Month: September 2019

GLOBAL
Australian Financial Review. Literacy, numeracy and engagement are Dan Tehan’s priorities   The education minister Dan Tehan says he has been working closely with university deans of education to see how he can strengthen teacher education.

Mexico News Daily. Teachers present their ‘social struggle’ education plan to AMLO: Union says president has promised to allow automatic allocation of jobs to teacher college grads   Juan Melchor, a CNTE spokesman, said the president indicated that the automatic allocation of jobs to teaching students could be signed into law, which he said would be a “historic achievement.” However, Marco Fernández, an education specialist at the Tec. de Monterrey, said that enshrining the right of teaching students to an automatic job upon graduation would violate the constitution.

The Irish Times. The Irish Times view on teacher shortages   Financial incentives for students to become teachers in key subjects are also needed along with a system where specialised teachers are employed across groups of schools, as well as remuneration that encourages newly qualified personnel not to emigrate or leave the system.

 

UNITED STATES
Education Reform Now. A Deep Dive Into Alternative Teacher Prep: New Series will Examine Best Practices, Lessons for the Future

EdWeek.
1) Oregon Schools Rolling Out Indigenous Studies Curriculum   Guenther suggests teachers may also need to unlearn their own bias and personal learning experiences from the past.
2) Wanted: Teachers as Diverse as Their Students   To help students who may encounter financial barriers on their way to earning a teaching degree, some districts and teacher-preparation programs are pouring resources—seed money—into the efforts.
3) When School’s a Battleground for Transgender Kids, Teachers Learn to Protect, Affirm Them   But few professional development providers and teacher-preparation programs show teachers the best practices for working with students of different gender identities.

Inside Higher Education. Scaled-Back HEA Plan Coming Soon?   Alexander, the chairman of the Senate education committee, has said he wants to pass an update to the HEA before he retires after next year… But Senator Patty Murray, the Washington Democrat and ranking member on the committee, has repeatedly said she’s not interested in passing legislation that falls short of a comprehensive reauthorization of the higher ed law.

Murfreesboro.com. MTSU, SCORE sign teacher preparation partnership focused on K-12 innovatio Middle Tennessee State University announced Wednesday (Aug. 28) a first-of-its-kind partnership focused on bringing research-supported innovations to how the university prepares students to become K-12 teachers.

NYTimes. New Mexico Announces Plan for Free College for State Residents: Under the plan, tuition to all state colleges would be free for students regardless of family income.

Stanford Center for Assessment, Learning and Equity (SCALE). Call for Proposals, edTPA National Conference 2020 Austin, TX Mar. 26-28 [deadline Nov. 4]

The Atlantic. How to Keep Teachers From Leaving the Profession: After 38 years in education, Judith Harper thinks what teachers are missing is more time to learn from one another.   Decades of research in the United States and abroad show that effective teaching is not an innate skill, but a complex craft that requires a great deal of on-the-job training, including participation in peer networks such as the one Harper coached in. That’s why many high-achieving countries, such as Japan, Singapore, China, and Finland, provide ample weekly hours for this type of professional development. 

 

NEW YORK STATE
Chalkbeat. New York’s state education commissioner has a new job at a school improvement consulting firm   Elia’s portfolio will be national in focus, according to a press release, and will include community schools that have in-house wraparound services, teacher evaluation systems, standards, school choice, and urban education.

NYSATE/NYACTE. 2019 Annual Conference: Registration Open & Draft Conference Program Available [Oct. 16-18, Saratoga Springs]. 3pm Thurs: A culturally relevant approach to professional development for preservice teachers of color, presented by K. Ledwell, S. Reid, Teachers College

Professional Standards and Practices Board for Teaching.
1) May meeting minutes
2) September meeting agendas

 

NEW YORK CITY

NYDailyNews. What NYC’s preschool teachers deserve: Unionization would cement their salary parity gains   The new agreement means that certified early childhood teachers in nonprofits will see salary increases ranging from 40%-43% over the next two years, providing starting pay parity with public school preschool teachers. These increases come in response to high turnover and severe teacher recruitment and retention problems among organizations that provide the bulk of New York City pre-kindergarten programs and all center-based early childhood education programs for children 0-3 years of age.

Teachers College.
1) “Equal” is What Matters. “Separate” is Negotiable: TC’s Sonya Douglass Horsford calls for a “radical imagination” of education for America’s new majority  “This redistribution of resources, with less concern on the ‘separate’ and a greater focus on the ‘equal,’ must be used to provide children with access to caring, demanding and well prepared teachers with high expectations, a curriculum that teaches the history of their group, and a supportive affirming environment that fosters self-knowledge, self-confidence and self-respect.”
2) Teach Our Children — About Climate Change: Americans think schools should, finds a survey by TC researchers   “Climate change is a defining issue of our time,” assert Teachers College’s Oren Pizmony-Levy, Associate Professor of International and Comparative Education, and Aaron Pallas, Arthur I. Gates Professor of Sociology & Education…

Walton Family Foundation. Walton Family Foundation Announces Major Investments to Support, Retain and Increase the Diversity of Educators Nationwide   Bank Street Graduate School of Education: To train teacher candidates in the Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages Residency Program in New York to address the intellectual, linguistic and emotional strengths and needs of students learning English.

 

GLOBAL
CBC News. Northern Quebec schools suffer shortage of qualified teachers   Leigh-Ann Gates, chairperson of the parent’s committee in the Cree community of Chisasibi, says she has noticed the increasing difficulty in hiring teachers over her past three terms. She criticizes the move to use unqualified teachers, because they lack training on how to manage students, which can make classroom dynamics chaotic. 

Deutche Welle. Germany: Primary school teacher shortage worse than expected   Bertelsmann suggested that tackling the teacher shortage will require a comprehensive strategy. One solution would be to mentor and certify people who have relevant skills in school subjects and wish to be teachers, but have not gone to university for teaching.

International Society for Music Education. Call for Submissions, 34^thAnnual Conference [Helsinki 2-7 August 2020]

 

UNITED STATES
AACTE. 72^ndAnnual Meeting Early-Bird Registration [Feb. 29-Mar 1, Atlanta]

Bridge. Michigan teachers: Flunking won’t help kids read. We have better ideas.   Kariainen, the Houghton teacher, said teacher preparation programs could better prepare teachers by spending more time on literacy education. She noted that Michigan only requires six college credits of reading instruction for certified teachers.

Chronicle of Higher Education.
1) What Elizabeth Warren Can Teach Us About Teaching   As instructors, we must choose to be committed to all students, to put their development first, to be led by them, rather than the other way around. This is a political choice — not because we’re trying to get our students to vote a certain way, but because our job is to help students believe in their own possibilities, in their own agency, within a system that far too frequently denies them any.
2) Want to Improve Your Teaching? Start With the Basics: Learn Their Names

EducationWeek.
1) A Perennial Challenge in Rural Alaska: Getting and Keeping Teachers  The Council for the Accreditation of Educator Preparation, one of two national bodies that accredit teacher training programs, revoked accreditation for all seven of the teacher-preparation programs at UAA, due to the school’s failure to meet four out of five standards set by the group.
2) ‘I Am Pro Good Schools.’ Democratic Presidential Candidates Debate Charter Schools, Equity   Harris also outlined her plan to boost federal funding for historically black colleges and universities in part to build the pipeline of black teachers to public schools, which have a largely white educator workforce.
3) Nearly All Teachers (and Other Public Servants) Who Applied for Loan Forgiveness Were Denied   Last year, Congress expanded a program to forgive the student loans of more public servants, such as teachers. But a new government watchdog report found that 99 percent of people who applied were rejected by the U.S. Department of Education.
4) The Push to Get More Teachers of Color in Special Education Classrooms  …a networked improvement community with 10 teacher-preparation programs that have pledged to find ways to enroll more aspiring special educators and reduce the shortage of special education teachers by fall 2022. A priority is bringing people of color and people with disabilities into the special education teaching ranks.

Hechinger Report.
1) A new teacher vows to help in a classroom full of need: “Under the right conditions, they’d be stars”  The Francis residency was launched in 2016 to recruit teachers who can relate to the struggles of New Orleans students and who ultimately want to create “a more just and humane society.”
2) With a teacher like me, ‘Would I have turned out better?’   … the Brothers Empowered to Teach (BE2T) Initiative. The program recruits college-age people of color, particularly African American men, and pays them stipends to work in schools in New Orleans and Baton Rouge.

Learning Policy Institute. Closing the Opportunity Gap: How Positive Outlier Districts in California Are Pursuing Equitable Access to Deeper Learning  …controlling for student and district characteristics, the most important in-school factors were the qualifications of teachers—in particular having fewer teachers on emergency permits and substandard credentials and more with greater years of experience.

NEAToday.
1) 3 Teachers Tell How They Took On the Civics Gap   But Flores has continued to push for change in how schools understand and implement civics. He served on a state commission on environmental literacy, and is now working with the state university teacher prep program to show how cross-curricular lessons are essential for preparing students to tackle the climate crisis.
2) Educators Need the Loan Forgiveness Program Fixed … Now   An investigation has found that Congress’ recent efforts to forgive the federal student debt of teachers and other public-service workers aren’t working… The stakes also are high for the education profession in general—and the students who need highly qualified teachers to succeed.

Tennessee State Board of Education. State Board Releases Educator Preparation Providers Progress Report   On Monday, the State Board of Education released the 2019 Educator Preparation Providers Progress Report: A Review of Improvements Over Time, a companion report to the annual Educator Preparation Report Card. This report highlights several educator preparation programs (EPPs) that made significant strides on the annual Report Card in the past several years.

Washington Post. What Nashville can teach New York about school desegregation[by TC prof. A. Erickson]

 

NEW YORK STATE
NYSED Board of Regents.September meetings
1) Appointment of Interim Commissioner of Education and President of the University of the State of New York
2) Appointments to the State Professional Standards and Practices Board for Teaching
3) Proposed Amendment to Section 80-5.17 of the Regulations of the Commissioner of Education Relating to the Conditional Initial Certificate Requirements
4) Proposed Amendments to Section 80-6.1 of the Regulations of the Commissioner of Education Relating to Continuing Teacher and Leader Education for Educators in Nonpublic Schools
5) Proposed Amendment to Section 80-1.5 of the Regulations of the Commissioner of Education Relating to the Creation of Safety Nets for the Science Content Specialty Tests (CSTs)
6) Relating to the Requirements for Transitional D Programs that Lead to School District Leader Certification

Professional Standards and Practices Board for Teaching[new documents posted under resources]
1) Guidance on Establishing and Strengthening Teacher Leadership in New York State
2) Professional Learning Plan – Guidance Document 2019-2020

 

NEW YORK CITY
Chalkbeat.
1) NYC preschools are training teachers what to do if immigration authorities come knocking
2) Success Academy does ‘screen’ its students. It’s not in the way you might think.  Success Academy issues cell phones to every teacher and requires them to respond to any phone call or text from a parent within 24 hours, but it’s a two-way street. “If we call you, we expect you to return that call within 24 hours,”

Crain’s Keeping New York’s teachers in school: Turnover among the city’s educators is shockingly high   A New York City Teaching Residency would phase in over five years and grow to train 1,000 teachers annually. Rather than being immediately placed in charge of a classroom, residents would be placed alongside an experienced mentor-teacher for a full school year. They would receive a stipend, while mentor-teachers would receive a pay increase.

NYPost. New book tells secrets and surprises of Success Academy’s winning academics   The teachers, he found, are “mostly very young,” twenty-somethings, but Moskowitz has “figured out a way to get new teachers good, quickly,” he says. Success Academy uses the exact same curriculum for each grade, so teachers don’t have to spend hours devising lessons — like city teachers do, Pondiscio said. “They spend all their time preparing how to best teach the lesson and going over students’ work.”

 

GLOBAL
InsideHigherEd. Recruiting in the Western Hemisphere: Speakers at EducationUSA conference discuss recruitment within a diverse hemisphere.   The Dominican Republic, Mexico and Panama all provide government scholarships for teacher training, while Canada and Mexico have scholarships for short-term, nondegree study.

NYTimes. Mexico: Main Suspect Absolved in 2014 Student Disappearances   One of the main suspects in the 2014 disappearance of 43 teachers’ college students in southern Mexico has been acquitted, a human rights attorney said Tuesday…

Sudbury.com [Toronto] Standardized tests for teachers don’t necessarily improve student scores: report.  Starting at the end of this academic year, new teachers will have to score at least 70 per cent on the test to register with the teachers’ college.

Sydney Morning Herald. $80,000 pay rises in plan to tackle ‘low status’ of teaching in Australia   The plan would introduce scholarships worth $10,000 a year for top school leavers who go on to study teaching. 

UNESCO. eAtlas of Teachers

 

UNITED STATES
AACTE. Outstanding Dissertation Award [extended deadline Sept. 13]

Brookings Institute. The value of student-teacher matching: Implications for reauthorization of the Higher Education Act [by T. Bristol TC PhD ‘14]  …given the evidence on ethnoracial matching between students and teachers, policymakers working on the HEA reauthorization of must identify the levers available within the purview of that act to increase the number of our nation’s Latino and Black teachers.

Chalkbeat. 6 of the 10 leading Democratic candidates say they will boost teacher diversity. Here’s how.   Strategy #1: Add and expand teacher-prep programs at colleges that serve many students of color Strategy. #2: Fund new kinds of teacher-prep programs Strategy. #3: Tackle prospective teachers’ financial challenges.

EducationWeek.
1) Michael Bennet Releases K-12 Plan, Says Education System Reinforces Inequality  Addressing student loan debt through a variety of proposals, including student loan forgiveness for teachers and other professionals in high-need areas… Improved teacher training and residency programs…
2) Teachers Nationwide Now Have Access to Open-Source Science Curriculum
3) Teachers Still Believe in ‘Learning Styles’ and Other Myths About Cognition   Boser said schools should provide accurate information on the science of learning through those channels, in an effort to combat these myths. But it should start in teacher preparation, he said. “Many schools of education don’t embrace the cognitive sciences,” Boser said. Yet they have a responsibility to prepare teachers to stay abreast of the current research in the cognitive sciences: “It would be weird if large swathes of American doctors believed in bloodletting,” he said.

NYTimes. ‘We are committing educational malpractice’: Why slavery is mistaught — and worse — in American schools.  Middle-school and high-school teachers stick to lesson plans from outdated textbooks that promote long-held, errant views. That means students graduate with a poor understanding of how slavery shaped our country, and they are unable to recognize the powerful and lasting effects it has had.

Phi Delta Kappan. Frustration in The Schools: Teachers Speak Out on Pay, Funding, and Feeling Valued. Education marks the sharpest difference. Ninety-two percent of teachers have a bachelor’s degree or higher, compared with 33% of the general public. Indeed, 58% of teachers have a master’s degree or higher vs. just 15% of all adults.

Washington Post.
1) People do grammar bad. Google’s AI is hear too help.   “Language is part of your heritage and identity, and if you’re using a tool that is constantly telling you, ‘You’re wrong,’ that is not a good thing,” said Paulo Blikstein, associate professor of communications, media and learning technology design at Columbia University Teachers College. “There is not one mythical, monolithical (English) … And every time we have tried to curtail the evolution of a language, it has never gone well.”
2) Teaching America’s truth”  For generations, children have been spared the whole, terrible reality about slavery’s place in U.S. history, but some schools are beginning to strip away the deception and evasions   Many teachers feel ill-prepared, and textbooks rarely do more than skim the surface. There is too much pain to explore. Too much guilt, ignorance, denial.
3) With substitute teachers in high demand, Montgomery County eases requirements   Hoping to broaden the pool of substitute teachers, school system officials have reduced requirements for the job: No longer is a bachelor’s degree the minimum. Now, applicants can qualify with an associate degree or 60 college credits.

 

NEW YORK STATE
Education Trust. New York’s Future Teachers: An Educator Equity Snapshot

Educator’s Voice. CFP: Vol. XIII – Students with Disabilities: Access and Equity in the School Community [deadline Oct. 1]

NYSATE/NYACTE. 2019 Annual Fall Conference Registration & nominations for Appleby Outstanding Teacher Educator Award [Oct. 17-19 Saratoga Springs]

NYSED
1) Office of Higher Education August Newsletter
a) Deputy Commissioner D’Agati Retiring
b) Guidance on Establishing and Strengthening Teacher Leadership in New York State
c) edTPA Passing Score Increasing in January 2020
2) Professional Standards and Practices Board for Teaching
a) New Website
b) May meeting minutes
c) Guidance on Establishing and Strengthening Teacher Leadership in New York State

 

NEW YORK CITY
Chalkbeat.
1) A reading ‘crisis’: Why some New York City parents created a school for dyslexic students   Teacher preparation programs aren’t consistently instructing educators on how to best teach children to read, experts said. Most public schools don’t have teachers with extensive training in methods such as Orton-Gillingham — and those that do have them are in short supply…. Jo Anne Simon (D-Brooklyn)…introduced a separate bill that would require all teacher prep programs to offer at least some instruction in phonics-based approaches.
2) New York’s gifted program is at the center of a new round of diversity debates. Here’s how it works.   In such a large system, differences abound among classrooms, said Celia Oyler, a professor at Teachers College who studies how to make classrooms inclusive and challenging for all kinds of learners… James Borland, a Teachers College professor who studies gifted education, questioned whether the programs are uniformly high quality or even that distinguishable for general education classes. 

Education Trust. New York’s Future Teachers: An Educator Equity Snapshot—Teachers College snapshot

Gotham Gazette. Why It’s Time to Re-think Bloomberg Era Gifted & Talented Programming in New York City[by TC Prof. A. S. Wells]   In the predominantly black and Latinx District 16 in Brooklyn, parents fought to bring G&T programs into their schools. Nevertheless, when a new program was added, it was underfunded and low quality in part because the teachers were not well prepared.

Teachers College.
1) Felicia Mensah Will Co-Edit the Journal of Research in Science Teaching   Mensah’s more recent publications include “Finding Voice and Passion: Critical Race Theory Methodology in Science Teacher Education,” published in February by the American Educational Research Journal. That article chronicles the journey of one of Mensah’s Teachers College students from childhood through her first full-time teaching appointment as an elementary school teacher in New York City.
2) Office of Teacher Education Presents “Relationships: The Difference-Maker” 2019 NYS Teacher of the Year Alhassan Susso, Sept. 19 7:00-8:30 [Open to the TC community]
3) Student Profile. Burnishing His Faculties: Music education student Camilo Suárez-Sánchez has been on the other side of the podium  Indeed, his one semester at TC has already changed the way Suárez-Sánchez teaches. “I’m making better decisions by approaching music education from a critical point of view.”
4) TC’s Stephen Silverman Becomes Dean of Florida Atlantic University’s College of Education   During his 21 years at TC, Silverman focused his research on teaching and learning (motor skill and attitude) in physical education … Silverman is the co-author of 18 books on teaching and research.
5) Teaching Residents @ Teachers College Fall Edition Newsletter