GLOBAL
BusinessWorld [Philippines]. On Education: Lessons from Finland and now, from Estonia If we are to glean any nuggets of wisdom from the experience of Finland and Estonia, we must elevate the quality of our education colleges and the training of our teachers. Our schools must offer the same high quality of education regardless of student economic status or background. Otherwise, Filipinos will remain sorry onlookers as other countries prosper and perform well in the international educational arena.
Global Education Monitoring Report. Arab States 2019 Global Education Monitoring Report | Migration, displacement, and education: Building bridges, not walls In Sudan… Teacher availability and qualifications constitute a major challenge in these states. Many teachers are volunteers, and around half are not trained as teachers. Training for the other half typically consists of a two week course at most. The Ministry of Education does not supervise, train or pay volunteer teachers. Schools and alternative learning centres recruit volunteer teachers, usually from the local community.
Hechinger Report.
1) The teacher’s role in “phenomenon-based learning”: Finland’s version of PBL requires teachers to strike a new balance in the classroom Teachers have to make sure students know the foundational knowledge they need on a given topic to even consider developing a research question within it. They need to teach students how to craft appropriate research questions that can lead to interesting and engaging, and hopefully even original, research opportunities.
2) U.K. to test ‘ed tech testbeds’ in real classrooms After all, change happens slowly in education. It can take months or years to train teachers to teach something differently and years more to see if those pedagogical changes lead to better outcomes for students.
Ottawa Citizen About to graduate, education students question fairness of new mandatory math test Education students across the province are campaigning against the math test for new teachers introduced by the Conservative government even while they cram to prepare for it.
Washington Post. International alliance unveils recommendations on teaching about the Holocaust — but only 12 U.S. states require it Experts and political leaders from more than 30 countries gathered in Luxembourg on Wednesday to declare their commitment to adopt an updated set of recommendations for teaching and learning about the Holocaust.
UNITED STATES
American Association of Colleges for Teacher Education (AACTE).
1) ‘Grow-Your-Own’ Efforts Continue at University of Central Florida District leaders, lead teachers, high school students, and university faculty who partner with them came together to share knowledge and best practices as it relates to the creation, growth, and results of High School Teaching Academies and “grow-your-own” pathways.
2) Identifying Barriers to Workforce Diversity in Education [Video]
3) The Reality of Segregation in Public Schools There needs to be a preemptive strike by those who prepare teachers. We need to teach candidates about race, class, gender, age, and other identifiers that foster discrimination within our teacher prep curricula. In order to be classroom ready, young teachers need to understand the differences that exist among the students they will be tasked to teach.
Associated Press (AP). Court hears suit arguing youth aren’t prepped for civic life Rhode Island, in particular, stands out because there is no requirement for students to take a civics course and no indication that teachers receive specialized training to teach the topic, among other issues, Michael Rebell, lead counsel and a professor at Teachers College, said last year.
Center for American Progress. What To Make of Declining Enrollment in Teacher Preparation Programs … reveals divergent state policies and regulations for how to address teacher shortages and exemplifies a worrying trend in the rapid growth of for-profit, non-IHE alternative certification programs. Policymakers should consider greater state and federal regulation of this sector, along with additional data collection, to help better understand not only the decline in enrollment in teacher preparation programs but also the characteristics of U.S. teacher labor markets more broadly.
Education Week.
1) Improving Reading Isn’t Just a Teaching Shift. It’s a Culture Shift She had learned a lot in her preparation about reading theories, but no specific protocols for teaching the subject. So she did what many teachers new to a grade do. She used the methods more seasoned colleagues told her to use…
2) Lucy Calkins, Creator of Reading Workshop, Responds to ‘Phonics-Centric People‘ Calkins’ program, the Units of Study for Teaching Reading, uses a workshop model. Teachers demonstrate the skills and habits that good readers have, and then students practice them on their own, with teachers acting as guides. The program takes a constructivist approach to education, minimizing direct instruction.
Edutopia. Lacking Training, Teachers Develop Their Own SEL Solutions Even if the necessary support exists, teachers don’t feel they have received enough training—either through teacher preparation programs or professional development opportunities—to address student needs.
Hechinger Report. What is it like to be a male teacher in early ed? One early childhood educator said he wanted to be a male role model for children. Others were drawn to teaching after becoming fathers. Several said they like teaching young children because it allows them to make a difference in their communities. These are just a few of the responses researchers received from a survey of male early childhood educators, the results of which were released recently by a team from the Borough of Manhattan Community College.
Inside Higher Ed. High Debt, Low Earnings: The Education Department for the first time has released earnings data for thousands of college programs at all degree levels. What do they show? At the associate level, Kelchen’s analysis found that the lowest-earning fields included criminal justice, health administration and teacher education.
Learning Policy Institute (LPI). Interactive Map: Understanding Teacher Shortages in California: A district- and county-level analysis of the factors influencing teacher supply and demand
New York Times.
1) Cory Booker Bets $100 Billion on Historically Black Colleges and Universities Mr. Sanders, who also proposed universal free public college and canceling all student loan debt, pledged to make similar investments in H.B.C.U.s with a focus on educating teachers and those in the medical field.
2) ‘It Just Isn’t Working’: PISA Test Scores Cast Doubt on U.S. Education Efforts Because the United States lacks a centralized system for teacher training or distributing quality instructional materials to schools, Professor Koretz said, states and districts did not always effectively carry out the Common Core or other initiatives.
3) There Is a Right Way to Teach Reading, and Mississippi Knows It: The state’s reliance on cognitive science explains why. [OpEd by E. Hanford] But a study in Mississippi several years ago showed that teachers were not being trained to use this model and that many professors and deans in colleges of education had never even heard of it.
NPREducation. A Dreaded Part Of Teachers’ Jobs: Restraining And Secluding Students She says she wishes more staff in her school had been trained so they knew how to de-escalate situations, and when, exactly, restraint or seclusion was really warranted.
Politico. Booker wants to invest $9B to help students studying early childhood education The legislation, called the Preparing and Resourcing Our Student Parents and Early Childhood Teachers Act, or PROSPECT Act, would establish federal grants aimed at providing free child care to student-parents attending qualifying institutions, as well as increasing and improving the infant-toddler educator workforce through mentorship and training.
The74.
1) A Decade of Decline at America’s Teacher Preparation Programs: New Numbers Show Enrollment of Aspiring Educators Has Fallen By More Than a Third Since 2010 The report also recommends collecting data in such a way so that the public can know how many teacher-prep programs are run by for-profit colleges or are chiefly online.
2) How Is the Education Workforce Structured? What Are the Pathways to an Ed Career? New Report Has Some Answers … we were struck by the sheer range of pathways that individuals can take within the field. Among our respondents, no two stories were the same. Recent graduates hoping to move into an education career and advance along a steady trajectory will find no clear signposts along the way: no external indicators that a given job will move them closer to their ultimate goals
Wall Street Journal. Students Press Unusual Argument in Court: a Constitutional Right to Civics: Lawyers for Rhode Island students argue the Constitution guarantees an education that prepares them to be capable citizens ‘‘We want the federal courts, and ultimately the U.S. Supreme Court, to declare there is a right to a basic quantity of education to prepare kids for capable citizenship,” said Michael Rebell, lead counsel for the plaintiffs and professor at Teachers College, Columbia University.
Washington Post.
1) Education Department puts hold on 5-day suspension of employee who provided The Post with budget information The proposal included cutting in half funding for college work-study programs, ending public-service loan forgiveness and cutting hundreds of millions of dollars that public schools could use for mental health, advanced coursework and other services.
2) Impeachment is difficult to teach. The case of President Trump provides real-time lessons … Kevin C. Walsh, president of the John Marshall Foundation, which trains teachers to deliver lessons on the U.S. Constitution. “When we look out and we see the battling forces that are trying to enlist the Constitution on their side, it wakes us up to the need for people to be educated.”
3) The best and worst education news of 2019 — and one item hard to categorize Most teachers polled in the respected annual PDK International survey said they would not want their children to become teachers.
4) ‘To embrace charter schools in 2020 is to embrace Betsy DeVos, Donald Trump,’ says black scholar who once led charters Black people need systemic change. We can’t allow the cry for charters to drown out the demands for school financing reform, better work conditions, higher teacher pay, universal pre-K, free college, teachers’ training and recruitment programs, stronger labor protections and workforce housing initiatives.
NEW YORK STATE
My Brother’s Keeper. Teacher Opportunity Corps II Spotlight: SUNY Old Westbury Interns
NYSED Board of Regents. Regents Meeting for December 2019
NYSED Office of Higher Education. November Newsletter
- Educator Diversity Report
- Assessment Vouchers for Certification Exams
- NYSTCE Field Testing and Test Development Opportunities
- edTPA Passing score increase for candidates who submit edTPA after Dec. 5
NEW YORK CITY
City Limits. Teacher Quality is a Key Ingredient of Racial Equity in NYC Schools To begin the process of desegregating NYC’s public schools, we need to first equip teachers for long-term efficacy in high-needs districts.
City University of New York. Statement By Chancellor Matos Rodriguez On Ratification Of CUNY’s Five-Year Contract With Professional Staff Congress The historic five-year deal benefits students at the nation’s premier urban public university and provides wage gains for the 30,000 full-time faculty, adjuncts and professional staff of CUNY’s largest union.
Teachers College.
Reading and Writing Project/L. Calkins. No One Gets to Own the Term “The Science of Reading” That is, just as many teachers are not prepared for the demands of teaching phonics, many are also not prepared to support the equally important skills of comprehension. They are also not well prepared to teach writing. They also are not well prepared to support English language learners. They also are not well prepared to teach culturally relevant curriculum. Clearly, teachers don’t enter the profession with all the knowledge they will need to rise to the challenges of their enormously complex field. We all need to be engaged in continuous learning.
