Month: December 2020

GLOBAL
Ethical Schools. Podcast: Dodging responsibility for our children: Reducing learning to test scores [ interview with S. E. Abrams of Teachers College]  …they pay their teachers better. They prepare them better. It’s a five-year master’s program. All right. So three years in content, two years in pedagogical theory and practice. And this has been since 1979 in Finland. They started phasing it in in 1972, but that’s not true in Denmark, Norway, Sweden, or the United States. 

MOFET Institute. 5 Things You Can Do with the International Portal of Teacher Education: The online resource of academic content on teacher training and teacher education

UNESCO.
1) 2020 Global Education Meeting highlights   …co-hosted by the Governments of Ghana, Norway and the United Kingdom. The 2020 GEM provided a unique platform for exchange among high-level political leaders, policy makers and global education actors to protect and rethink education in the current and post-COVID-19 world
2) Ensuring effective distance learning during COVID-19 disruption: guidance for teachers
3) Strengthening pre-service teacher education in Myanmar (STEM): phase II, final narrative report
4) Policy Paper Inclusive Teaching: Preparing All Teachers To Teach All Students

 

UNITED STATES
AACTE. 2020 Technology Implementation Grant Recipients.  Twenty AACTE member institutions were named recipients of the 2020 AACTE Video Observation Technology Implementation Grant, offered in partnership with Edthena. Institutions will implement the Edthena platform for the spring 2021 semester to enhance training for future teachers in methods courses, field observations, skill building, and group learning via advanced technology. 

Chalkbeat.
1) Illinois will start grading its teacher prep programs   The Illinois State Board of Education gave a preliminary look at its new Educator Preparation Profile on Monday. The report has data from 52 colleges and universities in the state that offer more than 700 approved teacher preparation programs. On average, the programs produce 5,000 teachers every year. However, local school districts need more educators in the classroom.
2) Newark schools are ramping up virtual tutoring. Will it be enough to combat pandemic learning loss?   The city school district plans to train students to tutor their peers, and it recently launched a “homework hotline” where teachers work one-on-one with students over video chat. Some Newark charter schools are also bringing in tutors, including corporate volunteers at one school and AmeriCorps members at another.

Education Week.
1) Author Interview: ‘No More Culturally Irrelevant Teaching’   In this first post of a two-part interview, Mariana Souto-Manning answers questions about the book she co-authored, No More Culturally Irrelevant Teaching. Mariana Souto-Manning is a professor of education at Teachers College, Columbia University in New York City…. Ethically, culturally relevant teaching demands that teachers have high expectations for their students and work to ensure that their brilliance is able to shine. Morally, culturally relevant teachers know that Black, Indigenous, and children of color are geniuses.
2) Eight Strategies for Engaging in Culturally Relevant Teaching   In this second post of a two-part interview, Mariana Souto-Manning answers questions about the book she co-authored, No More Culturally Irrelevant Teaching...it is incumbent upon us to engage in unlearning some of the myths we learned during our own schooling journeys–including our teacher-preparation programs..
3) How Betsy DeVos Bent the Nation’s Education Debate in Four Tense Years   … the education community’s backlash to Trump highlights how non-educators (DeVos never worked as a teacher or in education administration before becoming secretary) have dominated education policymaking and in many ways failed to support a frail K-12 system, said Sonya Douglas Horford, an associate professor of education leadership at Columbia University’s Teachers College.
4) Is This the End of ‘Three Cueing’?   …addressing the persistence of cueing is a challenge that goes beyond curricula, said Emily Solari, a professor of reading education at the University of Virginia’s Curry School of Education and Human Development. “We have generations of teachers who haven’t been provided adequate training on how to teach reading, through no fault of their own,” she said. 

Inside Higher Education. Essay on Dr. Jill Biden Prompts Uproar   The university released a statement that said, “Joseph Epstein has not been a lecturer at Northwestern since 2003. While we firmly support academic freedom and freedom of expression, we do not agree with Mr. Epstein’s opinion and believe the designation of doctor is well deserved by anyone who has earned a Ph.D., an Ed.D. or an M.D. Northwestern is firmly committed to equity, diversity and inclusion, and strongly disagrees with Mr. Epstein’s misogynistic views.”

Latino Rebels. Call Me Doctora: Why It Matters [by B. E Vega TC EdD ‘05]   Take the work of teachers, for example. The preconceived and misdirected notions that “everyone can be a teacher” is one of the most problematic ideologies that has persisted in capitalist societies such as the U.S. This is evident in the ways we treat and pay teachers. 

NEPC. Education Policy Satire is What We Need to End This Bear of a Year: New Onion-like humor book follows ridiculous education policies to their ridiculous extremes.

New York Times.
1) An Opinion Writer Argued Jill Biden Should Drop the ‘Dr.’ (Few Were Swayed.)   Dr. Biden, who holds two master’s degrees and a doctorate in education from the University of Delaware, is clearly proud of her job as a community college professor. When her husband, President-elect Joseph R. Biden Jr., takes office next month and she becomes first lady, Dr. Biden plans to continue teaching at Northern Virginia Community College, where she has been an English professor since 2009.
2) Wall Street Journal Opinion Editor Defends Item on Dr. Jill Biden.  After earning two master’s degrees, Dr. Biden received her doctorate in 2007 from the University of Delaware. She also taught English at a community college in Virginia, and has said she hopes to continue doing so while serving as first lady.

TNTP. A Broken Pipeline: Teacher Preparation’s Diversity Problem   In this report, we use data from the U.S. Department of Education to compare the demographics of each state’s teacher preparation program enrollees to that of public school students to calculate a “teacher prep diversity gap.” We also highlight individual teacher preparation programs that are–and are not–recruiting enough teahers of color to match student demographics in their states.

Wall Street Journal. Is There a Doctor in the White House? Not if You Need an M.D.  Any chance you might drop the “Dr.” before your name? “Dr. Jill Biden” sounds and feels fraudulent, not to say a touch comic. Your degree is, I believe, an Ed.D., a doctor of education, earned at the University of Delaware through a dissertation with the unpromising title “Student Retention at the Community College Level: Meeting Students’ Needs.”

Washington Post.
1) The Wall Street Journal column about Jill Biden is worse than you thought.   In her 50s, she acquired an EdD from the University of Delaware; she now works as a community college professor, and plans to continue through her husband’s presidential term.… as Merriam-Webster dictionary pointed out on Twitter, “doctor” comes from the Latin word for “teacher”; it was scholars and theologians who, back in the 14th century, used the title well before medical practitioners.
2) Two outsiders emerge as top contenders for Biden’s education secretary.  Fenwick has criticized education programs such as Teach For America — a nonprofit that for years recruited only new college graduates, gave them five weeks of summer training and placed them in high-need schools — and the move to inject competition and corporate-inspired management techniques into schools.

 

NEW YORK STATE
Commission on Independent Colleges and Universities. Announcing Dr. Drew Bogner as Interim President

Daily Gazette. Student-teacher experience also bends to pandemic’s will   Some districts and teachers have passed on student-teacher placements this year, complicating the work of teacher preparation programs working to ensure prospective teachers have the opportunity to meet teacher certification requirements during the pandemic. State officials eased the rules of the placements to enable student teachers to work in an all-remote environment, but interim state Education Commissioner Betty Rosa still had to send a letter to districts earlier this month encouraging them to maintain student-teacher programs this school year.

NYSATE/NYACTE. Dec. 4 Webinar: NYSED Educator Diversity Report

NYSED Board of Regents. December Meeting Higher Education Committee:
Matters Requiring Board Action:
*Proposed Amendment to the Regulations of the Commissioner of Education Relating to the Content Core Requirement in Computer Science Teacher Preparation Programs. Your Committee hears a proposal to amend Section 52.21 of the Commissioner’s regulations to revise the content core requirement in computer science teacher preparation programs from at least 12 semester hours of coursework that addresses five specified computer science concepts to at least 12 semester hours of coursework that provides a knowledge base for assisting students in meeting the new NYS K-12 Computer Science and Digital Fluency Learning Standards.
Matters Not Requiring Board Action:
*Principal Talent Management System. Your Committee heard Department staff provide an update and present a video on the field’s response to the new software system that enables district leaders to tap into a larger pool of School Building Leader certified individuals who have the experience and credentials that meet the needs of their schools.
Consent Agenda Items:
*The Board voted to amend Part 49 of the Commissioner’s Regulations relating to the authorization of New York Higher Education Institutions to participate in the State Authorization Reciprocity Agreement (SARA) and the approval of out-of-state institutions to provide distance education to New York residents.
*The Board voted to approve the reappointment of Theresa Reynolds, administrator member and PSPB P-12 co-chair, to the State Professional Standards and Practices Board for Teaching, for a four-year term beginning December 31, 2020 and ending December 30, 2024.

NYSED Office of Curriculum and Instruction. Subscribe to email notification service that directly provides educators important information relevant to their area of certification and assignment.

Spectrum News. Calls for Cuomo to Sign Legislation Loosening GPA Requirements for Teachers   Under current state law, if a student wants to be accepted into a graduate-level teacher and educational program, they must achieve at least a 3.0 minimum grade point average. Patty Pion [TC EdD in progress], who has been a teacher now for 19 years, says when originally she tried to apply for the master’s teaching program she did not have the grades and this almost kept her from being a teacher.

The College of Saint Rose. Saint Rose to discontinue academic programs as part of proactive plan to address financial challenges  …a plan to reduce academic expenses by $5.97 million, including the closure of 16 unique bachelor’s degrees, six unique master’s degrees, and three certificate programs: Music Education K-12 (BS), Mathematics: Adolescence Education (BS and BS/MSED in Special Education),  Biology: Adolescence Education (BS and BS/MSED in Special Education),  Higher Ed Leadership and Administration (MSED), Literacy grade 5-12 (MSED), Literacy birth-12 grade (MSED)…

 

NEW YORK CITY
New York Daily News. NYC teaching force has grown less white — but still doesn’t match student body, city data shows    The percentage of white teachers dipped from 59% when de Blasio took office in 2014 to 56% last school year, according to a first-of-its kind report on teacher demographics mandated by legislation from the City Council… Officials credit the uptick to the NYC Men Teach initiative and alternative certification programs like New York City Teaching Fellows, which have higher shares of teachers of color.

Teachers College.
1) Imagining and Re-Imagining Teaching, Becoming and Being Teacher Educators: A colloquium series.  A colloquium about what the doctoral teacher education specialization is about and what are the graduates and students in the program doing. [Noon EST Feb 5 & Feb. 12]
2) It All Goes Back to Relationships: The Peace Corps Fellows Program’s success reflects three longstanding associations   …relationship at the heart of the Peace Corps Fellows Program is the one between TC and the Peace Corps itself. The two organizations have been intertwined since the early 1960s, when TC launched a teacher training program in East Africa that was an inspiration and model for President Kennedy’s Peace Corps. TC and the Peace Corps rekindled their relationship in 1985 when TC offered Returned Peace Corps volunteers tuition scholarships to fulfill their commitment to service at home in local communities, thus creating the inaugural program for Fellows USA, later known as the Coverdell Fellows Program.
3) Setting the Record Straight on Culturally Responsive Teaching   In the first of two interviews in Education Week, Teachers College’s Mariana Souto-Manning, Professor of Early Childhood Education and co-author of No More Culturally Irrelevant Teaching: Not This But That (Heinemann 2018), addresses misconceptions about the nature of several related teaching strategies for honoring the knowledge of Black, Indigenous and people of color (BIPOC).
4) To Educate or Legislate?: For master’s degree student Katie TerBush, that is the question   For TerBush, TC’s program in Elementary Inclusive Education has offered a unique opportunity to combine her interests in policy and teaching… She also did volunteer work this past fall with TC Director of Governmental Relations Matthew Camp and the ad hoc group Advocacy Academy, assisting TC students in writing to members of Congress to ask them to protect graduate student aid. 
5) Teaching Residents @ Teachers College. Professional Learning and Events of Interest: Mid-December 2020
*Come Celebrate With Us!
* Student-Centered Events
*Professional Learning
* Wellness

GLOBAL
European Conference on Educational Research (ECER). Call for Proposals. “Education and Society: expectations, prescriptions, reconciliations” 6-10 September 2021 [deadline 31 Jan.]

Korea Herald. AI education to begin in high schools next year   In order to strengthen teachers’ AI-related competencies, the government will ensure that AI-related content is included in basic and information and computer teaching courses. In a relevant move, it will push to have graduate schools of education offer AI reeducation programs to about 5,000 incumbent teachers by 2025. 

The Sector. Teacher training programs to be fast tracked in Victoria to combat workforce shortages   While the measure is primarily focused on supporting schools to employ local teachers to work in hard-to-staff roles in outer-metropolitan, rural and regional locations, in areas such as STEM, languages, applied learning and specialist education, it will also help early childhood educators become teachers as part of the roll-out of Three-Year-Old Kindergarten.

UNESCO. Global Education Monitoring (GEM) report, 2020. Latin America and the Caribbean: inclusion and education: all means all   70% of countries in the region provide for teacher training on inclusion in laws or policies, in general or for at least one group, and 59% provide teacher training for special education needs in laws, policies or programmes…

 

UNITED STATES
AACTE.
1) AACTE Announces 2021 Annual Meeting Keynote Speakers  Bettina L. Love: Speaker Spotlight Session Presenter; Michael Beschloss: Closing Keynote Speaker 
2) Leading and Engaging Faculty in Teacher Preparation Reform: The Role of Deans [Webinar: Dec. 16, 12:00pm EST]
3) Leveraging Teacher Candidates as Assets During the Pandemic: A Win-Win for All   Last month, AACTE partnered with CCSSO, the Center on Great Teachers and Leaders at the American Institutes for Research, and the CEEDAR Center to discuss how teacher candidates can be leveraged as assets for PK-12 districts navigating online learning and uncertainty during the pandemic.

Barron’s. America’s Students Are Struggling. Biden Needs to Unite Us Behind Them.   Millions of highly skilled Americans with real skills honed in a range of related professions can be recruited to become second-career teachers provided with the education content and skills. And far more teachers and principals need to be people of color. Students can’t learn unless we focus on improving teacher quality, which is essential especially given the enhanced demands on the profession.

EdSource. Less siloed, more inclusive: Changes to special education teacher preparation expected to have big impact on schools   Last month, the California Commission on Teacher Credentialing approved the latest in more than a dozen changes to the requirements for credentialing aspiring special education teachers.

EDWeek. How to Bring ‘Surprise and Delight’ to Virtual Teacher Training During COVID-19   No matter the content, connections to careers and real world applications exist. Museums, national parks, zoos, and more that rely on field trip events are looking for ways to connect with classrooms virtually. Teachers simply need to find the education contact at these locations and learn more about what opportunities exist or be willing to brainstorm with the organization to design a personalized event for their students.

InsideHigherEd. Biden’s Pick to Head Economic Advisors Seen as Sympathetic to Loan Borrowers   Cecilia Rouse… found that holding student debt made it more likely for students to choose high-paying careers and eschew lower-paying ones like teaching.

NEA News. How Student Debt Cancellation Would Help Educators Breathe: NEA and other advocacy organizations are urging President-elect Joe Biden to immediately cancel federal student loan debt as an act of racial justice and economic advocacy.   For teachers, who are paid less than similarly educated professionals, it’s a particular burden, and it’s especially severe for teachers of color who often borrow more to pay for college. Debt cancellation would honor the decades of financial sacrifice that educators make to serve students, and also help to recruit and retain future teachers into the profession, educators say.

NYTimes. Pantyhose and Trash Bags: How Music Programs Are Surviving in the Pandemic   at New Mexico State University …Mr. Vigil’s first student teaching position, critical for the degree in music education he is seeking, was canceled….In Missouri, Nevaeh Diaz, who graduated from North Kansas City High School in May, is now studying music education at Missouri State University.

 

NEW YORK STATE
EdWeek. Biden Might Please the K-12 World by Picking an Education Secretary From Outside It   It’s also possible that Biden’s pick could have experience in both K-12 and higher education. Betty Rosa, New York’s interim state education commissioner, has been on a few wish lists, including that of incoming Democratic congressman and former public school principal Jamaal Bowman, of New York. Rosa, who started her career teaching English-language learners, has also taught graduate-level courses and serves as the president of the University of the State of New York.

InsideHigherEd.  Jim Malatras, president of Empire State College, part of the State University of New York system, has been named chancellor of the SUNY system.

NYSATE/NYACTE.  Open and Joint Board Meetings, Award Presentations [4pm Dec. 10]

NYSED Office of Higher Education November Newsletter.
*Board of Regents November Items Definition Of University
*New York State Teacher Certification Examinations (Nystce) Test Development Activities  The revised Content Specialty Tests (CSTs) in Dance, Music, Theater, and Visual Arts became operational on November 9, 2020.

New York State Legislature. On Dec. 3rd, the Cumulative Grade Point Average Legislation, S.7117 (Sanders)/A.9750 (Glick), was delivered to the Governor’s desk. This legislation would lift the requirement that prospective students in masters in teaching programs have a 3.0 undergraduate GPA to be considered for admission.  It would allow higher education institutions to consider alternative criteria in determining admissibility into graduate-level teacher and education leadership programs. The Governor will have until December 15, 2020 to either sign or veto the bill.  Comments: Dan Fuller, Deputy Secretary for Education, <[email protected]>; Michael Mastroianni, Assistant Secretary for Education <[email protected]>; Terry Pratt, assistant counsel to the Governor <[email protected]>

                                   Each institution registered by the department
     5  with graduate-level teacher and leader education  programs  shall  adopt
     6  rigorous  selection criteria geared to predicting a candidate's academic
     7  success in its program, including but not limited to, a minimum score on
     8  the graduate record examination or a substantially equivalent  admission
     9  examination,  as  determined  by  the  institution, and achievement of a
    10  minimum cumulative grade point average [of 3.0 or higher] in the  candi-
    11  date's  undergraduate  program;  provided, however, such graduate record
    12  examination or substantially equivalent admission  examination  require-
    13  ment  shall in no case apply to certified teachers or school administra-
    14  tors who already hold a graduate degree.

NEW YORK CITY
Queens Daily Eagle. AOC taps huge team of volunteers to tutor kids in Queens   U.S. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez has rallied a massive team of volunteers from across the country to provide free tutoring for kids in Queens and the Bronx… Last week, over 1,500 volunteers signed up… “So we are calling on retired teachers, college students or anyone interested in helping kids keep up with their studies to sign up and volunteer their time.”

Teachers College.
1) A Teaching Model for Trying Times: TC’s Peace Corps Fellows Program has much to teach an education system in crisis.  “The Peace Corps Fellows Program attracts teachers with a dedication to serving students’ needs, a devotion to social justice, a commitment to the pursuit of peace, and a passion for education,” says the Peace Corps Fellows Program’s Director, Elaine Perlman (M.A. ’92).… upon completing a three-month Intensive Summer Institute, the Jaffe Peace Corps Fellows work as full-time, certified teachers earning $58,300 annually, plus benefits, while earning their TC master’s degrees. Since 2019, thanks to the support of the Jaffe family and Teachers College, the Program has offered 100 percent tuition scholarships to up to a dozen Jaffe Peace Corps Fellows.
2) Teaching Residents @ Teachers College. Induction and Beyond. Holiday 2020 I TR@TC Induction Newsletter