’t help students earn college degrees   “The overall conclusion that there is little difference between charter schools and non-charter schools is not shocking to me,” said Sarah Cohodes, a professor at Columbia University’s Teachers College…
2) Indiana could scrap test seen as a barrier to training more teachers of color   The House Education Committee unanimously voted on Wednesday to remove the state requirement that students pass the basic reading, writing, and math skills test known as “CASA” as freshmen or sophomores before they enter college teacher preparation programs.

Education Week.
1) Meet the Moms Pushing for a Reading Overhaul in Their District   … in general, the part that’s most important that we’ve been pushing for from the beginning is just more comprehensive training for our teachers and really good materials around that training. And I think that’s the thing we’ve gotten most pushback on. We felt from the beginning that teachers didn’t have this information and we’ve learned that it’s not part of most teacher training programs.
2) New York Teachers Are Highest Paid in U.S., Report Finds  Teachers in New York State are paid the highest salaries in their field in the United States, according to a new report by the Rockefeller Institute of Government.
3) No substitute: Schools struggle to find coverage for classes   Experts partially blame the substitute teacher shortage on a smaller pool of new graduates looking for teaching jobs. During the 2012-13 school year, the Pennsylvania Department of Education issued 18,957 teaching certifications. Just five years later, during 2017-18 school year, that number dropped to 6,918.
4) Why Have Education Politics Gone National?  [TC Prof. J. Henig, co-author] The local political stage has become more crowded, with some of the major players coming from out of town, including philanthropies, like the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and the Walton Family Foundation; charter networks and alternative sources of teacher credentialing, like KIPP and Teach For America…

InsideHigherEd. New Rules for Accreditors   Negotiators also approved a fix to the TEACH grant program that will allow thousands of teachers whose grants were converted into loans to appeal those decisions. 

KEPR. Columbia Basin launches degree in teacher education program   After nearly four years of work and dozens of requests, Columbia Basin College (CBC) is rolling out a Bachelor of Applied Science in Teacher Education (BASTE): Residency Teacher Preparation Program with Early Childhood Education (ECE) Endorsement.

National Center on Education and the Economy. How Districts Can Learn From The World’s Best  …states should limit teacher education to a small number of research universities and make it more selective, as Finland did in the 1970s. While some feared that restricting entry into teacher education would lower the number of potential candidates, the opposite happened: more high-achieving students wanted to go into teaching. “They wanted to be in a profession that was considered prestigious,” Tucker said.

NEA Today. Why We Stay: What Motivates Educators To Step Into (and Remain) in the Classroom    Nationwide, and day after day, millions of educators step into school settings with a willingness to share love and commitment with their students. And although they use different words to describe why they stay, it all boils down to the determination to make a difference in students’ lives—one that will last a lifetime.

Southern Regional Education Board. Getting The Balance Right: Reconsidering the Mix of Teacher Licensure Measures   The emergence of practice-based tests might encourage policymakers to think more expansively about which measures states should use to certify teachers.

The Daily Illini. Teacher shortage sparks licensing reevaluation  The state’s approach to this shortage is to reevaluate the lengthy and expensive licensing process including the three tests required for prospective teachers: the edTPA, TAP 400, SAT or ACT and the Illinois content test.

The 74. Why Aren’t College Grads Becoming Teachers? The Answer Seems to Be Economic — and the Labor Market May Be Starting to Improve And in 2017, the most recent year for which we have data, we had the first year-over-year increase in college graduates with education degrees since 2012. It’s still not much — 2017 was just .62 percent higher than 2016 — but it could be the start of a promising trend.

U.S. Department of Education. Fiscal Year 2020 Budget Summary  [Elevate the Teaching Profession Through Innovation p. 7; TEACH Grants p. 34]

Walton Family Foundation. How Better School-to-Parent Communication Drives Educational Success [by TC Prof. P. Bergman]  Right after college I was a New York City Teaching Fellow, teaching special education, English and social studies for 7th and 8th graders. 

Washington Post.
1) Education Dept. rejects vast majority of applicants for temporary student loan forgiveness program   “We authorized $700 million dollars to help ensure public servants — including firefighters, teachers, and nurses — receive the loan forgiveness they have earned, and it’s maddening that the Trump Administration is letting it go to waste,” Sen. Tim Kaine (D-Va.) said in an email.
2) The latest ‘shockingly bad’ education idea in North Carolina   The programs offer everything from educational games to a full preschool curriculum complete with boxes of activities that are shipped to a student’s home and a teacher’s guide for an adult. 

NEW YORK STATE
New York State. The 2019-20 Executive Budget

• $3 million for a We Teach New York grant program to address the teacher shortage

• $25 million for Teachers of Tomorrow

NYSATE/NYACTE. CFP: 2019 Annual Fall Conference[Saratoga Springs, Oct. 16-18]

NYSED Board of Regents. April meeting agenda

NYS Professional Standards and Practices Board for Teaching. January meeting minutes

NEW YORK CITY
Gotham Gazette. Giving Our Children Tools to Eat and Live Healthily[co-authored by P. Koch, TC Tisch Center for Food, Education & Policy]

New York Times. 50 Years of Affirmative Action: What Went Right, and What It Got Wrong   In a late-life bid for middle-class stability, he returned to college with renewed zeal for learning, and received a bachelor’s degree in history from Lehman College in 2003, then completed most of a master’s degree. He lasted only briefly as a high school social studies teacher…

WNYC. Pre-K Teachers Weigh Strike As Pay Disparity Persists  …a starting salary for a teacher with a masters working for the DOE is $56,711, compared to $34,085 for a teacher with a masters who works at a CBO. As a result, community organizations have reported an exodus of teachers for the school-based programs.

Teachers College. 332 presentations by faculty, students, staff and alumni at AERA 2019: Democratizing the Evidence in a Post-Truth Era