Reflection on Today's Tragedy

As I try to absorb the incomprehensible tragedy of the Connecticut school shooting, my heart is indeed heavy for the children and families who experienced this tragedy.

I want each of you to know, especially those of you who have your own classroom, how proud I am of you for wanting to be a part of a noble and honorable teaching profession. It is important to remain focused on learning and employing the skills to make you the most effective teacher you can be.

I would encourage each of you to spend some additional time listening to your students and your children. They may have concerns that you may need to address. If you need help in addressing children and student concerns, please do not hesitate to contact a professional counselor or our office. We all need to be a part of the healing process.

Diann Huber, Ed.D.

A Small Community’s Innovative Curriculum Coaches

iteachTEXAS' Principal Candidate instructor Lizzy Kloiber, secondary curriculum director of Celina (Texas) Independent School District knew the district needed coaches, and was determined to find a way to pay for them.

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Ten Alternative Tips for New Teachers

Ten out-of-the-ordinary bits of advice for new teachers.

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Reliance Grows for Alternative Certification

Reliance Grows for Alternative Certification

Four out of 10 new public school teachers hired since 2005 came through alternative teacher-preparation programs, a new survey shows.

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How much do your kindergarten teacher and classmates affect the rest of your life?

Economic Scene: The Case for $320,000 Kindergarten Teachers
By DAVID LEONHARDT
A new study found students with better teachers learned more in kindergarten - and earned more as young adults.

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Thinkfinity.org

Thinkfinity..org - thousands of lesson plans, interactive learning, social networking and professional development - all FREE.

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Teaching Secrets: 10 To-Dos for New Teachers

Teaching Secrets: 10 To-Dos for New Teachers

College commencements are in the air, and while the thoughts of some new teacher graduates are no doubt turning to the beach or summer jobs, other freshly minted educators are already envisioning their first classrooms full of students, each with his or her own special learning needs.

Please click here to view the entire article from EdWeek.

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iTunes Texas Education Channel Launched

Texas students can now download podcasts, videos and other multimedia lessons directly from iTunes through a new online program aimed at providing free, supplementary coursework that can be accessed anywhere, state officials announced Tuesday.

The Texas Education iTunes U channel allows teachers to upload material from their classes to help students understand new concepts or do more research in a specific subject area. Students and parents can access the material through home or school computers, and those with iPods can download the information to the handheld devices.

Please click here to view the entire article from Education Week.

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Undergraduate Teacher-Training in Texas Come Up Short

Many Teacher-Training Programs in Texas Come Up Short

By Katherine Mangan

4/30/10

The National Council on Teacher Quality release on Thursday a scathing critique of teacher-education programs across Texas.

The two-year study of 67 undergraduate schools of education in the Lone Star State finds that many fail to provide adequate teacher training in science, mathematics, and reading. The nonpartisan research and advocacy group, which has issued reports critical of training programs in other states, also concluded that teacher-education requirements vary across Texas, "with no apparent rationale."

Among its findings:

• Sixty-three of the 67 schools (94 percent) lack "proper content in mathematics that elementary teachers need."
• Eighty-four percent of the schools inadequately prepare middle-school teacher candidates in the subjects they will be teaching.
• Three-quarters of the schools ignore a state regulation that requires them to train elementary-school teacher candidates in effective methods of reading instruction.
  

read on... http://www.nctq.org/edschoolreports/texas/docs/report.pdf

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Panel Finds No Favorite in Teacher-Prep Pathways

After six years of study, a national panel of prominent scholars has concluded that there’s not enough evidence to suggest that teachers who take alternative pathways into the classroom are any worse­—or any better­—than those who finish traditional college-based preparation programs.

The full article from Education Week can be view here.

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Alternate Path for Teachers Gains Ground

Alternate Path for Teachers Gains Ground

Not long ago education schools had a virtual monopoly on the teaching profession. They dictated how and when people became teachers by offering coursework, arranging apprenticeships and granting master’s degrees.

Dan Cosgrove, in his second year with Teach for America, in his classroom at Leadership Prep in Bedford-Stuyvesant.

But now those schools are feeling under siege. Officials in Washington, D.C., and New York State, where some of the best-known education schools are located, have stepped up criticisms that the schools are still too focused on theory and not enough on the craft of effective teaching.

The entire article can be read here.

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2009 Holiday Hours

Holiday Office Hours

During the Thanksgiving Holidays, our office will be closed the following days:

Wednesday November 25, Closed

Thursday November 26, Closed

Friday November 27, Closed

During the Christmas Holidays, our office hours will be as follows:

Monday December 21, 9:00 a.m. – 3:00 p.m.

Tuesday December 22, 9:00 a.m. – 3:00 p.m.

Wednesday December 23, Closed

Thursday December 24, Closed

Friday December 25, Closed

Monday December 28, 9:00 a.m. – 3:00 p.m.

Tuesday December 29, 9:00 a.m. – 3:00 p.m.

Wednesday December 30, Closed

Thursday December 31, Closed

Friday January 1, Closed

As you continue your work in the courses, be aware that your instructor will also be observing the holiday season. Assignments will not be graded as frequently during this time.

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The Impact of Alternate Routes to Teaching

Education Week

Published Online: November 13, 2009

Published in Print: November 18, 2009, as The Impact of Alternate Routes

The Impact of Alternate Routes to Teaching

How Teacher Preparation Has Changed, and Why It May Need to Change More

By C. Emily Feistritzer

Who would have thought 25 years ago, when New Jersey created its then-controversial alternate route to teacher certification, that having such quick paths to the classroom would be a criterion for the distribution of huge sums of federal money, as it is in the Obama administration’s Race to the Top initiative? While New Jersey, and subsequently other states, created such alternatives as a way to improve the quality of the teaching force by offering programs attractive to liberal arts graduates, alternate routes have been derided by some as substandard, “scab programs,” and merely fast-track ways of getting warm bodies into classrooms.

So why are about one-third of new teachers hired in this country coming through some 600 programs being implemented under the umbrella of 125 state alternate routes to certification, with such options available in nearly every state?

Alternate routes have not only proliferated, but have also had a profound influence on the way we think about the preparation of teachers.

Moreover, why are scores if not hundreds of thousands of individuals with at least a bachelor’s degree attracted to these programs as a way to enter teaching? Why are career-switchers, men, people of color, mathematicians, scientists, and recent graduates of top universities all over the country trying to get into teaching through alternate routes? And why are colleges of education becoming big players in this space?

Simple answer: because alternate routes are market-driven. From day one, they have been created to meet market demand on both sides of the supply-and-demand equation—schools’ need for more and better teachers and the needs of a nontraditional market of individuals who want to help meet those demands.

Alternative teacher-certification programs generally don’t exist unless there are teaching jobs that need to be filled. They have been created to recruit, select, train, and certify individuals to teach in schools that need teachers in specific subjects and grade levels. This is why most alternate-route programs are in urban areas and outlying rural areas in the South and in Western and Eastern regions of the United States: Those places are where the demand for teachers is greatest.

This is also why alternative programs produce more math, science, and special education teachers, since those are the subject areas of greatest demand. And more male and minority candidates are entering teaching through alternate routes because these subjects and geographic areas are where the greatest concentration of men and minorities are.

Alternate routes come and go—if there is no market demand for teachers and no applicants, the programs die. And that is not a bad thing.

---

For the last half-century, America has relied for its teachers almost exclusively on high school students going to college and enrolling in a state-approved undergraduate teacher education program. It was not that long ago that teacher quality was measured by the SAT scores of students indicating they intended to major in education when they got into college.

Data from the federal Schools and Staffing Survey show that only 57 percent of brand-new entrants to the teaching profession in 2003-04 were recent college graduates (most likely to have come through a traditional program). And today about 40 percent of undergraduates who train to teach do not go into teaching. The U.S. Department of Education’s Baccalaureate and Beyond Longitudinal Study shows that only about a third of education majors (33.5 percent in 2001) go directly into teaching, and fewer than three-quarters teach at some point in the 10 years after finishing their bachelor’s degrees. This is not an efficient model for teacher production.

There is more than a sheer market phenomenon at work. Alternate routes have not only proliferated, but have also had a profound influence on the way we think about the preparation of teachers. Much to the chagrin of critics, one of the hallmarks of alternate routes is that they get candidates into classrooms early—sometimes right away—as teachers of record. The National Center for Alternative Certification’s database of alternate-route providers indicates that virtually all participants teach with salary and benefits during their programs (79 percent full time, and 21 percent part time). Support from mentor teachers and other school or university personnel also is a major component of most alternate-route programs.

All of these programs, including those administered by colleges of education, stress on-the-job training. And this strikes many in the field as the wave of the future. At a recent Education Department policy discussion on the reauthorization of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act, for example, one participant cited Finland’s brand of teacher preparation as a model. There, candidates practice-teach throughout their education. They are in the classroom literally from the day they begin study.

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The federal Institute of Education Sciences has come out with three startling reports over the past year: one basically concluding that the pathway to teaching doesn’t matter in the production of effective teachers, and the other two indicating that mentoring and induction are not all they’ve been cracked up to be in producing teachers who improve student achievement or in retaining teachers.

The reports and statistics go on and on. What does it all mean? What have we learned about how best to prepare teachers? Here are some thoughts:

• There are now hundreds of diverse pathways into teaching, with varying entry and program-delivery components.

• There are vastly more educated, talented, eager adults who want to teach in high-demand subjects and geographic areas than there are jobs available.

• No research, to date, has found that the pathway one takes into teaching makes much difference in classroom effectiveness (which translates to student achievement).

• The continuing debates about alternative vs. traditional teacher preparation, and such nonsensical phrases as “alternative is not alternative,” are a waste of time at this juncture.

• Most school districts do not want to run teacher-training programs.

Maybe—just maybe—counting courses, defining program-quality indicators, lining up licensing credentials, and providing other measures of “highly qualified teachers” are not the way to go. Perhaps decisions about the preparation of teachers can be made based on answers to the “effective teacher” questions: What, if any, components of existing teacher-preparation programs—recruitment and selection, mentoring and induction, curriculum/content and assessments—make a difference, and under what circumstances?

Thankfully, an evolving critical mass of smart people is focusing on effective teachers for answers—teachers whose students really do learn. How do we know an effective teacher when we see one? What makes an effective teacher effective? Can we make them, or do we just find them?

While answers to these questions are being sought, we also need to focus attention on what kinds of teachers will be needed going forward and how we get them. After all, practically the same cast of characters that was around when the college-assured teacher education model began in the early 1950s (the American Association of Colleges of Teacher Education was formed in 1948; the National Council for Accreditation of Teacher Education in 1954) is still running colleges of education. And that was about the time that television was first showing up in living rooms across the country. Think about it.

The rapidity of technological advancements and their impact on teacher and student learning are immense. The Internet began to be widely used less than two decades ago. Google was started by a couple of college kids in 1998. We all began walking around with cellphones about 10 years ago. The BlackBerry came out in 2002, and the iPhone two years ago. And then there is the recent explosion of social networking, and cloud computing on the horizon.

That pace of change prompts the question: How are kids going to learn 10 years from now? And, going further, what role will teachers play?

C. Emily Feistritzer is the president and chief executive officer of the National Center for Education Information and the National Center for Alternative Certification, in Washington.

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Cash-for-grades

Selling candy didn't raise much money last year, so a Goldsboro middle school tried selling grades.

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ETS Maintenance

Computer-Administered Testing (CAT) System Maintenance

System maintenance is being performed on the ETS Computer-Administered Testing (CAT) System from approximately 7:00 a.m. until 3:00 p.m. (Central time) on Thursday, November 15, 2009. During this time, you will NOT be able to register, reschedule, or cancel any CAT exams administered at test centers with an APCN or APCU prefix (e.g., APCN 7711). All functions will continue to be available for test centers with an STN prefix (e.g., STN13089). Registrations for paper-based testing will not be affected.

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iteachTEXAS Candidate Making Local News

Gilmer Elementary art teacher Lori Martin explains the difference between an acute and an obtuse angle, but she's not teaching math. Click here to read and view a video of Lori incorporating cross-curriculum instruction into her Art class.

"If they are doing a math problem and they think oh wait a minute I can draw that out and understand what I'm doing with it," said Martin. "That may help them in their TAKS scores or any problem they may see in the future."

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Are Teacher Colleges Turning out Mediocrity?

On Thursday, Secretary of Education, Arne Duncan went to Columbia University's Teachers College, the oldest teacher-training school in the nation, and delivered a speech blasting the education schools that have trained the majority of the 3.2 million teachers working in U.S. public schools today. "By almost any standard, many if not most of the nation's 1,450 schools, colleges and departments of education are doing a mediocre job of preparing teachers for the realities of the 21st century classroom," he said to an audience of teaching students who listened with more curiosity than ire — this was Columbia University after all, and they knew Duncan wasn't talking to them. It was a damning, but not unprecedented, assessment of teacher colleges, which have long been the stepchildren of the American university system and a frequent target of education reformers' scorn over the past quarter-century.

Are Teacher Colleges Turning out Mediocrity?

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Institutions Whose Degrees are Illegal to Use in Texas

Consonant with its responsibilities under Chapter 61 of the Texas Education Code and rules promulgated pursuant thereto, the Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board is reviewing the current status of institutions included on this list.

"Fraudulent or substandard degree" means a degree conferred in Texas in violation of the Texas Education Code; conferred in another state in violation of that state's laws; conferred in another state by an institution that was not accredited by an accreditor recognized by the Coordinating Board and that has not been approved by the Coordinating Board for its degrees to be used in Texas; or conferred outside the United States by an institution that the Coordinating Board determines is not the equivalent of an accredited or authorized degree. (Texas Educational Code, Chapter 61, Section 61.302)

The Texas Penal Code (Section 32.52) prohibits the use of fraudulent or substandard degrees "in a written or oral advertisement or other promotion of a business; or with the intent to: obtain employment; obtain a license or certificate to practice a trade, profession, or occupation; obtain a promotion, a compensation or other benefit, or an increase in compensation or other benefit, in employment or in the practice of a trade, profession, or occupation; obtain admission to an educational program in this state; or gain a position in government with authority over another person, regardless of whether the actor receives compensation for the position." Violation of this law is a Class B misdemeanor.


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Teacher Contract Called Potential Model for Nation

Teacher Contract Called Potential Model for Nation:
The pact in New Haven, CT allows for changing work rules in "turnaround" schools, and revamping how teachers are evaluated and paid.


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New Interpretation/Guidance for Elementary School Teachers New to the Profession

Cory Green, TEA NCLB, recently spoke to certification programs and certification officers at the Consortium of State Organizations for Texas Teacher Education (CSOTTE) in San Antonio.
During a monitoring visit this fall the Department of Education (DOE) cited the state for noncompliance in determining the Highly Qualified status of EC-6 teachers. While the state, with the full support of TEA Commissioner Robert Scott is seeking further clarification and requesting flexibility in the implementation of the new interpretation, the DOE contends that the new guidelines must be followed in the reporting of HQ for EC-6 teachers hired for the 2009-2010 school year. Click on the link below to access the TEA letter that will be sent to districts this week.

New Interpretation Letter

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