Teaching Education News....

AACTE Weekly News Briefs | May 19, 2009
. . . delivered to your inbox so you can enjoy up-to-date news on colleges of education, teaching and the classroom, legislation, STEM teacher issues, grants, and upcoming events. Please click on linked headlines for full story.


AACTE ANNOUNCEMENTS

FREE Access to Archived Webinar on Closing the Achievement Gap for Children in Foster Care (AACTE webinar)
Access this free webinar anytime through June 30! "Tutor Connection: Closing the Educational Achievement Gap for Children in Foster Care" is sponsored by the Casey Family Programs. Tutor Connection has provided 1,240 student teachers from California State University-San Marcos to work directly with children in foster care to improve academic performance. Hear about the results for over 1,500 foster care youth who have participated in this program and learn more about the roles that Departments of Education can play in positively impacting this unique and often invisible population.

Register Now for AACTE's Day on the Hill
AACTE's 2009 Day on the Hill will take place June 17-18 in Washington, DC. This is AACTE's premier advocacy event! Come to DC to meet with your members of Congress and to tell them about the good work you do. This year's theme is "Innovation and Reform in Teacher Preparation." For more information, please contact Mary Harrill-McClellan at mharrill@aacte.org.

New AACTE Leadership Academy
Two of AACTE's yearly professional development conferences, the Leadership Institute for Department Chairs and the New Deans Institute, will be combined in 2009 to create an exciting educational opportunity. With the goal of sustaining the teacher education profession by providing powerful learning and networking tools, AACTE's new Leadership Academy is an essential event for new deans, department chairs, and other educational administrators to attend. This event will take place June 28 - July 3 in St. Louis, Missouri. Click here to view the 2009 Leadership Academy brochure. Registration deadline: May 28.


NATIONAL NEWS

Obama Budget Choices Scrutinized
From Education Week
Following an unprecedented increase for education aid in the federal economic-stimulus package, President Barack Obama's fiscal 2010 budget request for the U.S. Department of Education is being met with a tepid response from some school advocates. One of the most controversial proposals in the spending plan would move at least $1 billion from Title I grants to districts to Title I school improvement grants, which help finance interventions for schools struggling to meet the goals of the 7-year-old No Child Left Behind Act.

U.S. Negotiations Run Aground Over College Outcomes, Year-Round Pell Grants
From Inside Higher Ed
Negotiations over possible new regulations to carry out a range of changes in the Higher Education Act ended in acrimony Wednesday amid disagreement about proposed reporting of college outcome measures and the availability of year-round Pell Grants. The negotiation that concluded Wednesday, which covered general non-loan issues, was one of five that the Education Department has been conducting since February to gather recommendations from higher ed professionals and others about how it should carry out changes Congress made to the law with the Higher Education Opportunity Act last summer.

‘Innovation' Push Raising Questions
From Education Week (LOGIN REQUIRED)
School leaders are under increasing pressure to "innovate." The word is ricocheting around Washington, emanating from the White House, the U.S. Department of Education, and numerous reports and conferences convened by those who hope to influence the direction such ventures take. In a March paper titled "Innovation, Motherhood, and Apple Pie," Grover J. "Russ" Whitehurst, director of the Brookings Institution's Brown Center on Education Policy, took aim at the hubbub around innovation. He cautioned against forgetting that there are effective and ineffective innovations.

Website Estimates Education's Effect on Health, Crime, Income
From USA Today
Researchers have known for decades that rising education levels positively influence a host of social factors: income, health, voting rates and even the likelihood that a person will stay out of prison. Education matters. A new website seeks to quantify just how much. It allows users to fiddle with state and county high school graduation rates, college attendance and college graduation rates to predict what the effect of raising those rates might be.

Fact Check: Are U.S. Students Really That Bad?
From the Associated Press
America's moms and dads are getting a good scolding: Your kids are lagging behind students all around the world. The White House says so, with concern bordering on alarm. So do institutions such as the Gates Foundation, citing performance tests, graduation rates and other benchmarks. But don't measure for dunce caps just yet.


NEWS FROM AROUND THE COUNTRY

Education Secretary: Detroit Schools ‘Ground Zero'
From the Associated Press
Education Secretary Arne Duncan says the Detroit school system is "ground zero" for failing education in the United States, and is urging the city's new mayor to take charge of the public schools. The visit is part of Duncan's national "Listening and Learning Tour." Detroit is the tour's second stop.

Aspiring Primary Teachers May Be Tested in Math
From Education Week (LOGIN REQUIRED)
Elementary school teachers lay the foundation for students' knowledge in many subjects, including mathematics—an area in which they may have little background. To address that concern, Massachusetts is preparing to require all elementary educators to pass a math-specific test for state licensure, as opposed to simply mandating that they notch a general passing score across all subjects.

University of Missouri Study Looks at Second-Career Teachers' Quality
From the Columbia Tribune
A study by University of Missouri researchers says the success of alternatively certified teachers depends largely on their past careers and not how successful they were in their previous professions. "The teachers who did better in the field were not the ones who had an in-depth experience in the field but the ones who actually had experience in a field close to education," said MU Associate Professor Jay Scribner.

Texas Halts One Merit Pay Plan for Teachers, Keeps Newer Program
From the Dallas Morning News
Texas' longest running merit pay plan for teachers is being quietly retired this year after getting lackluster returns on its $100-million-a-year investment. The voluntary Texas Educator Excellence Grant program, aimed at schools in low-income areas, was plagued from the start by criteria that caused large numbers of campuses to drop in and out of the program every year. That made it difficult to determine whether the teacher bonuses were actually improving students' performance.

State Partnerships for Quality Teacher Preparation (Issue Paper)
From the Education Commission of the States
There are increasing concerns that the disconnect between teacher preparation programs and K-12 schools has resulted in teacher education graduates who are not optimally prepared to teach today's diverse population of students the new, more rigorous state proficiency standards. In an effort to more effectively integrate teacher preparation with the increasingly complex realities of today's classrooms, some states are exploring how the creation of partnerships between K-12 and postsecondary education institutions can create greater responsiveness to K-12 workforce needs.


OTHER ANNOUNCEMENTS

American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009: Using ARRA Funds to Drive School Reform and Improvement
Education funds provided through the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA) provide a unique opportunity to jump start school reform and improvement efforts while also saving and creating jobs and stimulating the economy. These one-time resources should be spent in ways most likely to lead to improved results for students, long-term gains in school and school system capacity, and increased productivity and effectiveness.

Free Interactive Webcast: Systems and Strategies to Address the Inequitable Distribution of Teachers
The National Comprehensive Center for Teacher Quality presents a live, interactive webcast addressing the inequitable distribution of teachers on Thursday, May 21, 3:00 - 4:30 p.m. EDT. Registration is required but free of charge.

U.S. Department of Education Invites Comments on the HEOA Title II Reporting Forms on Teacher Quality and Preparation
The U.S. Department of Education recently released the draft institutional and state report card forms required of the accountability provisions in Title II of the Higher Education Opportunity Act (HEOA). The public may comment on these forms by June 8. Title II of HEOA requires institutions of higher education that prepare teachers to provide annual reports on how these teacher candidates perform on certification/licensure exams; goals that the institution has set for preparing teachers in key shortage areas; assurances for how institutions are preparing all candidates to be successful in the classroom; and descriptions of how preparation programs are structured. AACTE encourages its members to respond to this call for comment.


Kristin K. McCabe, Editor
American Association of Colleges for Teacher Education
1307 New York Ave., NW Suite 300
Washington, DC 20005
(207) 899-1309
kmccabe@aacte.org