Report on performance-based teacher evaluation systems

Thought this might be of interest given the current national push for this type of accountability.

"...An examination of performance-based teacher evaluation systems in five states, was conducted by the 2006-2011 REL Northeast and Islands at Education Development Center, Inc. This study reviewed state education agency websites and publicly available documents for all 50 states to identify states whose performance-based teacher evaluation systems met certain criteria similar to the guidelines set forth in the 2009 Race to the Top grant competition"

The criteria were:

• Was required for practicing general educators.
• Was operational statewide as of the 2010/11 school year.
• Included multiple rating categories.
• Used multiple measures of teacher effectiveness, such as observations, self-assessments, and professional growth plans.
Five states (Delaware, Georgia, North Carolina, Tennessee, and Texas) met these criteria.

Report is linked here: http://ies.ed.gov/ncee/edlabs/projects/project.asp?projectID=294

Information Literacy Standards for Teacher Education published

The Association of College and Research Libraries (ACRL) published Information Literacy Competency Standards for Higher Education in 2000, which were subsequently incorporated into many accrediting bodies' benchmarks. Since that time, work has been underway to develop discipline specific standards, and those for teacher education have just been published. "The Information Literacy Standards for Teacher Education provides a bridge between the ACRL Information Literacy Competency Standards for Higher Education (2000) and the application of the information literacy standards in teacher education contexts" (Cook & Cooper, 2006).
According to the committee that drafted and revised the standards,
"The main purposes of the Information Literacy Standards for Teacher Education are to:

• Guide teacher education faculty and instruction librarians in developing information literacy instruction for teacher education students.
• Enable the evaluation and assessment of such instruction and curricula through benchmarking outcomes.

Secondarily, the Standards aim to communicate to teacher education students expectations for information literacy knowledge and skills they need to develop and apply in their academic work and pre-service teaching. The Standards also aim to lead teacher education students to consider how they might integrate information literacy into their future curriculum, instruction, and assessment activities once a member of the teaching profession." (http://crln.acrl.org/content/72/7/420.full)

Cook, D. & Cooper, N. (Eds.) (2006). Teaching information literacy to social sciences students and practitioners: A casebook of applications. Chicago: ACRL.

 

New reporting for teacher prep programs proposed for 2012

Here is an historical summary of legislative reporting requirements (federal) as provided in Education Week (March 8, 2011).

Federal Requirements

1998 Amendments to the Higher Education Act of 1965
• Traditional teacher-preparation programs create report cards on enrollments in traditional teacher education programs and the passing rate of candidates on teacher-certification or -licensing tests.
• States create report cards ranking teacher-preparation programs based on the passing rates on those assessments, as well as those in state-approved alternative-certification programs. They also identify low-performing and “at risk” programs.
Higher Education Opportunity and Access Act of 2008
In addition to previous requirements, the law requires:
• Reporting on alternative-certification programs both inside and outside higher education programs.
• Preparation programs to report on the average scaled scores, as well as passing rates, on all licensing tests, broken out by the stage at which candidates take the tests.
• Preparation programs to report on admissions, the number of candidates by field, demographics of program participants, the number of faculty supervising clinical experiences, and programming on technology instruction and working with special populations.
• Preparation programs to set and report on goals for increasing the number of teachers prepared in shortage fields.

Fiscal 2012 Proposals
• Would eliminate some reporting requirements.
• Preparation programs would be expected to report on three outcome measures:

• Achievement growth of students taught by program graduates;
• Graduate job-placement and retention rates; and
• Graduate and employer satisfaction

• Would end the TEACH grant program and replace it with the Presidential Teaching Fellows program.

SOURCE: Education Week

US News will start ranking teacher prep programs

Couple of articles describing U.S. News & World Report's intentions to start a survey of 1,000 teacher prep programs, utilizing the National Council on Teacher Quality methodology.

From PR Newswire:
http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/us-news--world-report-and-national-council-on-teacher-quality-launch-comprehensive-review-of-nations-teacher-preparation-programs-114163659.html

From Inside Higher Ed:
http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2011/01/19/qt#248429

"Transforming teacher education through clinical practice"-- New report from NCATE

Released Nov. 16, this new report sponsored by NCATE emphasizes clinical preparation as the key to reforming teacher preparation programs. The entire report is available here.
An article from Inside Higher Ed provides an overview stating in part, "At the report’s core is the assertion that for teachers to be effective, they need educations grounded in immersion and clinical practice. The report calls for more rigorous accountability; strengthening candidate selection and placement; revamping curriculums, incentives and staffing; and identifying what works and supporting continuous improvement. " All of this probably shounds familiar if you went to hear Jane West speak at the Alumni Center a couple of weeks ago.

Innovative strategies for teacher prep

This short piece on MSNBC news discusses the use of virtual classrooms to help prepare teachers. The program was developed at the University of Central Florida and one of our own, Dr. David Grant, is actually one of the stars in this 2 min. 23 sec. video. In addition to the points made about being able to give students classroom experience earlier in their curriculum, I think one of the real advantages is being able to present the developing teachers with specific classroom behaviors and challenges--with the opportunities to get formative feedback on handling them. Putting them in real classrooms, doesn't necessarily offer the chance to deal with particular kinds of situations while they are still in a position to get formative feedback (from education faculty, classmates, etc.). So students would get more practice, with a greater variety of situations/behaviors, earlier in their preparation!

NCATE and TEAC are now CAEP

As you may have heard from speaker Jane West yesterday, or via some other news source, the two major accrediting bodies for teacher education programs have now merged into the Council for the Accreditation of Educator Preparation. West called this a positive step in creating a unified voice for teacher preparation programs. Here's an excerpt from the new organization's web site:
"October 22, 2010, was a historic day for educator preparation. The NCATE and TEAC governing boards voted to create a single accrediting body for educator preparation. The two organizations will consolidate into one organization, CAEP, within a two-year period. The new organization will offer accreditation options."

Report on the world's best-performing school systems

A record for this report, "How the world's best-performing school systems come out on top," examining 25 school systems, has been added to the UNLV Libraries catalog or is available here:
http://www.mckinsey.com/App_Media/Reports/SSO/Worlds_School_Systems_Final.pdf
They found 3 things that matter most: (1) getting the right people to become teachers, (2) developing them into effective instructors, and (3) ensuring that the system is able to deliver the best possible instruction for every child. Success is not strictly related to cost; for example, Singapore is among the top performers and yet spends less on primary education than 27 of the 30 OECD countries.

19 states planning to implement performance based pre-licensing assessment for teachers

According to Education Week (Aug. 30, 2010), "Education programs across 19 states are piloting a performance-based assessment for teacher-candidates that potentially could serve as a common prelicensing measure for new teachers. Based on a test in use in about 30 education schools in California, the Teacher Performance Assessment includes a “teaching event” requiring teachers to extensively document and submit for review artifacts of their planning, instruction, and ability to assess and respond to student needs...Five of the states taking part in the work—Massachusetts, Minnesota, Ohio, Tennessee, and Washington—have committed in legislation to use a performance-based licensing test, and officials have signed memoranda of understanding agreeing to adopt the assessment if it proves to be technically valid and reliable."
Additional states planning on participating include California, Colorado, Iowa, Illinois, Maryland, Michigan, Missouri, New York, New Jersey, North Carolina, South Carolina, Virginia, West Virginia, and Wisconsin.

Arne Duncan's speech at Teachers College

Since it has generated so much press and conversation among individuals and organizations, I thought I would put a link to the text of the speech here.

NCEE report on teacher preparation to work with students with disabilities

A new report from REL Southeast:
"The study examines the extent to which elementary education teacher preparation programs in 36 randomly selected colleges and universities in the six Southeast Region states integrate content related to students with disabilities. Findings show most programs require one disability-focused course, two-thirds incorporate fieldwork related to students with disabilities, and more than half incorporate disability content into their mission statements."

Report links here: http://ies.ed.gov/ncee/edlabs/projects/project.asp?projectID=171&productID=124

Two new REL reports released

New from REL West -
"Characteristics of California school districts in improvement"
This descriptive analysis provides a statistical profile of California's Title I school districts in program improvement. As an independent analysis of these districts in the aggregate, it is intended to inform the context for district improvement as California rolls out and refines its district intervention strategies.
http://ies.ed.gov/ncee/edlabs/projects/project.asp?id=152

New from REL Central -
"Preparing teachers to teach in rural schools"
The Central Region states have greater percentages of rural students and schools than the U.S. average. This report describes how nine teacher preparation programs in the region prepare their graduates for teaching positions in rural settings.
http://ies.ed.gov/ncee/edlabs/projects/project.asp?id=10