Category: Teacher Education

GLOBAL
Deutsche Welle. Millions of Germans have trouble reading and writing   Literacy issues that pop up in adulthood in immigrant and impoverished communities begin in the classroom, requiring a rethink in the way teachers are trained in dealing with at-risk groups, McElvany added… “We simply don’t equip our student teachers enough to deal with the various environments and the various challenges of reality later on.”

TES. Exclusive: Could overseas training help England’s teacher recruitment crisis?   A new overseas teacher-training scheme is being touted as a way of tackling the domestic recruitment crisis by promoting the career’s potential for international travel.

World Didac Association. University of Helsinki and HY+ embark on an extensive education project in Pakistan   The main objective of the project is to offer the University of Helsinki’s expertise in the development and change of the educational culture of a teacher education college in Pakistan. 

 

UNITED STATES
American Association of Colleges for Teacher Education.  AACTE Commends Increase of Teacher Quality Partnership Grant Funds in Draft Funding Bill    Among the programs seeing an increase in funding is the Teacher Quality Partnership (TQP) grant program, the only federal initiative dedicated to strengthening and transforming educator preparation at institutions of higher education.

American Educational Research Association. 2020 Annual Meeting Call for Paper and Session Submissions. San Francisco, April 17-21 [Deadline July 10]

Atlanta Journal Constitution. Will Georgia’s new dyslexia mandate make a difference?   Senate Bill 48, which Kemp signed Thursday, mandates dyslexia screening for every kindergartner. It also requires future teachers to learn the latest research about how to spot and help students who may have it.

Bloomberg. American Students Have Changed Their Majors: Health professions are in, education and the humanities are out. Here are some reasons for the shift.   Education degrees have been in a long decline, so to some extent what has happened is that women switched from teaching to health care.

Chalkbeat. Gov. Whitmer wants universal pre-K by the end of her four-year term. Will there be enough teachers?

Education Week.
1) Florida Governor Signs Divisive Bill Allowing for Armed Teachers   “Sworn police officers undergo extensive firearm training to respond to crisis scenarios, and we continue working on our skills and discipline throughout our careers. Teachers enter that profession to educate children, not to serve as school security,” Tony wrote in a letter to the school board.
2) History Instruction Indicted: Too Much Memorization, Too Little Meaning   But unlike some critics, who fault teacher training or weak course requirements, the report’s authors say bad curriculum is to blame. “Based on our analysis, this is not an issue of whether high school history teachers are adequately prepared or whether children today even study American history in school,” the foundation’s president, Arthur Levine, says in a statement.
3) We Need More Teachers of Color. Let’s Scrap Exams That Keep Them Out of the Classroom   A recent report estimates that each year, the exams screen out approximately 8,600 of 16,900 aspiring teachers of color. That exclusion rate is 27.5 percent higher than for white aspiring teachers. 

Hechinger Report. Twice exceptional, doubly disadvantaged? How schools struggle to serve gifted students with disabilities    Teachers need to be trained to recognize and understand children who are 2e. They need to try to remove the stigma that kids who have a disability cannot be smart.

Inside Higher Ed. Warren Zeroes In on Race   It’s notable that the Warren campaign released an analysis of what debt cancellation would mean for racial groups as well as different income brackets, said Judith Scott-Clayton, an associate professor of economics and education at Teachers College at Columbia University who has studied the racial patterns of student loan defaults.

Medium|Politics. Can Elizabeth Warren Fix Higher Education?  “What the public sees is rising tuition costs,” explains Judy Scott-Clayton, a professor of economics and education at Columbia Teachers College. “If tuition is going up every year, how can it be that institutions actually have fewer resources? The answer is that states have been systematically investing less in higher ed per student than they were 20 to 30 years ago.” This divestment has resulted in a tuition spike as schools raise their prices to recuperate some of the money lost.

National Center for Teacher Residencies. NCTR, Mississippi to Develop the Nation’s First State-Operated Teacher Residency   The National Center for Teacher Residencies has received a $649,366 grant from the W.K. Kellogg Foundation to support the Mississippi Department of Education in the development of the nation’s first state-run teacher residency.

U.S. News & World Report. Illinois Lawmakers to Consider New Teacher Testing Methods   Two bills are pending in the Illinois General Assembly that would pause or permanently eliminate a basic skills test for new teachers that some officials say has contributed to a statewide shortage of educators

Washington Post.
1) California is overhauling sex education guidance for schools — and religious conservatives don’t like it   Tony Thurmond, the state’s newly elected education secretary, said teachers will have to undergo training to learn how to present the material in class.
2) Kindergarten teacher: ‘Why our youngest learners are doomed right out of the gate’ — and a road map to fix it  I would like to borrow a profoundly important document from brilliant teacher, child specialist and pre-eminent teacher trainer, Jean Feldman. I believe that when we adhere to the Kindergarten Bill of Rights…we will no longer hear that our youngsters are disinterested, hating kindergarten, acting out and “failing” because they are not yet reading.

 

NEW YORK STATE
NYSATE/NYACTE. 2019 Annual Fall Conference Saratoga Springs, October 16-18 [Proposals due May 15] 

NYSED Board of Regents. May Meetings
P-12 Education/Higher Education Joint Meeting
Classroom Academy – A Teacher Residency Program Update Presentation on the Teacher Residency Program in Queensbury, New York.

Higher Education
Proposed Amendment to Sections 52.21 of the Regulations of the Commissioner of Education Relating to the Requirements for Transitional D Programs that Lead to School District Leader Certification
Proposed Amendments to Section 80-6.1 of the Regulations of the Commissioner of Education Relating to Continuing Teacher and Leader Education (CTLE) for Educators in Nonpublic Schools
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)
Proposed Amendment to Section 80-5.17 of the Regulations of the Commissioner of Education Relating to the Conditional Initial Certificate Requirements

Definition of “University” in New York State

NYSED News. State Education Department Announces Recipients of 2019 Vice Chancellor Emerita Adelaide L. Sanford Scholarships   Also since 2016, NYSED awarded $9 million in Teacher Opportunity Corps II (TOC) grants to increase the participation rate of historically underrepresented and economically disadvantaged individuals in teaching careers. NYSED awarded grants to 16 colleges and universities…

Times Union. Schools struggle to find teachers for English language learners   The report maintains that a state requirement, which mandates that English language learners receive English as a new language instruction, has contributed to the shortage of qualified teachers. It concludes that incentives could be offered by school districts to encourage teachers to get dual-certification so they can fill this need.

 

NEW YORK CITY
Chalkbeat. I teach pre-K in NYC. My job is not babysitting. This is what I really do and why pay matters.   Entrieri seized the opportunity, completing her master’s and passing the certification exams required to continue teaching…But the process of becoming a teacher, she says, has left her with mountains of debt. And because her job doesn’t offer benefits, she is living paycheck-to-paycheck, forced to make tough choices about whether to pay back her student loans or purchase health insurance. 

Teaching Residents @ Teachers College. May 2019 | Spring Edition Newsletter

GLOBAL
BBC News. Lack of teachers hampering Irish-medium secondary sector  Mícheál Mac Giolla Gunna, head teacher of Coláiste Feirste in west Belfast – the largest Irish-medium school in Northern Ireland with about 650 pupils – said there was an urgent need to plan for the training of new teachers to meet the needs of a rapidly growing sector.

Education International. Iraq: Teacher union invests in facilities to improve education in Kurdistan   KTU President Abdulwahed Mohamed reaffirmed that his education union should “… be able to provide teachers with the best possible services in terms of holding training courses, improving cultural and scientific levels, and generating interest in research focusing on persons with special needs as well as focusing on environmental protection”.

Inside Higher Ed. Iceland’s Missing Male Students: Sixty-four percent of students are women, the highest percentage of any European nation.  Courses with scarcely any men, such as playschool teacher education and social service counseling, have started to award male-only scholarships to redress the balance, explained Heijstra.

Washington Post. Quebec ban on religious symbols would fall heavily on hijab-wearing teachers   New teachers would be affected most by the bill… Chahira Battou is set to graduate this spring from teachers college. “The thing is that if I submit to the law, and I remove my scarf when I go to teach, that is when I become a submissive woman,” said Battou, 29.

 

UNITED STATES
American Association of Colleges for Teacher Education (AACTE). 1) Call for Entries: 2020 AACTE Awards; 2) Call for Board and Standing Committee Nominations; 3) Call for Proposals, Reviewers for 2020 AACTE Annual Meeting “Disrupting Inequities: Educating for Change” [Login required]

AP. School safety at forefront of teacher rally after shooting  RALEIGH, N.C…The nearly $24 billion spending package includes money to raise teacher pay on average by 4.6%, with increases weighted toward the most veteran educators. A 10% salary supplement for teachers with master’s degrees, phased out earlier this decade, would be restored.

Atlanta Journal Constitution. Researcher says we lose too many teachers and lack of autonomy is a big factor   Since the late 1980s, the number of minority elementary and secondary teachers has increased by over 100%, outpacing growth in the number of nonminority teachers and outpacing growth in minority students.

Chalkbeat. With loan forgiveness and stipends, Colorado lawmakers hope to lure teachers to rural districts   All told, state education officials say there are 800 more people in the “pipeline,” preparing for teaching careers, than there were two years ago. But Colorado will need a lot more people to enter teaching — and stay in the classroom — to fill vacancies and replace thousands of educators expected to retire in the coming decade.

Education Week.
1) 4 Things You Need to Know About ‘Free College’ Proposals
2) A RedForEd Wave: Teachers in North and South Carolina Leave Classrooms in Protest   The protest was organized by the N.C. Association of Educators, with support from the grassroots group Red4EdNC. Teachers are asking for a 5 percent raise, extra compensation for advanced degrees…
3) Battle Over Reading: Parents of Children With Dyslexia Wage Curriculum War   In Arkansas, lawmakers have passed at least eight laws in the past seven years. The state is changing everything, including dyslexia screening, reading instruction, and teacher training and licensing.
4) College of Education Now Prepares Teachers in the Science of Reading [YouTube video; Univ. of Central Arkansas]
5) Defying Trump, Democrats Propose $4.4 Billion Boost for Education Spending  Trump wants to eliminate three prominent department programs: state grants for educator training, after-school activities, and block grants for student support and academic enrichment. Democrats want more money for all three… 

Hechinger Report.
1) 7 in 10 students aren’t writing at grade level — we can do better   In addition, a recent study from Teachers College, Columbia University, analyzed the implementation of WITsi in New York City’s most struggling Renewal High Schools between 2014 and 2016, and found that WITsi students were almost two and a half times more likely to be on track to graduate than students in schools without the approach.
2) Teachers go to school on racial bias   “Teachers want and need a space to talk about this. It feels useful. You feel the practicality of it.” This kind of dialogue, she said, was largely absent from her graduate school teacher-training program, where issues of race and bias were rarely mentioned.

NEA Today. Rodney Robinson Named 2019 National Teacher of the Year   Robinson… earned a bachelor’s degree in history from Virginia State University and a master’s degree in administration and supervision from Virginia Commonwealth University. 

NPR. Teachers Begin To See Unfair Student Loans Disappear   In exchange for agreeing to work in low-income schools, aspiring teachers could get federal Teacher Education Assistance for College and Higher Education (TEACH) Grants from the department to help pay their way through college. But those grants were often unfairly turned into loans that teachers had to pay back… Now, that fix has been expanded, and thousands more teachers are likely to get help.

New York Magazine. Years of Low Pay Helped Spark the Teacher Strike Wave   …NEA president Lily Eskelsen-Garcia said that when the union asks colleges of education why they’d experienced what she calls “a precipitous drop” in the number of prospective teachers, they cited low pay and student loans as deterrents.

New York Times.
1) Elizabeth Warren Wants to Cancel Student Loans. Critics Wonder if That’s the Right Solution.  In a post on Medium announcing the plan on Monday, Ms. Warren talked about how she, as an aspiring young teacher, had paid just $50 in tuition a semester at the University of Houston. “I could afford it on a part-time waitressing salary,” she said.
2) Still Separate, Still Unequal: Teaching about School Segregation and Educational Inequality

Penn State News. New process of teaching literacy to future teachers gets rave reviews   The PDS program is a collaboration between the College of Education and State College Area School District (SCASD) in which student teachers follow the schedule of a full academic year from August to June. The SCASD instructional coaches learned the collaborative learning experience at Teachers College at Columbia University in New York City.

Phi Delta Kappan. Toward equality of educational opportunity: What’s most promising?  In teaching, not all preparation institutions must meet rigorous standards. And not all candidates for teaching must meet rigorous standards before being allowed into the classroom. In other words, the teacher credentialing system is rife with loopholes, resulting in a teaching force of varied and uncertain quality.

Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. Clarion University will relaunch a stand-alone School of Education   “This is necessary to be able to address the existing teacher shortage in special education, math and sciences, and the looming teacher shortage in all areas,” said Pam Gent, provost. “It is also necessary as we begin to pilot new and innovative ways to educate future teachers…”

Univ. of Texas at San Antonio. UTSA Teacher Residency Program produces first graduates

U.S. Dept. of Education. Teacher Quality Partnership (TQP) Grant Program CFDA Number 84.336S [Deadline for Transmittal of Applications: May 20, 2019]

U.S. News & World Report. Teacher Salaries Fell 4.5% Over the Last Decade  “When we go into colleges of education and ask them why they’ve seen a drop in the number of people applying to teacher colleges, they keep saying that these are prospective teachers who have to look at the pay they are going to receive as new teachers. And they are saying, ‘We won’t be able to pay off our student loans for that,'” Eskelsen García said. “People who want to be teachers are going into other professions because of the pay gap.”

 

NEW YORK STATE
Chalkbeat. New York State leaders want teachers to spend more time learning how to help English learners   Right now, students studying to be teachers in New York are required to spend six semester hours learning about language acquisition and literacy. Last month, state education policymakers proposed requiring teacher preparation programs to dedicate three of those hours to how English language learners learn and acquire language.

NYSED Office of Higher Education. April Newsletter
1) New Director of Teacher Certification
2) Expiring CST Safety Nets
3) Regulatory Amendment: Student Teaching Requirement
4) Proposal: Language Acquisition and Literacy Development Coursework Requirement
5) Proposal: School Counselor Education Program Registration Requirements and Certification
6) Proposal: Professional Learning and CTLE for Teachers Who Work with Teacher Candidates

New York State Register.
1) The public comment period is now open on a proposed amendment to extend the edTPA safety net for candidates who receive a failing score on the Library Specialist edTPA.
2) The public comment period is now open on a proposed amendment to extend the Educational Technology Specialist Content Specialty Test (CST) safety net expiration date.

Professional Standards and Practices Board for Teaching. April meeting agenda

 

NEW YORK CITY
Chalkbeat. In a last-minute reversal, union representing thousands of NYC pre-K teachers calls off strike — for now   Teachers in community-run programs earn salaries starting around $42,000, while those in traditional public schools, who are represented by the United Federation of Teachers, start around $59,000. Regardless of the setting they work in, teachers are ultimately required to earn the same credentials and perform the same work.

NYCDOE. 2019-2020 Calendar [with corrected dates]

Washington Post. Teacher Appreciation Week is coming, and this educator is starting to cringe: ‘I’ll trade appreciation for respect any day’  In New York City, most teachers attain master’s degrees before they ever begin work or finish them within the first few years… We are not seen as the “experts” in the very area that we have not only studied fastidiously, but also proved ourselves to be successful.

GLOBAL
EducationHQ. Many more entering and staying in the profession: Ministry data   But despite the projected retention rates for teachers, New Zealand Educational Institute Te Riu Roa president Lynda Stuart said there was still work to be done in making teaching a viable long-term career choice.

Global Partnership for Education. We must support our teachers   Countries have different definitions of what it means to be ‘trained’, making it difficult, if not impossible, to draw international comparisons. Some countries require an advanced university degree that can span five years of education. For others, a three-month training program seems to be enough.

Longfellow Foundation. Global Teacher Education Fellows Program [deadline: May 1]

New York Times. Artist Ai Weiwei Takes Aim at State Violence in Mexico With Legos Entitled “Reestablishing Memories,” the work also features a timeline of the 2014 abduction of the trainee-teachers from the all-boys Ayotzinapa Rural Teachers College in southern Mexico and the government’s widely disparaged investigation into the case.

 

UNITED STATES
American Association of Colleges for Teacher Education. Call for Board and Standing Committee Nominations Now Open

Association of Teacher Educators. 2019 ATE Summer Conference, Burlington VT, July 26-30. CFP: due May 15 

California State University. Recruiting and Preparing Teachers for Diverse Classrooms.

Chalkbeat. Are teachers unions helping or hurting schools? Here’s what the newest research tells us   Researcher Jason Baron compared trends in teaching degrees earned in Wisconsin after 2011’s Act 10 to those trends in nearby states. The Wisconsin law appeared to lead to a 20 percent increase in the share of college students training to become a teacher…

EducationDive. Report: Overall pre-K spending grows, but few states make gains in quality, enrollment   Especially when pre-K teachers have bachelor’s degrees and are certified to teach, they often move on to jobs in the elementary grades where they can earn more money — which contributes to high turnover rates in early-childhood programs.

EdSource. Teach for America targeted as legislation seeks to limit inexperienced teachers in California: Assemblywoman says new teachers with little training can’t adequately serve neediest students

EducationWeek.
1) More Education Studies Look at Cost-Effectiveness   The Center for Benefit-Cost Studies in Education, at Teachers College, Columbia University, looked at intervention studies supported by IES. In 2014, only two of 18 research evaluations planned to analyze the costs of their interventions. Two years later, that was up to seven of 22 funded studies, but they included few details.
2) Where Will the Next Teacher Protests Take Place?   North Carolina teachers will protest in Raleigh on May 1, calling for a 5 percent pay raise, more support staff in schools, extra pay for advanced degrees, and an expansion of Medicaid to improve student health. 

Forbes. Think You Want To Be A Teacher? Read This First   But one reason the system is broken is that teacher education programs are broken. There’s a wide gulf between what cognitive scientists have found about how children learn and what teachers—and their supervisors—have been led to believe. 

NEAToday. Public Education ‘Ground Zero’ in Radical Right’s Assault on Democracy, Says Historian  Buchanan grew up in rural Tennessee, attended public schools and went to a local teachers’ college. Why did he have such animus towards public goods and America’s existing social contract when he was a direct beneficiary of them?

NCEE. Leading High-Performance School Systems: Lessons from the World’s Best, Apr. 23 1-5pm [incl. Susan Fuhrman, Past-President, Teachers College]

The Ada News. Klaric to deliver ECU’s eighth annual Lockmiller Lecture on Wednesday   Klaric will present some of her recent findings about ECU alumnus and artist Leon Polk Smith… Born in 1906 in the Chickasaw Nation in Indian Territory, Smith attended what is now ECU and graduated in 1934 with a bachelor of arts degree in English. He began teaching primary and secondary school in Oklahoma while completing a master’s degree in art and educational psychology at Columbia University’s Teachers College.

The Atlantic. Why American Students Haven’t Gotten Better at Reading in 20 Years   While some elementary teachers have embraced the approach advocated by the NAEP panel, it’s clear that most have been trained to in methods that aren’t supported by research, and that many are resistant to change

Washington Post.
1) Teaching is a marathon for this D.C. educator. It’s her students who cross the finish line.   Harper, a native of Silver Spring, never intended to be a teacher. But after completing a few legal internships while attending Atlanta’s Spelman College, she decided the best way to help was to reach children before they became entangled in the justice system. She graduated from college in 2012 and joined the nonprofit Teach for America program in Houston.
2) Why this South Carolina teacher quit mid-year: ‘The unrealistic demands and all-consuming nature of the profession are not sustainable’   There was also bad news about future teachers: The number of South Carolina students who completed a teacher education program has declined by 32 percent since 2012-2013, it said.

 

NEW YORK CITY
Bank Street GSE.
1) Bank Street Graduate School of Education Receives Grant to Launch new TESOL Residency Program   This spring, the Bank Street Graduate School of Education received a grant from the Walton Family Foundation to help support the launch of a new Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages (TESOL) Residency Program. The two-year program aims to support accessible, high-quality teacher preparation for educators pursuing TESOL certification while increasing diversity in the profession.
2) New ONLINE Master’s Degrees in Early Childhood & Childhood Education

Center for Innovation in Teacher Education and Development (CITED). Teatro and Culture Circles: Transformative Teacher Education Pedagogies [Teachers College, Apr. 30] … underscore the particular promises of critical pedagogies, like Freirean Culture Circles and Boalian Theatre of the Oppressed, for preparing asset-oriented teacher educators, particularly given trends in teacher education to value reductive notions of teacher educator knowledge and practice.

Gotham Gazette. As Early Childhood Educators Consider Strike, New York City Must Achieve Pay Parity   CBO-based pre-K teachers with bachelor’s degrees earn significantly less than their counterparts with the Department of Education (DOE) — and often work more hours for a longer school year. A CBO-based certified teacher with five years of experience makes approximately $42,000, while DOE counterparts with the same credentials earn closer to $60,000. 

 

GLOBAL
Center on International Education Benchmarking (CIEB). Building Systems that Work for Young Children[May 16] Join world-renowned early childhood researcher Sharon Lynn Kagan for the release of The Early Advantage 2: Building Systems That Work for Young Children

Daily Mail. Teacher at Catholic London secondary school is suspended after it’s discovered he ‘CAN’T READ or write’   Faisal Ahmed was given the green light by elite teacher training program TeachFirst despite having ‘extreme difficulty with handwriting’, problems with reading and understanding ‘written tests’.

The Telegraph. How to become a teacher – what you need to know   If we have learnt anything from Matilda’s Miss Honey or Mr Keating from Dead Poets Society, it’s that teachers can have a big impact on their students’ lives. Whether you are heading to university or tired of your desk job, you can train to become a teacher and pursue a more fulfilling and active career.

Washington Post. Mexico to receive UN help in missing students case   U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights Michelle Bachelet called the case of the students from the teacher’s college in Ayotzinapa “paradigmatic.”

 

UNITED STATES
AACTE.
1) 2019 Washington Week [June 2-5]
2) Call for Proposals, Reviewers for 2020 AACTE Annual Meeting “Disrupting Inequities: Educating for Change”

Anchorage Daily News. UA regents vote to eliminate UAA’s teacher preparation programs after accreditation loss   Instead of reapplying for accreditation, which could take up to three years, UA President Jim Johnsen recommended last week that regents eliminate the seven teacher preparation programs at UAA. The UAA chancellor, the UAA Faculty Senate and the UAA student government have all supported seeking re-accreditation.

Brookings Inst. The teacher diversity gap is literally inherited.  Using nationally representative surveys of the cohorts that graduated high school in the late 1970s and early 1980s, we show that compared to other children, the children of teachers are more than twice as likely to become teachers themselves. This is true for the sons and daughters of white teachers and for the daughters of black teachers; the heritability of teaching is even stronger for the daughters of Hispanic teachers. 

BuzzFeed. Kamala Harris Wants Her Teacher Pay Raise Proposal To Bring Young Black Americans To The Profession — And To Her Campaign  “I want some young student at Morehouse or Howard who is excelling in science to be able to follow their passion and go teach in the neighborhood middle school and not worry about how they’re going to put food on their own table or pay their bills,” Harris said Friday. 

Chalkbeat. Feeling ‘cheated’ by her own schooling, this award-winning N.J. math teacher tried to become the teacher she never had   But when she decided to pursue teaching, she saw that her hardships were also an advantage. She would be able to connect with students from backgrounds similar to hers in a way that many of her peers might not be able.

Council of Great City Schools. English Language Learners in America’s Great City Schools  According to the Education Commission of States (ECS), however, fewer than 30 states have state policies or department of education guidelines requiring teachers of ELLs to have specialized certification. According to the 2014 ECS report, of the 20 states that had some type of requirement for teachers of ELLs, 14 of them required an ELL-related endorsement and only six required an ELL-related license or certification.

EducationDive. AERA ’19: Testing policies are the ‘Jim Crow of education,’ association president suggests   [TC Prof.] Wells said the test score gap, teaching to the test score gap through “dumbing down the curriculum,” and discipline policies that exclude students from school are policies that target low-income communities of color and amount to a sort of “Jim Crow of education.”

Education Week.
1) Betsy DeVos: ‘Teaching Has Gotten a Bad Beating Over the Years‘   …DeVos said that part of the reason there isn’t a huge pipeline of teachers is that the profession has “gotten a bad beating over the years.” She suggested states take steps to offer advancement to effective teachers and find ways to help teachers who “may be better in a different profession to find that profession more quickly.”
2) Democrats Seeking White House Make Teacher-Friendly Pitches  Sen. Cory Booker of New Jersey called for helping teachers by retiring their college debt… Marianne Williamson, an author, promises new investments in teacher training, early-childhood education, and more… It didn’t always seem politically smart to cozy up to teachers, said Jeffrey Henig, the director of the politics and education program at Teachers College, Columbia University. “That’s been ameliorated,” he said. “Teachers [are] more sympathetic allies, and that makes it a little bit easier for candidates to portray teachers as underpaid and underappreciated.”

New York Times. Is the U.S. a Democracy? A Social Studies Battle Turns on the Nation’s Values   Each of the 50 states can create its own learning standards. These documents are closely examined. While schools can teach material not included in them, they shape the content in standardized tests, and many educators rely heavily on the standards as they craft lesson plans. Student teachers are trained to use them.

Politico. Teach For America — except for California  Backed by powerful teachers unions, Democrats are pushing to ban Teach For America from California amid a wave of teacher’s strikes and a heated debate over charter schools in the nation’s most populous state.

University of Colorado, Colorado Springs.Understanding Remote – UCCS students explore Colorado’s smallest schools   Through an innovative two-week immersion experience, UCCS education students assisted teachers, provided instruction to elementary and secondary students, and focused on understanding the vital link between rural schools and the local communities while exploring a unique part of Colorado.

U.S. Dept. of Education. Applications for New Awards; Teacher Quality Partnership Grant Program   The purposes of the TQP program are to improve student achievement; improve the quality of prospective and new teachers by improving the preparation of prospective teachers and enhancing professional development activities for new teachers…

U.S. Dept. of Health and Human Services.The Role of Licensing in Supporting Quality Practices in Early Care and Education   Although the conceptual relationship between licensing and quality is evolving, there is little research about how licensing influences quality. This brief provides a framework to support discussion and research in this important area.

 

NEW YORK STATE
NYSED Board of Regents. April Meetings, Higher Education Sub-committee
Proposed:

• Proposed Amendments to Sections 52.21 and 80-3.7 of the Regulations of the Commissioner of Education Related to Requiring Study in Language Acquisition and Literacy Development of English Language Learners in Certain Teacher Preparation Programs and in th
• Proposed Amendment to Section 80-1.5 of the Regulations of the Commissioner of Education Relating to the Extension of the edTPA Safety Net for Candidates Who Receive a Failing Score on the Library Specialist edTPA
• Proposed Amendments to Sections 52.21, 57-2… of the Rules of the Board of Regents Relating to Professional Development Plans and Other Related Requirements for School Districts and BOCES
• Proposed Amendments to Sections 52.21, 80-2.1 80-3.1, 80-3.11, 80-3.12 and 80-5.23 and the Titles of Subparts 80-2 and 80-3 of the Commissioner’s Regulations Relating to School Counseling Program Registration, School Counselor Certification Requirements,

Voted:

• Proposed Amendments to Sections 52.21 and 80-3.7 of the Regulations of the Commissioner of Education Relating to Student Teaching Requirements for Teacher Certification and the Registration of Teacher Preparation Programs
  • VOTED: That sections 52.21 and 80-3.7 of the Regulations of the Commissioner of Education be amended, effective April 24, 2019, as submitted.
• Proposed Amendment to Section 80-1.5 of the Regulations of the Commissioner of Education Relating to the Extension of the Educational Technology Specialist Content Specialty Test Safety Net
  • VOTED: That Section 80-1.5 of the Regulations of the Commissioner of Education be adopted as an emergency action, effective July 1, 2019, to ensure that the safety net becomes effective immediately

Consent Agenda:

• Appointments and Reappointments to the New York State Teachers’ Retirement System Board 

NYSED News. State Education Department Proposes Changes to Enhance Teacher Preparation Programs to Better Serve English Language Learners  The State Education Department today proposed regulatory changes that would require teacher preparation programs in certain subject areas to dedicate at least three of the currently required six semester hours in language acquisition and literacy development to language acquisition and literacy development of English language learners (ELLs)…

NewsDay. Minimum student teaching time increased in NY  The change will take effect for students entering college education programs in fall 2022, according to John D’Agati, a deputy state education commissioner who coordinated the push for stronger requirements.

 

NEW YORK CITY

Chalkbeat. As New York City pre-K teachers weigh a strike, new estimate puts cost of pay boost at $438 million   Teachers can begin working at a community organization without certification while they earn their credentials, and operators say many of their teachers are on study plans because those with certification leave for the higher salaries offered at public schools.

New York Post. ‘Educational genocide’: NYC schools are leaving black and Hispanic students behind   Then-Mayor Mike Bloomberg changed the system citywide to require a minimum 90th-percentile score on national standardized intelligence tests. “Parents living in poverty don’t know about this test. It’s an awareness problem,” said James Borland, an education professor at Teachers College, Columbia University, who focuses on gifted issues.

Teachers College.
1) Shirley Chisholm Dissertation Award: Lisa Edstrom (Ed.D. ’18) began working at Barnard in 2006-2007 as a supervisor for student teachers in the Education Program. In 2008, she became the program’s Certification Officer, guiding students through the NYS teacher certification process.
2) Teaching Residents @ Teachers College April Newsletter

GLOBAL
CTV News. Ontario considering mandatory annual math testing for all teachers   The consideration of the annual test for all teachers comes after the government passed legislation Wednesday that will require all aspiring teachers in Ontario to pass a math test before receiving their licence.

Daily Mail. Revealed: The ridiculously easy test designed to weed out poor student teachers – but those who fail are STILL being allowed in the classroom   Student teachers have three chances to sit the LANTITE test administered by the Australian Council for Educational Research (ACER)… Students are instead trying up to five times after receiving study support and coaching from their universities who back them…

International Task Force on Teachers for Education 2030. Strategic Plan 2018 – 2021 

The Guardian. School music report reveals cuts, inequality and demoralised teachers   …an increase in GCSE courses starting in year 9, mean that music is being squeezed out of the curriculum, while the number of postgraduate students choosing to train as music teachers has shrunk by over two-thirds in the past decade.

The Times of India. 14 BEd colleges derecognized  In a major setback, at least 14 teachers’ training colleges of the state, including that of Patna Women’s College, have been derecognized by the National Council for Teacher Education (NCTE).

 

UNITED STATES
American Educational Research Association. Annual Meeting Online Program  Incl: Presidential Address, Amy Stuart Wells [TC Prof.]: “An Inconvenient Truth about the New Jim Crow of Education”

Anchorage Daily News. University of Alaska president recommends closing UAA’s School of Education in wake of accreditation loss   … a national oversight body, the Council for the Accreditation of Educator Preparation, had revoked accreditation for UAA’s seven teacher preparation programs. The programs failed to meet four of five accreditation standards, according to CAEP.

Chalkbeat.
1) Federal study finds charter middle schools didn’t help students earn college degrees   “The overall conclusion that there is little difference between charter schools and non-charter schools is not shocking to me,” said Sarah Cohodes, a professor at Columbia University’s Teachers College…
2) Indiana could scrap test seen as a barrier to training more teachers of color   The House Education Committee unanimously voted on Wednesday to remove the state requirement that students pass the basic reading, writing, and math skills test known as “CASA” as freshmen or sophomores before they enter college teacher preparation programs.

Education Week.
1) Meet the Moms Pushing for a Reading Overhaul in Their District   … in general, the part that’s most important that we’ve been pushing for from the beginning is just more comprehensive training for our teachers and really good materials around that training. And I think that’s the thing we’ve gotten most pushback on. We felt from the beginning that teachers didn’t have this information and we’ve learned that it’s not part of most teacher training programs.
2) New York Teachers Are Highest Paid in U.S., Report Finds  Teachers in New York State are paid the highest salaries in their field in the United States, according to a new report by the Rockefeller Institute of Government.
3) No substitute: Schools struggle to find coverage for classes   Experts partially blame the substitute teacher shortage on a smaller pool of new graduates looking for teaching jobs. During the 2012-13 school year, the Pennsylvania Department of Education issued 18,957 teaching certifications. Just five years later, during 2017-18 school year, that number dropped to 6,918.
4) Why Have Education Politics Gone National?  [TC Prof. J. Henig, co-author] The local political stage has become more crowded, with some of the major players coming from out of town, including philanthropies, like the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and the Walton Family Foundation; charter networks and alternative sources of teacher credentialing, like KIPP and Teach For America…

InsideHigherEd. New Rules for Accreditors   Negotiators also approved a fix to the TEACH grant program that will allow thousands of teachers whose grants were converted into loans to appeal those decisions. 

KEPR. Columbia Basin launches degree in teacher education program   After nearly four years of work and dozens of requests, Columbia Basin College (CBC) is rolling out a Bachelor of Applied Science in Teacher Education (BASTE): Residency Teacher Preparation Program with Early Childhood Education (ECE) Endorsement.

National Center on Education and the Economy. How Districts Can Learn From The World’s Best  …states should limit teacher education to a small number of research universities and make it more selective, as Finland did in the 1970s. While some feared that restricting entry into teacher education would lower the number of potential candidates, the opposite happened: more high-achieving students wanted to go into teaching. “They wanted to be in a profession that was considered prestigious,” Tucker said.

NEA Today. Why We Stay: What Motivates Educators To Step Into (and Remain) in the Classroom    Nationwide, and day after day, millions of educators step into school settings with a willingness to share love and commitment with their students. And although they use different words to describe why they stay, it all boils down to the determination to make a difference in students’ lives—one that will last a lifetime.

Southern Regional Education Board. Getting The Balance Right: Reconsidering the Mix of Teacher Licensure Measures   The emergence of practice-based tests might encourage policymakers to think more expansively about which measures states should use to certify teachers.

The Daily Illini. Teacher shortage sparks licensing reevaluation  The state’s approach to this shortage is to reevaluate the lengthy and expensive licensing process including the three tests required for prospective teachers: the edTPA, TAP 400, SAT or ACT and the Illinois content test.

The 74. Why Aren’t College Grads Becoming Teachers? The Answer Seems to Be Economic — and the Labor Market May Be Starting to Improve And in 2017, the most recent year for which we have data, we had the first year-over-year increase in college graduates with education degrees since 2012. It’s still not much — 2017 was just .62 percent higher than 2016 — but it could be the start of a promising trend.

U.S. Department of Education. Fiscal Year 2020 Budget Summary  [Elevate the Teaching Profession Through Innovation p. 7; TEACH Grants p. 34]

Walton Family Foundation. How Better School-to-Parent Communication Drives Educational Success [by TC Prof. P. Bergman]  Right after college I was a New York City Teaching Fellow, teaching special education, English and social studies for 7th and 8th graders. 

Washington Post.
1) Education Dept. rejects vast majority of applicants for temporary student loan forgiveness program   “We authorized $700 million dollars to help ensure public servants — including firefighters, teachers, and nurses — receive the loan forgiveness they have earned, and it’s maddening that the Trump Administration is letting it go to waste,” Sen. Tim Kaine (D-Va.) said in an email.
2) The latest ‘shockingly bad’ education idea in North Carolina   The programs offer everything from educational games to a full preschool curriculum complete with boxes of activities that are shipped to a student’s home and a teacher’s guide for an adult. 

NEW YORK STATE
New York State. The 2019-20 Executive Budget

• $3 million for a We Teach New York grant program to address the teacher shortage

• $25 million for Teachers of Tomorrow

NYSATE/NYACTE. CFP: 2019 Annual Fall Conference[Saratoga Springs, Oct. 16-18]

NYSED Board of Regents. April meeting agenda

NYS Professional Standards and Practices Board for Teaching. January meeting minutes

NEW YORK CITY
Gotham Gazette. Giving Our Children Tools to Eat and Live Healthily[co-authored by P. Koch, TC Tisch Center for Food, Education & Policy]

New York Times. 50 Years of Affirmative Action: What Went Right, and What It Got Wrong   In a late-life bid for middle-class stability, he returned to college with renewed zeal for learning, and received a bachelor’s degree in history from Lehman College in 2003, then completed most of a master’s degree. He lasted only briefly as a high school social studies teacher…

WNYC. Pre-K Teachers Weigh Strike As Pay Disparity Persists  …a starting salary for a teacher with a masters working for the DOE is $56,711, compared to $34,085 for a teacher with a masters who works at a CBO. As a result, community organizations have reported an exodus of teachers for the school-based programs.

Teachers College. 332 presentations by faculty, students, staff and alumni at AERA 2019: Democratizing the Evidence in a Post-Truth Era

GLOBAL
ABC News. Teaching students are being employed in the classroom rather than heading to university   Some Australian schools have started using a new tertiary training model that allows prospective teachers to skip attending a university, instead giving them “hands-on” in-classroom experience as paid employees.

Association for Teacher Education in Europe. 2019 Annual Conference: Bath Spa University UK 14-16 August. Abstract submission deadline 31 Mar.

Education International. Iraq: Kurdistan’s education unionists take stock of obstacles to quality education system   The conference discussed several important topics, including: Teaching methods and ways to better prepare teachers professionally; Admission of students to universities, trying to balance their education wishes for university departments and colleges with their potential…

TES [UK]. Trainee teachers with more friends less likely to quit ‘Personal and professional relationships enhance resilience’, study finds

The East African. Kenya’s Peter Tabichi crowned world’s best teacher  …a teacher at Keriko Mixed Day Secondary School in Pwani Village in Nakuru, a town 160km southeast of Nairobi, won the $1m prize on Sunday….the 36-year-old Egerton University graduate … Mr Tabichi, who is also a Franciscan brother, has been a teacher for 12 years.

 

UNITED STATES
American Association of Colleges for Teacher Education.
1) #AACTE19 Opening Keynote Speakers Discuss Accountability in Teacher Education   Cochran-Smith …co-authored, Reclaiming Accountability in Teacher Education, in which she and her colleagues analyze the major accountability initiatives: the Department of Education regulations, CAEP accreditation procedures, National Council on Teacher Quality (NCTQ) teacher preparation reviews, and edTPA.
2) Deeper Dive panel examined winning strategies to address teacher shortage in diverse communities

Belleville News-Democrat. Teacher licensing tests come under fire in Illinois   Scherer, however, focused much of her attention on the edTPA program, which she faulted for being too expensive for many… With an average of 5,000 prospective new Illinois teachers taking that test each year, at a cost of $300 per test, Scherer noted that equates to $1.5 million a year going to Pearson — a number she repeated with emphasis several times.

California Legislature. Assembly Bill-221 Teach for America teachers: assignment prohibition in low-income schools.  This bill would prohibit, commencing with the 2020–21 school year, Teach for America teachers from being assigned, pursuant to the Teach for America program, to teach at any California public school, including a charter school, that has at least 40% of its pupils being from low-income families…

Education Policy Institute. The teacher shortage is real, large and growing, and worse than we thought: The first report in “The Perfect Storm in the Teacher Labor Market” series    The teacher shortage is real, large and growing, and worse than we thought. When indicators of teacher quality (certification, relevant training, experience, etc.) are taken into account, the shortage is even more acute than currently estimated… 

Education Week.
1) Are Teacher Shortages Worse Than We Thought?  Alternative-certification programs bring in more teachers of color, male teachers, and teachers who attended selective colleges than traditional prep programs do, past reports have found. But research has also found that alternatively certified teachers quit at higher rates and report feeling less prepared than their traditionally certified colleagues.
2) Mock Auctions. Pretending to Flee Captors. Do Simulations Have a Place in Lessons on Slavery?   Many say educators need more guidance on how to teach slavery. At the elementary school level, especially, teachers are often reading or math specialists, and don’t have specialized training or content knowledge in social studies, said Costello of Teaching Tolerance.
3) States’ Standards for Teachers Don’t Define Culturally Responsive Teaching, Study Argues   New America’s report, and its call for more robust standards, aligns with work by the Council of Chief State School Officers and other organizations to diversify the nation’s teaching corps. The organizations argue that developing a diverse pool of educators trained to demonstrate culturally responsive teaching is crucial. Federal data indicate that 51 percent of public K-12 students in the United States are nonwhite, but only 20 percent of teachers are.
4) Three Things to Watch for When DeVos Defends Trump’s Budget to Congress   Some higher education issues Democrats could raise, like Trump’s proposal to eliminate Public Service Loan Forgiveness, would have links to K-12 education, since teachers are eligible for the program. Others, like an executive order about free speech on college campuses that the president unveiled Thursday, as well as Trump’s push to have higher education get “skin in the game” regarding college costs, wouldn’t directly involve K-12.  

Hechinger Report. The dark side of education research: widespread bias: Johns Hopkins study finds that insider research shows 70 percent more benefits to students than independent research

New York Times. [OpEd] Do You Speak My Language? You Should   Government spending on foreign-language education and the education of qualified foreign-language teachers needs to increase. More states need to enforce language-education requirements. Colleges need to recognize the importance of their foreign-language education programs. 

The Eagle. Texas A&M University System: Working to graduate more teachers   Texas A&M is the state’s largest producer of teachers in the high-need fields of math and science, as well as English language arts and reading. The college also ranks in the top 10 in the state for producing teachers in the areas of special education and bilingual education. In the 2017-2018 school year, we issued 929 certifications.

Pennsylvania Capital-Star. We need more teachers of color, so why do we use tests that keep them out of the classroom?   A recent report estimates that each year, the exam screens out approximately 8,600 of 16,900 aspiring teachers of color. This rate of exclusion surpasses that of white aspiring teachers by 27.5 percent. It’s not a new phenomenon, either. The trend goes back to the 1960s when states began to adopt these exams to improve the quality of teachers.

US New & World Report.
1) Lamont makes pitch for minority teacher legislation   Gov. Ned Lamont is making a pitch for legislation intended to help recruit more minority teachers for Connecticut’s classrooms… to urge support for his bill, which extends mortgage assistance and student loan forgiveness programs to graduates of historically black colleges and others.
2) Sisolak Names New York Educator as Nevada Superintendent

Washington Post.
1) A case for why both sides in the ‘reading wars’ debate are wrong — and a proposed solution   Here is our proposal: Teachers should know the rules of the English writing system when teaching children to read and write English. Children can be taught letter-sound correspondences AND the regular way that morphemes are spelled.
2) Kamala Harris: Our teacher pay gap is a national failure. Here’s how we can fix it.   The plan will also include a multibillion-dollar investment in evidence-based programs that elevate the teaching profession. Half of this funding would be dedicated to historically black colleges and universities and other minority-serving institutions, because more than 30 percent of all black teachers, and more than 40 percent of all Hispanic teachers, graduate from those schools.

WTXL. FL Board of Education votes to lower fees for examinees taking state teacher certification exam  Some fees to be reduced by up to 78% 

Yakima Herald. Editorial: State should end flawed system for entry into teacher programs   …the House recently unanimously passed HB1621, sponsored by 13th District Rep. Alex Ybarra, R-Quincy, that would still require teacher-program applicants to take the test but not have the results be the sole determinant for acceptance. The bill now is being heard in the Senate, where, barring unforeseen glitches, it also is expected to easily pass and await certain signing by Inslee.

 

NEW YORK STATE
New York State Association of Teacher Educators (NYSATE). Newsletter Vol. 1 No. 1

New York State Education Department Office of Higher Education. March Newsletter

The Saratogian. Regents member to visit local school   New York State Board of Regents member Beverly Ouderkirk will visit the Washington-Saratoga-Warren-Hamilton-Essex BOCES region on Thursday…. focus attention on the Classroom Academy… the first two-year Master of Science for Teachers level residency model in the state.

Times Union. Reynolds seeks re-election to Saratoga Springs school board   Dr. Heather Reynolds … earned her master’s in education at Harvard University and completed a Ph.D. at the University of Michigan is an associate professor of teacher education at the State University of New York Empire State College.

 

NEW YORK CITY
Salon. The entrenched segregation of New York City’s public high schools   Amy Stuart Wells, a professor of sociology and education at Columbia University’s Teachers College, explained…”In a post-racial era, we don’t have to say it’s about race or the color of the kids in the building… We can concentrate poverty and kids of color and then fail to provide the resources to support and sustain those schools, and then we can see a school full of black kids and then say, ‘Oh, look at their test scores.’ It’s all very tidy now, this whole system.”

GLOBAL
Columbia University Teachers College. Civic Education in the US and France Conference: Confronting Hatred and Threats to Democracy 28, March.   This conference will bring together educators from France and the U.S. to discuss how to improve civic education and better prepare our youth to be tolerant and engaged citizens, capable of safeguarding our democratic institutions against the dangers of hatred and racism. 

News Ghana. UNESCO, China to further enhance teachers’ capacity in Africa   The UNESCO-CFIT project on “Enhancing Teacher Education for Bridging the Education Quality Gap in Africa” was launched in 2012 with funding from the Chinese government. The project has so far benefited 10 African countries including Cote d’Ivoire, the Democratic Republic of Congo and Ethiopia.

UNESCO. The intersections between education, migration and displacement are not gender-neutral   In Dadaab, Kenya, the Borderless High Education for Refugees project trained 400 teachers through onsite and online courses at all levels and women were included through special affirmative action initiatives. 

World Education Blog. George teaches in a double-shift school in a refugee camp in Kenya to increase access to education  Only 8% of primary teachers had national certification, and 6 out of 10 refugee teachers were untrained. 

 

UNITED STATES
AACTE. Board of Directors Elects New Leaders

American Institutes for Research. New Collaborations New, Approaches: Research for Improvement in Teacher Preparation

Education Week.
1) Bilingual Teachers Are in Short Supply. How Can Schools Cultivate Their Own?   Now, a Washington-based think tank has released a guide to help school districts and states that want to identify, develop, and hire bilingual educators in their own communities.
2) Dear White Teachers: You Can’t Love Your Black Students If You Don’t Know Them [OpEd]  Now my job is teaching future educators about what it takes to teach beautiful Black children. No matter where I go, when I ask future teachers why they want to teach–especially White women, who make up the vast majority of all teachers—their first or second answer is always: “I love children,” followed by, without taking a breath, “I love all children.” The word “all” is meant to signal, “I am not racist; I am fit to be in the classroom with children of color.”
3) Taking the Guesswork Out of Teacher Hiring  The central human resources office scores applicants based on recommendations and the experience and skills on their resumes. Then, principals look at the candidates who have met a particular cutoff score and do another round of evaluations before bringing prospective teachers in for interviews.
4) Who Should Improve the School Improvement Industry?  [by TC Prof. T. Hatch]  Our recent research brief and report documented more than 100 programs that work directly with students or teachers to improve reading outcomes in New York City public elementary schools.
5) Why Teacher-Student Relationships Matter: New findings shed light on best approaches   The study also found in an analysis of two of these programs that teachers trained in the instrumental focus were more likely to go on to teach in low-income, high-minority schools, while those trained in reciprocal relationships ended up in schools with more high-income and white students.

Chalkbeat. New teachers often get the students who are furthest behind — and that’s a problem for both   Improving teacher preparation could help, too. Research has found that pairing student teachers with effective mentors can boost novice teachers’ skills.

Inside Higher Ed.
1) Cornell, Harvard Drop GRE for English Ph.D.
2) White House Looks to Curb Student Lending  The proposed lending caps reflect a similar proposal in the PROSPER Act, a 2017 House Republican plan to overhaul the HEA. PROSPER called for annual limits of $28,500 for graduate students…

KGNS. TAMIU shaping tomorrow’s teachers    The program is called “We Teach Texas” and it’s a statewide campaign through the Texas A&M University system. The program focuses on encouraging students to consider careers in education.

Lowell Sun [MA]. Diversity in teaching workforce a “big deal” for state   …Lawrence managed to triple its number of Latino teachers, in part by looking within the school system… He said school officials looked to their paraprofessionals, many of whom were moms with kids in the district, and “got them trained up” to be teachers by providing test-taking support and financial help for needed coursework. Lawrence officials also reached out to graduates …and offered incentives like paying for master’s degrees or connecting them with a housing program to make homeownership affordable. 

NEAToday. 5 Key Trends in the Teacher Workforce  “Too often, researchers, school leaders, and policymakers are still operating under false assumptions about who goes into teaching and how teaching careers unfold,” Ingersoll said. “If we want to improve student performance, we must understand this new reality.”

NYTimes. Yes, You Can Play With Your Clothes: Fidget spinners are so 2017; in 2019, fidget fashion is on the rise   “My fidget jewelry helps with my own A.D.H.D. and anxiety, and people who compliment it are always surprised to hear it was designed to serve a purpose,” said Ms. Connell, 31, who has a master’s degree in disability studies from Columbia University Teachers College and lives in Denver. “Then they want to buy one for themselves, because who isn’t anxious these days? Society is moving toward understanding that fidgets can inspire concentration, focus and brainstorming — but you can’t pull out a fidget spinner in a board meeting.”

Post Register [Idaho Falls]. Many area teachers work multiple jobs to maintain, survive   “Most early career educators have to do something in order to supplement their (lives) and maintain and survive,” Overall said. “They’re students that are leaving with $80,000 in student debt, and that’s from Idaho universities, and they have to make ends meet with thirty-six, thirty-seven thousand dollars a year.”

Rapid City Journal.  Augustana University revives special ed master’s program   A university in Sioux Falls is reviving a teaching program after a 20-year hold to help put a dent in the nationwide special education teaching shortage. Augustana University will be launching an online-only master’s of arts and special education program this fall, in hopes of giving more teachers access to proper certifications, said Laurie Daily, chairwoman of the university’s education department.

The Herald Bulletin. Chris DeHart says he’s ‘an ordinary teacher in an extraordinary place’: Juvenile correctional educator will be teacher-in-residence at IU   His expert teaching has earned DeHart Indiana University’s Martha Lea and Bill Armstrong Teacher Educator Award. He will serve starting with a two-day retreat this summer as a teacher-in-residence at IU where he will help prepare future teachers for the classroom.

Washington Post. Why are teachers protesting in ‘blue’ cities?: Deep-pocketed national donors are changing local school politics.   …these donors have been, and continue to be, highly active national campaign contributors. Many serve on the boards of education nonprofits such as KIPP and Teach for America. [co-authored by TC Prof. J. Henig]

WPRI. Everything you should know about Rhode Island’s next education commissioner   [Infante-Green] graduated from the State University of New York at Buffalo before earning master’s degrees in both education and school administration and supervision from Mercy College. Her career path has taken her from teaching in the South Bronx with Teach for America …has also held various leadership posts overseeing English language learner (ELL) programs in the New York City Department of Education and the NYSED.

 

NEW YORK STATE
NYS Legislature: Assembly Bill NY A06450, Senate Bill NY S04342. Relates to requiring the commissioner of education to establish and enforce rules and regulations to incorporate the structured multisensory approach into the already required literacy curriculum for all teachers.  The commissioner shall establish and enforce rules and regulations requiring every institution of higher education that offers a graduate or undergraduate degree or certification program in education or educational administration located within the state to incorporate evidence-based, effective methods of teaching reading, which shall include instruction in direct and explicit structured multisensory approaches, also known as structured literacy, within the current required literacy curriculum.

Professional Standards and Practices Board for Teaching. March Meetings Agenda

The Classroom Academy. The Classroom Academy is a 2 year residency program for graduate level students. Residents receive a $22,000 per year living stipend as they work alongside matched, lead expert teachers.

 

NEW YORK CITY

Center For Innovation In Teacher Education And Development (CITED). Teaching Teachers: Changing Paths and Enduring Debates March 26th. Russell Hall, Teachers College

Hechinger Report.When personalized learning also boosts special education students: A Brooklyn school’s commitment to personalized learning draws double the portion of special ed students as its local district  Thanks to a teacher residency and a fellowship program, it has enough instructors to have every class be co-taught. These programs have the added benefit of creating a pipeline of certified teachers who get trained in Brooklyn Lab’s philosophy.