GLOBAL
EducationInternational. Morocco: Report highlights inequities caused by increased privatisation of education …as Abdous points out, the government has recently launched a partnership with Teach for Morocco, an organisation that places unqualified teachers with just a few weeks of training in public schools, undermining the status of the profession.
GovInsider. How Finland designed its schools around well-being Teachers are trained in developmental psychology and how children learn, so they’re able to monitor their students’ learning progress on a daily basis. They can then give more attention to struggling students. This has allowed Finland to do away with mandatory standardised tests to track students’ progress. Teacher education also empowers teachers to “have their researcher glasses on” as they teach and to constantly analyse if their methods are effective.
InsiderHigherEd. Open Society University Network Launched With $1 Billion Gift: Bard College and Central European University will lead new network focused on a range of education, social, civic, human rights and environmental issues. It will also be involved in teacher education programs that focus on student-centered learning…
NLTimes. More Students Opting To Become Teachers, Nurses This academic year the number of new students studying to become a teacher in primary education increased by 9.5 percent.
PressProgress. Doug Ford’s Government is Now Looking For Private Companies to Test Ontario Teachers’ Grade 3 Math Skills In the Ontario Legislature, Ford claimed “one-third of teachers at teachers’ college have failed grade 6 and grade 7 math.”
UNITED STATES
AACTE.
1) AACTE Member Alumni are Finalist for Teacher of the Year The Council of Chief State School Officers (CCSSO) have announced the four finalists for the 2020 National Teacher of the Year, all of whom are graduates of AACTE member institutions…
2) Diversity, Equity and Inclusion Video Series: Building the Special Education Pipeline
Arkansas Democrat Gazette. More people taking Arkansas teacher prep courses A recent three-year drop in the number of people enrolled in Arkansas teacher preparation programs appears to have bottomed out, and the number is on the upswing, preliminary data from the Arkansas Division of Elementary and Secondary Education show.
Chalkbeat.
1) Teacher pay, literacy, and mental health are priorities in Tennessee governor’s proposed budget To complement salary increases, Lee wants to set aside $8.5 million to launch the Governor’s Teaching Fellowship to provide college scholarships for 1,000 of “our best and brightest” students to train to become teachers.
2) What the Democratic presidential candidates have said about education: Teacher diversity Biden has said he would support dual-enrollment classes for high school students who are aspiring teachers, help teachers aides get their teaching licenses, and invest in HBCUs…Sanders says he would establish a fund to create and expand teacher-training programs at HBCUs and other minority-serving institutions… Warren has said she would boost teacher diversity by investing in HBCUs and other minority-serving institutions. She’s also said she would increase funding for Grow Your Own Teacher programs and teacher residency programs…
Commonwealth. Unpacking Riley’s teacher licensing proposal: It’s a crack in the armor of high-stakes testing. …would allow teachers who fail the MTEL state teacher licensing exam repeatedly to be vetted by experts who observe their actual work in the classroom… Massachusetts’ high-stakes licensing exam for teachers has resulted in a teaching force that does not resemble its students.
Education Week.
1) ‘Government Schools’ or Public Schools? Trump, DeVos, and the Language of School Choice The phrase has a long history in both scholarship about school choice and in messaging policies like private school vouchers, said Jeffrey Henig, a professor of political science and education at Columbia University’s Teachers College. “It’s had this history that’s been tied to one sector that’s really animated by economic principles and ideas… then there’s the part of that community that’s been animated by religious autonomy and prayer in schools. Those folks aren’t necessarily the same …Trump’s more instinctually reacting to the elements of that that are tied to protecting religion and the rights of institutions and individuals to act based on their religious beliefs.”
2) Tennessee Seeks New Teacher, Principal Requirements in ‘Science of Reading’ Programs that prepare teachers and principals would be required to teach evidence-based reading instruction “exclusively,” Schwinn said.
3) When Teachers Are Tough Graders, Students Learn More, Study Says The study found that teachers who attended selective colleges, hold graduate degrees, and have more experience tend to have higher grading standards. Teachers with graduate degrees have grading standards that are about 19 percent of a standard deviation stricter than teachers without higher degrees—possibly because they experienced a more challenging academic environment.
4) White Teachers Need Anti-Racist Therapy I have also found the work of Yolanda Sealey-Ruiz, a professor at Teachers College, helpful. In a process she calls “Healing Through the Archaeology of Self,” Sealey-Ruiz asks teachers to dig, reflect, and discover their identities in relationship to their students, systems of oppression, and how teachers can be interrupters of the status quo.
InsideHigherEd.
1) Prepping for a Community College Career. Doctoral education doesn’t necessarily prepare future faculty members for the jobs they’re likely to get at teaching-intensive institutions. A new grant program takes aim at that problem.
2) Simplifying Public Service Loan Forgiveness The U.S. Department of Education signaled it will make it easier to apply for Public Service Loan Forgiveness after the application process has faced criticism for being too unwieldy.
NEA Today.
1) Black History Month Lessons & Resources
2) Hawaii Educators Tackle Teacher Shortage With Ambitious 5-Year Plan … include partnerships to help fund college tuition for students who commit to teaching in public schools for 3-5 years; an expansion of “Grow Your Own” programs; and working with lawmakers and the private sector on ways to increase affordable housing for educators.
New York Times. The New York Times Learning Network now on YouTube
The 74. Q&A — Three Minutes With CZI’s Brooke Stafford-Brizard: What the Schools Best at Supporting the Whole Child Have in Common [interview with Greg Richmond] I started my career as a middle school teacher in the Bronx. I was a Teach for America corps member. I wasn’t an education major. I went back to graduate school after I taught middle school, and the program I focused on was cognitive sciences in education, a doctoral program in human development that was part of Teachers College at Columbia, and I learned the science of learning and development.
The Colorado Sun. Most Colorado public school teachers are white, but almost half of their students are not. Can the state close the gap? Through the legislation, aspiring teachers would be able to see more detailed data about Colorado’s educator preparation programs and understand what programs are best preparing candidates to test for their licensure
Washington Post. News Literacy Project The News Literacy Project empowers educators to teach students the skills they need to become smart, active consumers of news and other information and engaged, informed participants in civic life.
WDRB. JCPS, U of L launch residency program to get more teachers in local classrooms Hoping to address its teaching shortage and attract more minorities into the profession, Jefferson County Public Schools announced a new one-year residency program with the University of Louisville on Thursday.
WRAL. Kansas City using a fellowship program to train new teachers Not only is the program helping KCK retain teachers, it’s also helping the district recruit more diverse educators. About half of the teaching fellows come from diverse backgrounds. The district’s students are about 50% Latino, 27% black and 13% white.
NEW YORK STATE
Chalkbeat. Your child’s birth month matters: NYC students born in November and December are classified with learning disabilities at higher rates “New York’s Dec. 31 cutoff leads to unbalanced comparisons,” said Mariana Souto-Manning, professor at Columbia’s Teachers College and director of Early Childhood Education and Early Childhood Special Education Programs. “The misalignment of cut-offs across states and New York’s cut-off being Dec. 31 end up pressuring New York education leaders and teachers to push-down academic skills in ways that are inappropriate.”
New York State Education Department (NYSED)
1) Letter of Intent Posting (LOI)– New York State Teacher Performance Assessment Seeking LOIs from vendors to administer and report a program of Teacher Performance Assessment (TPA) for New York State (NYS) teacher candidates as part of the NYSTCE program. *For the NYSTCE’s TPA program, NYSED currently uses the edTPA, which is a subject-specific, summative assessment designed to measure the knowledge and skills that candidates need to effectively teach subject matter to students. In NYS, the edTPA is administered to approximately 10,000 NYS teacher candidates annually. The edTPA is a multi-state assessment that is administered to a large racially/ethnically and geographically diverse population of teacher candidates in 41 states and Washington D.C. Currently, 20 states have policies that require candidates to pass a teacher performance assessment in order to obtain teacher certification. The edTPA has been approved as a teacher performance assessment for certification purposes in all of these states. * Note: Pearson’s contract ends later this year.
2) Seeking Experts for Review of NYSTCE Bilingual Education Assessments
NYSED is seeking educators to participate in a review of the New York State Teacher Certification Examination (NYSTCE) Framework for the revised Bilingual Education Assessments. A Framework Review Conference is scheduled for March 13, 2020, at the Hilton Albany, 40 Lodge Street, Albany, NY 12207. The framework for the current assessment is available here. Nominate qualified educators* here: http://research.net/s/NYSTPNominate. NYSED would appreciate nominations by February 14, 2020. All nominees must complete the online application here. Participants receive an honorarium and, if needed, reimbursement for travel expenses and lodging.
NYSED Board of Regents.
1) Approved in January: Amendments to the Regulations Relating to the Addition of Subject Areas to the Limited Extension and Statement of Continued Eligibility (SOCE) for Certain Teachers of Students with Disabilities and Technical Amendments to the Limited Extension, SOCE, and Subject Area Extensions in Grades 7-12 for Certain Teachers of Students with Disabilities | Regents Memo HE (A) 1 *. More information is available about this requirement and the subject area certification options on NYSED’s Special Education Teacher Certification Options webpage.
2) Conditionally Approved in January: New York State K-12 Computer Science and Digital Literacy Learning Standards |Regents MemoP-12 (A) 4 and Supplemental Presentation: Standards are grouped into four grade bands: K-2, 3-5, 6-8, and 9-12 and students are expected to master the standards by the end of the last year of the grade band. SED plans to return to the Regents for final adoption by later this spring, kicking off a multi-year roll out with full implementation planned for September, 2024.
3) Meeting Agenda for February 2020
NEW YORK CITY
Chalkbeat. De Blasio adds little to his education agenda in ‘State of the City’ speech Also expanding: a program designed to recruit more men of color into city schools, a group that makes up less than 9% of the city’s teachers, state data show. Officials said the city would put 1,000 more men of color “on the path to becoming teachers” by 2022. That’s identical to a promise the city made to add 1,000 men of color into the teaching pipeline by 2018, a goal officials said they accomplished. The education department hired some 1,700 men of color over three school years, running through the end of the 2018-2019 school year, officials said.
Teaching Residents at Teachers College (TR@TC) Winter Edition Newsletter
