School of Education Meeting

September 11, 2000

Fairfield Bay

Notes from Teacher Quality Grant Workshop
Sunday Afternoon
Central is student learning
- Introductions
- Teacher Quality Enhancement Program financed the grant
- State financed the grant
- Professional development
- What training is needed to help us meet this challenge?
- Arkansas Leadership Academy model for the weekend.
- Beginning of a conversation
- Listserv needed for email of conversation?
- Carmen Giebelhaus
- University of Dayton & Ohio State licensure issues, ETS consultant
- Setting Norms
- Storm, Form, Norm, Perform
- Agenda
- Why are we here?
- We are here to determine the best way to focus student learning on national and state standards
- Accreditation based on how well our student bring about learning in P12 students
- Documentation of learning and changes in P12 students
- Accountability
- Assessment - Demonstrations of knowledge and skills as they are applied in the real world
- Alignment
Curriculum, assessment and standards are aligned to the standards
- Accreditation
Performance assessment of candidates
Teacher Ed Nationally
- Teacher Education Policy
- Issues moving to a national level
- Federalization of teacher education
- Centralization and regulation versus deregulation of teacher education
- Nontraditional licensure
- Section 207 of the HEA of 1998
- Institutional report card
- Year to year measures of the quality of the institution's teacher education program
- Includes content areas
- Imposes a fine of 25 thousand dollar fine plus loss of federal aid
- State report card
Contents
- Pass rates of graduates assessed during 3 years of program completion
- Comparison of the program's pass rate with the average pass rate for the state
- Pass rates
- Single assessment pass rate (rule of 10)
- Aggregate pass rates
- Summary pass rates
- Program information
- Contextual information
- Allows us to explain differences in our data
- Assessment data of the first Title II Cohort
- Analysis of Praxis II scores
ATU had a 100 percent pass rate of P II scores
- 1999-2000 Cohort of students who took the test
- Carmen Giebelhaus
- Praxis Series
Praxis I - Basic Skills, Reading, Writing, Math
About the 8th grade level
Praxis II - Content knowledge and pedagogy
Paper and pencil assessment of knowledge
Students are required to use different skills in the new tests.
PLT - Pedagogy
Directly aligned with Praxis III
Praxis III/Pathwise
Pathwise used to support the assessment of P III
- Direct observation assessment
- Field based cooperating teacher
- Performance assessment as pedagogy
- Must embrace working with the cooperating teachers as well
- 2002 adoption
- Cooperating teachers have impact on the Title II report card
- P12 learning - Just having the conversation about teaching and learning using this framework has impacted the P12 learning. State standards are considered.
- National pressure on us to be accountable but it is also what P12 schools have had to do for years.
- Higher education can have a huge impact on P12 learning.
- When report cards come out, there will be a ranking of all institutions
- The highest cut scores in the nation are at about 69 percent
- Improving teacher education comes from both the education and arts and sciences community
- Potential of losing all federal funding (Including student aid)
- Political realities
- P 2 Tests
33 percent of candidates do not prepare in any way for the test.
They don’t read the TAAG
They don’t review material
- On exiting the test 90 % of these said "The test was not difficult, I thought I did well."
- Most of the people who failed the test were in that group
- People overestimate their preparedness
= Preparation is directly linked to success on P2 tests
-
Other factors
- Reading ability
-- Critical reading skills
- Familiar with grammar and syntax of multiple-choice questions
- Time Management skills
- TAAG bulletins
- How long
- How many questions
- Test formats
- Technology
- Portfolio pieces required or other technology?
- http://www.teachingandlearning.org
- Teaching the test - or aligning what we teach, how we teach, and how we assess to lead to student success
- What is it about teachers that would lead them not to prepare for a high stakes test?
- What is it about society that would give one third of students the freedom that they would believe this?
- Are you safe to teach?
7 PM Session...
How are the tests put together?
- Surveys of teachers in content area knowledge.
- What is it that you teach?
- Content analysis is performed
- Delphi study performed with the content
- Results go to societies
- What the teachers are telling them agrees with the societies.
- Number of questions is aligned with the topics taught.
- Education faculty writes questions
- Pilot study, focus group conversations,
- How do states decide what should be on the tests?
- Standards setting
- Call to novice teachers 1-7 years experience within a field
- Higher ed people are brought in as well
- Arts & Sciences or K12 people
- Spend the morning taking the test
- Spend the afternoon going over this item-by-item
- Would a novice teacher know this information? (In this question)
- Standards are set by item
- State by state choice
- Collaborative process
- Cut scores come from this process plus politics
- Impact of Praxis and Pathwise
Praxis 3 - 2002 scores will go on the report card
- Teaching and learning needs to be discussed using the same language including field experience instructors
- Jobs impacted include on campus, in the schools,
- If the job is done correctly in terms of working with cooperating teachers, an impact will be visible on P12 student learning
- How are you going to control when students take what tests?
- Students do not know when or what to take.
- Universities and program areas have to make a decision about when to take the test.
- The students who fail particular areas are to remediate themselves with an opportunity to take the test a second time.
- We have to think very clearly about when courses are offered. One of the reasons students have gaps in knowledge is because of the structure of course offerings and when they are offered.
- It may be difficult.
- Programs should send out requests re: reports from students
- There should be a course where students develop an understanding of P2 and it's importance
- Accept no score before its time
- Several questions re: Learning Plus and P1 testing
- Mary
- Reflections on reflective practice
- Learning from reflections on our experiences
- Purposeful reflections
- Journals
- Reflecting to design
- Reflective thinking pyramid
- Technical level
- Contextual level
- Dialectical level