US Teacher Education

AACTE Weekly News Briefs | October 13, 2009
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AACTE ANNOUNCEMENTS

Register for This Week's Dispositions Webinar
Lessons From Practice in Teacher Education: Toward a Professional Consensus Around Dispositions
October 15, 1:30-3:00 p.m. EDT
In this presentation, Erskine Dottin, professor at Florida International University, and Richard Osguthorpe, assistant professor at Boise State University, discuss "Dispositions as Habits of Mind: Making Professional Conduct More Intelligent" and "The Pitfalls of Attending to Dispositions in Teacher Education." In the first part of the session, Dottin provides lessons from a campus classroom in nurturing dispositions through reflective inquiry, a practice that defines dispositions as "habits of mind that render professional conduct more intelligent." In the second part, Osguthorpe discusses the common errors teacher educators and teacher education programs make when trying to define and assess teacher candidate dispositions.

AACTE to Cosponsor Webinar on Sustainability in K-12 Schools
November 5, 3:00-4:00 p.m. EST
AACTE is among the associations joining the U.S. Partnership for Education for Sustainable Development in sponsoring a webinar on an important trend in K-12 schools: education for sustainability. Educators will present case studies and share resources on how they are successfully using sustainability as an integrative theme in diverse elementary, middle, and high schools across the country.

PEDS Data Collection Has Begun
AACTE's 2010 data collection through the Professional Education Data System (PEDS) is under way. The collection will run in two parts, or sessions, to help bring our data up to date and align it with other data reports such as Title II. The first session runs now through January 2010, and the second will run next March through June.

NATIONAL NEWS

Education Secretary Stresses Need for Strong New Teachers
From USA Today
U.S. Education Secretary Arne Duncan appealed Friday for a new generation of extraordinary teachers, calling education the civil rights cause of our time. In remarks prepared for delivery to prospective teachers at the University of Virginia in Charlottesville, Duncan said veterans, retirees and professionals seeking a second career must heed the call to teach. Duncan also said the nation cannot rely alone on schools of education to produce the next generation of teachers.

Education Secretary Criticizes Education Colleges
From Inside Higher Ed
In a speech at the University of Virginia on Friday, Education Secretary Arne Duncan called for more Americans to consider teaching careers, and praised the U.Va. students for the rigor and breadth of their programs. But he also suggested that Virginia was the exception that demonstrated problems elsewhere with teacher education programs.

Education Agency Will Offer Grants for Innovative Ideas
From The New York Times
The federal Department of Education sketched out a new nationwide competition on Tuesday under which some 2,700 school districts and nonprofit groups are expected to compete for pieces of a $650 million innovation fund. The department already has the 50 states vying for chunks of a $5.4 billion education improvement fund that it calls Race to the Top; the Investing in Innovation Fund is a separate competition.

Teacher 'Residencies' Get Federal Boost
From Education Week
The recent announcement of $43 million in teacher-preparation grants by the U.S. Department of Education puts the first federal financing behind the burgeoning "residency" model of teacher training. The funding comes as a windfall for supporters of the teacher-residency approach, which stakes training on a yearlong clinical practicum for teacher-candidates. But because of the relative novelty of the model, the new grants' effects on teacher retention and on student achievement will likely be tracked closely.

Study Finds High Rate of Imprisonment Among Dropouts
From The New York Times
On any given day, about one in every 10 young male high school dropouts is in jail or juvenile detention, compared with one in 35 young male high school graduates, according to a new study of the effects of dropping out of school in an America where demand for low-skill workers is plunging. The picture is even bleaker for African-Americans, with nearly one in four young black male dropouts incarcerated or otherwise institutionalized on an average day.

Obama Aims to Boost Funding For Pell Grants by $40 Billion
From The Washington Post
After three years of major increases in federal Pell grants for needy college students, President Obama aims to boost the aid further with $40 billion in funding over the next decade. To fund the increase, Congress would end subsidies to private student loan providers and establish the government as the direct lender for the entire federal student loan market as of July 1.

National Academies' Board on Testing Offers Caution on RTT Rules
From "Inside School Research" (Education Week blog)
The official comment period for the proposed rules for the Race to the Top Fund has closed. But experts from the National Academies are weighing in with a heavy dose of caution for how the U.S. Department of Education is planning to use testing and assessments to measure how student achievement increases in the states that ultimately win the $4 billion in competitive grants from the economic stimulus.

Obama Proclaims October 2009 as National Information Literacy Awareness Month
From the White House
National Information Literacy Awareness Month highlights the need for all Americans to be adept in the skills necessary to effectively navigate the Information Age. In addition to the basic skills of reading, writing, and arithmetic, it is equally important that our students are given the tools required to take advantage of the information available to them. AACTE is a longtime member of the National Forum on Information Literacy, which advocated for the awareness month.

NEWS FROM AROUND THE COUNTRY

California OKs School Bill Required by U.S. Law
From The Washington Post
California is removing a legal ban on using the results of student achievement tests to evaluate teachers, under a bill signed into law by Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger. The bill lifts a barrier that prevented California from applying for $4.5 billion under the federal Race to the Top program.

Ensuring No Teacher Left Behind
From The Washington Post
At Marie Reed Elementary in Washington, DC, math scores on the District's Comprehensive Assessment System standardized test have risen substantially since teachers began practicing "lesson study," a model of professional development for teachers that was developed in Japan. The model is a wholly different approach from the workshop-with-an-outside-expert model that dominates professional development for U.S. teachers.

2 Michigan Teacher Prep Programs at Risk of Flunking
From the Detroit Free Press
In the last three years, ending up near the bottom of the list of Michigan's 31 teacher preparation programs may have simply been a public relations issue. But now there is more on the line for Marygrove College and the University of Detroit Mercy. The Detroit programs, which enroll hundreds of students, face termination if their state issued performance scores don't improve. But the school leaders say there's a simple reason their schools keep ending up at the bottom: students are taking the certification test too soon, leaving them with low pass rates.

R.I. Education Chief Seeks Higher Standards for Prospective Teachers
From The Providence Journal
Rhode Island Education Commissioner Deborah A. Gist, who has made teacher quality the cornerstone of her three-month-old administration, is raising the score that aspiring teachers must achieve on a basic skills test required for admission to all of the state's teacher training programs. Currently, Rhode Island's "cut score" ranks among the lowest in the nation, alongside Mississippi and Guam. Gist wants to raise it to the highest.

An Experiment Takes Off
From Inside Higher Ed
When Karen Symms Gallagher of the University of Southern California ran into fellow education deans last year, many of them were "politely skeptical" about her institution's experiment to take its master's program in teaching online. Could a high-quality MAT program be delivered online—with a for-profit entity, no less? Early results about the program known as MAT@USC have greatly pleased Gallagher and USC.

N.M. Educators Poised to Fight for School Funding
From the Santa Fe New Mexican
Education spending will be a major battleground when the New Mexico Legislature meets for a special session that Gov. Bill Richardson announced Monday will start Oct. 17. While some lawmakers say school cuts are unavoidable as state government tries to cover its latest revenue shortfall, Richardson repeated his stance that education funds are off limits.

Study Reveals Short Tenure for Texas Principals
From the Austin Business Journal
A new study from The University of Texas' College of Education reveals some troubling news about public school leaders in Texas. Only about half of newly hired public school principals are staying on the job at least three years and principals in high-poverty schools are leaving the soonest.

OTHER ANNOUNCEMENTS/INFORMATION

U.S. Department of Education Seeks Comment on Regional Labs
Comments Due October 15
The Institute for Education Sciences at the U.S. Department of Education seeks guidance on what kinds of resources and services education stakeholders need from their Regional Education Laboratories. AACTE encourages its members to submit comment by this week's deadline.

U.S. Department of Education Announces Proposed Priorities for Investing in Innovation Fund
The U.S. Department of Education has released the proposed priorities for the Investing in Innovation (i3) Fund. After a 30-day period for open comment, the Department will review comments and revise the priorities. The final application for the competitive grant program will be posted in the late winter 2009/early spring 2010. Grants will be given to LEAs or to partnerships of nonprofit organizations (which include institutions of higher education) and LEAs or school consortia. AACTE encourages its members to review the proposed priorities and to submit comments.

Submit Comments on Draft Common Core State Standards
Deadline: October 21
The National Governors Association and Council of Chief State School Officers convened a state-led effort to develop common core academic standards for college and career readiness. The draft standards in mathematics and English language arts are now available for public review and comment.

Register to View Teacher Education Address by U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan
October 22, 11:30 a.m. EDT
Teachers College, Columbia University will host U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan October 22 as he delivers a major policy address on teacher preparation. TC President Susan Fuhrman will introduce Duncan, whose remarks will be followed by audience Q and A. Teachers College will webcast the event at http://www.tc.edu/duncanwebcast/ (free advance registration required).

AERA to Run Undergraduate Training Workshop at 2010 Conference
Application Deadline: December 15
The American Educational Research Association seeks fellowship applications for its Undergraduate Student Education-Research Training Workshop, to be held in conjunction with the AERA Annual Meeting in Denver, Colorado, April 30-May 2, 2010. The workshop is designed to build the talent pool of undergraduate students who plan to pursue doctorate degrees in education research or in disciplines and fields that examine education issues.

NAEYC Invites Proposals for National Institute for Early Childhood Professional Development
Submission Deadline: November 1
The National Association for the Education of Young Children (NAEYC) invites presentation proposals for its 19th National Institute for Early Childhood Professional Development, to be held June 6-9, 2010, in Phoenix, Arizona. The institute's theme is Emotional Intelligence: A 21st-Century Skill for Children and Adults.

Wallace Foundation Issues Research Synthesis for Education Policy Making
A new Wallace Foundation research synthesis targets policy makers at all levels of education who are developing comprehensive approaches to achieving the Race to the Top reform objectives and other federal strategies to improve public education. Drawing from experience and research in the fields of educational leadership, out-of-school-time learning, and arts education, the report presents evidence-based policies and practices critical to the success of educational reforms at the local, district, and state levels.




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