Teacher Education

Following Graduates Into the Field – A U.S. Department of Education Inquiry

The U.S. Department of Education has asked AACTE to provide examples of what different educator preparation programs in higher education are doing to follow their graduates into the field and examine their impact on student achievement. We fully understand, as the Department does, that there are no comprehensive statewide data bases yet that link preparation programs to student achievement. However, we know that many of you have devised ways to make such determinations. The Department is looking for examples of what ed schools are doing in this area.

Please find three questions below related to this topic. We would be most appreciative if you could take a few minutes and respond.

Do you collect any data on your teacher graduates in terms of their impact on student achievement? If so, please describe (e.g. for how many years, what are the student achievement measures etc.)
Do you collect any data on your principal graduates in terms of their impact on student achievement? If so, please describe (e.g. for how many years, what are the student achievement measures etc.)
Do you publicly report any of these data? If so, please describe where you report.
Please send your responses to Mary Harrill-McClellan at mharrill@aacte.org.

Update on Teacher Quality Partnership Grants

As you know, the President recently signed into law technical amendments to the Higher Education Act, including two amendments to the Teacher Quality Partnership Grants. One issue that remains is that some institutions are finding it hard to secure eligible LEAs to partner with for the grants despite the fact that these are LEAs that serve large numbers of low-income students and/or have a high number of high-need schools. While it is too late to amend the law to create more ways in which an LEA might qualify as high-need in time for this grant competition, we would like to stay on top of this issue as we look for future opportunities to provide Congress with input. Thus,we are currently collecting examples of LEAs that are not eligible partners under the current statute that should be eligible. We plan to share these examples with Congress and the Department to develop a better understanding of this issue and possibly make changes to the statute. Our goal it to ensure that every LEA and school that serves significant populations of low-income children is an eligible partner.

If you have examples of LEAs that do not qualify as "high-need" that should, please let Mary Harrill-McClellan know (mharrill@aacte.org). (For example, Chattanooga, TN does not qualify because the poverty rate in the district is 19.8% and does not reach the 20% threshold.)

For those AACTE members who are not located near a "high-need LEA" (as defined by the statute), we encourage you to reach out to your neighboring institutions that do have eligible LEAs to see if there are ways partner. The Teacher Quality Partnership Grants are an opportunity to build/strengthen partnerships not only with LEAs and P-12 schools but also with our colleague institutions.