GLOBAL
Global Partnership for Education.
1) Emergency teaching online: 7 steps to get started The first post focused on platforms and content, while this one focuses on preparing teachers and learners, instruction, and assessment.
2) How can Sierra Leone’s education response after Ebola help with the COVID-19 response? WhatsApp groups are great for sharing messages and giving support. Great work has been done in Bangladesh on recording teacher training support on SIM cards, which teachers can then insert into their own phone to watch.
InsideHigherEd. China’s Limitations on Distance Education Many popular online platforms — including Facebook, YouTube, Twitter and some Google functions — are largely inaccessible to teachers and students on the Chinese mainland… Educators are scrambling to upload materials to whatever platforms they find handy and usable, and many lack experience dealing with Chinese internet restrictions, widely described as the great firewall of China.
PDK International. PDK2020 and Educators Rising National Conference will be cancelled for 2020 We are currently evaluating options for holding virtual competitions and will notify everyone of the status by the first week in May.
UNITED STATES
AACTE. AACTE and EdPrep Lab Presents Webinar: Preparing Educators for Deeper Learning and Equity during COVID-19 [Zoom Registration for April 23 Webinar]
AACTE/SCALE. News From edTPA® Guidance for Candidates Impacted by School Closure; Announcements and Resources
Education Week.
1) The Coronavirus Just Might End School Privatization Nonsense [D. Ravitch OpEd] In most parts of the nation, public schools are the center of community life. They provide free meals, a nurse (usually), and instruction by certified teachers (unlike some charters and many of the religious schools that accept vouchers).
2) Still Mostly White and Female: New Federal Data on the Teaching Profession Fewer than half of teachers took a course in teaching English-learners before their first year teaching. The survey asked teachers if they took a graduate or undergraduate course in selected subject areas before their first year in the classroom. Here are the results for public school teachers:
79 percent took a course in lesson planning
77 percent in learning assessment
74 percent in classroom management techniques
70 percent in serving students with special needs
65 percent in serving students from diverse economic backgrounds
56 percent in using student performance data to inform instruction
41 percent in teaching English-language learners
3) Student-Teachers In Limbo During School Shutdowns. Here’s How States Can Help Teacher-preparation programs are scrambling to figure out how to support teacher-candidates while still meeting state requirements, which are starting to be revised in some places.
4) Teacher-Candidates Will Be Able to Take the Praxis Certification Test at Home Passing the Praxis exam is a requirement to be a teacher in about half of states, and the test is administered in a strictly controlled and timed environment. Testing centers are now closed—but starting in mid-May, teacher-candidates will be able to take a Praxis exam at home or another secure location, ETS spokeswoman Alescia Dingle said in an email.
Hechinger Report. Teachers need lots of training to do online learning well. Coronavirus closures gave many just days. Some colleges ask teachers to complete nine credits to receive a certificate in online teaching. Experts in the area say planning, designing and implementing a high-quality online course can take more than a year; the best training is customized to meet teachers where they are and build on their knowledge.
Information Age Publishing. Call for Chapters: Preparing Quality Teachers: Advances in Clinical Practice All inquiries and documents should be submitted via e-mail to Drew Polly at [email protected]. [deadline Mar. 15, 2021]
InsideHigherEd. The Higher Education Act and the Pandemic
NEA Today. Caught in Limbo, Aspiring Educators Ask for Flexibility In cases where states won’t waive requirements around PPTA or EdTPA, NEA Aspiring Educators are advocating for provisional licenses, which would be based on the recommendations of their college or university programs, so that they can be hired and then complete the testing during their first year of work.
Pearson Education. Subject-Specific Considerations for Completing edTPA in a Virtual Learning Environment As with all alternative arrangements, the teacher candidate must consult with their program faculty/instructor or building level administrator (for unaffiliated teacher candidates) and P–12 partners to determine if the VLE is an appropriate and a viable alternative for both the teacher candidate and P–12 learners.
Teacher Education Podcast. Equity in the Classroom with National Teacher of the Year, Rodney Robinson
Texas Public Policy Foundation. The Case for Escape Hatches from Higher Education Accreditation Some accreditors have used their quasi-regulatory power to impose ideologically controversial viewpoints. For example, in 2006, the National Council for Accreditation of Teacher Education received unexpected criticism of its standard requiring education schools to evaluate the “dispositions” of students toward vague concepts such as “social justice” and “diversity.”… “investing 18 months and hundreds of hours of faculty and staff time within the current flawed system is not useful”. Other fields have similar results. The “best teacher education programs tend not to pursue NCATE accreditation at all”
The74. Analysis: Keeping Teachers at the Center of the Classroom — Physical or Virtual — Is Key to Learning, Especially for Low-Income Kids The availability of digital high-quality curricula, online teacher training supports and interactive learning tools are essential for online learning. And the key is to keep the teacher at the center of the classroom, whether physical or virtual.
Washington Post.
1) Uncommon Schools are demanding for students and teachers. This teacher likes it that way. When Mike Taubman was studying to be a teacher, he encountered little love for public charter schools. In his progressive graduate education school, at Stanford University, the highest-achieving, no-excuses charters were often seen as a right-wing plot that chewed up young teachers and treated children like automatons.
2) How covid-19 has laid bare the vast inequities in U.S. public education …renowned teacher educator Gloria Ladson-Billings argued in a celebrated address to the educational research community, the “achievement gap” is a misnomer, implying an expectation that all children would perform equally at school. Instead, she suggested, we should train our collective gaze on the “education debt” — the damage done to particular communities by “the historical, economic, sociopolitical, and moral decisions and policies that characterize our society.”
NEW YORK STATE
Univ. of Albany School of Education. …in order to support a greater need for remote learning in K-12 education… launched the website Remote Education Resource Center, or RemoteEd.
NEW YORK CITY
Chalkbeat. NYC limits school spending to remote learning and other coronavirus expenses Mayor Bill de Blasio has proposed cutting the education department’s spending by over $221 million, including a reduction in next year’s school budgets and broader cuts to teacher training.
Teachers College. Online Learning Resources
