Coursera to Offer Free Teacher Development Classes

Posted on May 22, 2013 by coreeducation

Coursera, one of the larger MOOC’s (massive open online courses), will begin offering free online teacher development courses this summer. And for a set of courses that are just beginning, a rather impressive list of traditional universities including the College of Education at University of Washington and John Hopkins University School of Education as well as non-traditional educational institutes such as the American Museum of History, The Museum of Modern Art, and the Exploratorium have all agreed to take part.

Here is a description of the new set of courses from edSurge:

[I]n addition to covering the 101 basics of teaching, classes will allow teachers to explore more niche topics like “Tinkering Fundamentals: Integrating Making Activities into Your STEM Classroom.”

The cost to run these PD MOOCs are expected to be lower than what Coursera’s “mainstream” college partners pay, which typically range from $10K-$50K for each 10-week course. One reason may be that the duration of these PD courses will likely be shorter, lasting only three to four weeks. The company also plans to issue statements of accomplishment for teachers who finish the classes.

“We are particularly excited about the opportunity to offer professional development for teachers that are more targeted and differentiated, based on their skills and experience,” says Julia Stiglitz, who oversees business development and partnerships at Coursera, and who was previously a teacher and Program Director at Teach for America.

This “first foray into early childhood and K-12-level education” raises an obvious question: will Coursera move deeper and, say, partner with prestigious high schools to offer MOOCs for K-12 students?

The company says there are currently no plans, but adds that it has already seen many high school students take MOOCs as part of their college prep work. Still, we wouldn’t be surprised if Coursera changes its mind somewhere down the line.

Following is a link to the list of professional development courses being offered:

https://www.coursera.org/courses?cats=teacherpd

TNTP Launches Blog

Posted on May 9, 2013 by coreeducation

Over the last 15 years, TNTP, a national nonprofit committed to ending the injustice of educational inequality, has shared what they have learned about education policy and effective teaching mainly through publications like “The Irreplaceables.” Recently, they have launched a TNTP blog. TNTP hopes to use the blog to offer a different perspective on the issues and share more of their learning process. TNTP is inspired by the power of great teaching to change lives. This blog shares ideas, research and opinion about how to grow great teachers and build systems that prioritize effective teaching in every classroom.

Some of the topics of the first blogs include:

For more information, please visit: http://tntp.org/blog

Bill Gates on Teacher Evaluations

Posted on April 23, 2013 by coreeducation

Through the influence of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, which has provided money for many different educational studies in recent years, Bill Gates has become an influential name in education.

It might be expected that Gates would support educational reforms more along the lines of the privatization-corporatization model as well as support reforms that involve technology, and that may be generally true, but in a recent op-ed piece in the Washington Post, Gates calls for balanced teacher evaluations that incorporate factors beyond simply student test scores.

Gates first highlights what he sees as an over-zealous attitude by some states to develop standardized tests. For example, he mentions how “in one Midwestern state, for example, a 166-page Physical Education Evaluation Instrument holds teachers accountable for ensuring that students meet state-defined targets for physical education, such as consistently demonstrating ‘correct skipping technique with a smooth and effortless rhythm’ and ‘strike consistently a ball with a paddle to a target area with accuracy and good technique.’ I’m not making this up!”

Gates believes it is this over-zealous approach to standardized testing that has engendered the backlash against it: “This is one reason there is a backlash against standardized tests — in particular, using student test scores as the primary basis for making decisions about firing, promoting and compensating teachers. I’m all for accountability, but I understand teachers’ concerns and frustrations.”

In summary, Gates wants a teacher evaluation system that incorporates multiple measures, including standardized tests, and that actually helps teachers know how to make improvements. Gates predicts that teachers will be more supportive of such initiatives: “If we aren’t careful to build a system that provides feedback and that teachers trust, this opportunity to dramatically improve the U.S. education system will be wasted. The fact is, teachers want to be accountable to their students. What the country needs are thoughtfully developed teacher evaluation systems that include multiple measures of performance, such as student surveys, classroom observations by experienced colleagues and student test results.”

Following is the link to the op-ed: http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/bill-gates-a-fairer-way-to-evaluate-teachers/2013/04/03/c99fd1bc-98c2-11e2-814b-063623d80a60_story.html

And a link to the Gates Foundation education page: http://www.gatesfoundation.org/What-We-Do/US-Program/College-Ready-Education

April Issue Brief: Common Core Implementation

Posted on April 21, 2013 by coreeducation

Forty-five states, four territories, the District of Columbia and DoDEA are currently transitioning to full implementation of the Common Core State Standards. While some groups are further along than others, educators across the country are seeking high quality resources to facilitate this process.

In this month’s issue brief, we explore resources and information designed to support Common Core implementation. We’re interested in hearing about the resources, websites and tools that you have found to be most useful during this transition. Please respond to our call for commentary. We’d love to hear from you!

To check out this month’s newsletter and access resources on school leadership, please follow this link: http://us5.campaign-archive1.com/?u=a4ae2b1b129b9f8a29d50b80f&id=82f07ccbb1&e=19cfa03b4e

To ensure you do not miss future issues, we encourage you to subscribe to the monthly newsletter by following this link: http://tinyurl.com/byje6b9

MOOC for Educators: “Digital Learning Transition”

Posted on April 15, 2013 by coreeducation

The Alliance for Excellent Education and the Friday Institute for Educational Innovation are offering a first-of-its-kind online course for school district leaders.

Last month, the Alliance for Excellent Education and Friday Institute for Educational Innovation at North Carolina State University opened enrollment for a first-of-its-kind Massive Online Open Course for Educators (MOOC-Ed). Titled “Digital Learning Transition,” the free course will examine how the effective use of digital learning can help school districts meet educational challenges, including implementing college- and career-ready standards for all students and preparing teachers to make effective use of technology to enhance teaching and learning.

The course—a component of the Alliance’s “Project 24” initiative and the first of a series of MOOC-Eds planned by the Friday Institute—will help school district leaders develop a set of digital learning goals to address their students’ specific needs. Participating educators will learn how technology and the global information age impact both what students need to know and how and when student learning can take place. They will study the elements necessary for a successful digital learning transition, develop a set of goals for digital learning aligned to desired student outcomes, and create an action plan to meet these goals.

“By participating in this ground-breaking effort, educators can experience first-hand how digital learning can change teaching and improve learning,” said Bob Wise, president of the Alliance for Excellent Education and former governor of West Virginia. “At the same time, they will develop a valuable plan for how to take their school or district through a digital learning transition.”

Throughout the course, participants will have access to digital learning experts who have successfully implemented digital learning efforts that are supporting teachers and positively impacting student learning. And by conducting the course on such a massive scale—literally thousands of district leaders can participate—participants will also benefit from “crowdsourcing,” a collaborative professional learning experience that uses the “wisdom of the crowd” to discuss ideas, share strategies and resources, and exchange constructive feedback with other participants in similar roles and schools.

“The Digital Learning Transition MOOC-Ed enables educators to experience using innovative technologies as learners and collaborators, which will help them gain insights into what these technologies can mean for students,” said Glenn Kleiman, executive director of the Friday Institute. “We look forward to having many innovative educators join us in exploring this new form of large-scale, flexible, multimedia, and collaborative professional development.”

Each of the course’s seven sessions will include core resources and supplemental materials around a specific topic, while allowing for a great deal of personalization and flexibility. Participants are expected to navigate their own paths, consistent with their own goals and the needs of their school or district, while being supported and guided by the facilitators, resources, and fellow participants.

Running through May 24, the seven-week course is designed for school and district leaders, including superintendents, principals, curriculum directors, technology directors, financial officers, instructional coaches, lead teachers, and others involved in planning and implementing K–12 digital learning initiatives. Participants should expect to commit between two and four hours each week, but there will be opportunities for those who wish to invest more time and explore issues more deeply.

Interested individuals can obtain more information and register for the course at dlt.mooc-ed.org. After registering, they are strongly encouraged to take Project 24’s free online self assessment to help frame a vision for digital learning and specify how technology can help align efforts to achieve college- and career-ready standards. Upon completion of the self assessment, participants will receive a personalized report analyzing their district’s progress in integrating technology into instruction.

The MOOC-Ed is part of “Project 24,” a ground-breaking new initiative led by the Alliance to help school districts plan for and effectively use technology and digital learning. Project 24 is an urgent call to action on the need for systemic planning around the effective use of technology and digital learning to achieve the goal of career and college readiness for all students. Project 24 participants benefit from free comprehensive district-level planning tools, expert advice, creative ideas, and tangible suggestions from experienced education experts and nonprofit education membership organizations. Already, more than 1,000 school leaders from nearly 500 school districts—representing 6.5 million students—have signed up to participate.

The Digital Learning Transition MOOC-Ed is provided by the Friday Institute for Educational Innovation as part of ongoing work to support the effective use of technologies and innovative teaching and learning practices in K–12 education.

“Make no mistake; digital learning holds the key to preparing millions of additional students for college and a productive career, but district leaders need to approach this opportunity with sound planning to leverage the potential and achieve the best results,” said Wise. “Going forward, our goal is to get every district to sign up and start planning.”

For more information, please visit the following:

http://dlt.mooc-ed.org/preview

CAEP “Raising the Bar” for Teacher Education Accreditation Programs

Posted on April 1, 2013 by coreeducation

The Teacher Education Accreditation Council (TEAC) and the National Council for the Accreditation of Teacher Education (NCATE) are merging into the Council for the Accreditation of Educator Preparation (CAEP). CAEP will become the sole body responsible for the accreditation of teacher education programs and will serve the more than 900 educator preparation providers currently accredited by the TEAC and NCATE. According to the press release on the merger, “Accreditation is a non-governmental activity based on peer review that serves the dual functions of assuring quality and motivating improvement.”

As far back as 2009, NCATE and TEAC began preparing for the merger, recommending in a report:

“That the Executive Board of NCATE and the Board of Directors of TEAC adopt a motion authorizing their Presidents to execute, on behalf of their respective organizations, agreements… which would provide for (1) the creation of The Council for the Accreditation of Educator Preparation, Inc., (CAEP), (2) a transition period of no more than two years to complete the design work and implement its capacity to accredit all institutions and other entities that prepare teachers, administrators and other P-12 professional educators and (3) immediately afterwards, the consolidation of NCATE and TEAC into CAEP as the field’s accreditor.”

Along with the merger, CAEP has made its new draft standards available.

The Commission has developed a draft of its recommendations for the CAEP Board of Directors… The Commission has given emphasis to a firm grounding of its standards and evidence on empirical research or, where there is little guiding research, has based its recommendations on best practices and professional consensus. The Commission calls for accountability of providers and CAEP, itself; public reporting must be forthright and transparent. And, the Commission recommends new standards and decision procedures that balance strong evidence with professional judgment.

CAEP’s leaders have set challenging goals to enhance the value of accreditation. Commission members have responded to their charge by identifying four especially critical points of leverage to transform educator preparation in our nation:

Build partnerships and strong clinical experiences-Educator preparation providers and collaborating schools and school districts bring complementary experiences that, joined together, promise far stronger preparation programs. (See standard 2.)
Raise and assure candidate quality-From recruitment and admission, through preparation, and at exit, educator preparation providers must take responsibility to build an educator workforce that is more able, and also more representative of America’s diverse population. (See standard 3, including minimum admissions criteria and a group average performance on nationally normed admissions assessments in the top third of national pools.)
Include all providers-Accreditation must encourage innovations in preparation by welcoming all of the varied providers that seek accreditation and meet challenging levels of performance.
And surmounting all others, insist that preparation be judged by outcomes and impact on P-12 student learning-Results matter; “effort” is not enough. (See standard 4, especially.)

These points of leverage are not accreditation “business as usual,” nor do they represent marginal changes from current and former education accreditation practice. Exercising them can add value to what states are trying to accomplish with their reforms in preparation policy.

The Commission’s work is organized in part around three areas of teacher preparation identified by the National Academy of Sciences 2010 report, Preparing Teachers: Building Evidence for Sound Policy. The Academy panel sifted through hundreds of research studies from recent decades and, not surprisingly, concluded that more research is needed in order to have sound evidence about the effects of particular aspects of preparation. But it found that existing research provides some guidance: content knowledge, field experience, and the quality of teacher candidates “are likely to have the strongest effects” on outcomes for students.

CAEP promises to bring a rigorous, 21^st century approach to their work in hopes of becoming the model professional accreditation organization.

The draft standards can be found at:
www.ncate.org

Will States be Ready for Common Core?

Posted on February 27, 2013 by coreeducation

A new report released by Education First suggests that states have made “significant progress” toward Common Core readiness.

Education First and the Editorial Projects in Education Research Center have released Moving Forward: A National Perspective on States’ Progress in Common Core State Standards Implementation Planning. A sequel to last year’s Preparing for Change report, this new report provides another 50-state snapshot of state plans to implement the Common Core State Standards (CCSS), and suggests that states have made significant progress since 2011.

A few highlights:

All 47 CCSS-adopting states reported having a formal implementation plan fortransitioning to the new standards.
Most CCSS-adopting states reported progress in planning since 2011.
As was the case in 2011, states are furthest along in their planning related to aligning teacher professional development to the CCSS.
Since 2011, states have advanced their planning to align instructional materials with the CCSS.
Most states have plans in place or in progress for aligning their teacher-evaluation systems to the CCSS.

There are a few signs of a lack of progress in some areas, however:

Six states indicated that they are further away from the goal of completing fully developed plans for a particular implementation area in 2012 than they reported a year earlier.
As of summer 2012, five states did not have a plan underway to align instructional materials with the CCSS.

The conclusion to the report remains positive, despite some of the weaknesses mentioned:

Though the ultimate impact of the transition to the Common Core State Standards remains to be seen, the survey results presented in this report suggest that most states are further along in planning for this change than they were a year ago. Since effective planning by state leaders will help educators navigate the shifting educational landscape and better prepare our nation’s students to meet new academic expectations, this is welcome news.

Access the report here: http://www.education-first.com/files/MovingForward_EF_EPE_020413_final.pdf

Reform to support Common Core

Posted on February 22, 2013 by coreeducation

If the Common Core initiative is to have a chance to take off, a new strategy of professional development, coupled with thoughtful evaluation is necessary. This is according to Peter Youngs, writing under the auspices of the Center for American Progress. This new strategy requires reform of the current system of teacher evaluation and needs the buy-in of principals and other school leaders. In the introduction to the report, Youngs provides the following background:

The Common Core State Standards Initiative, in its aim to align diverse state curricula and improve educational outcomes, calls for K-12 teachers in the United States to engage all students in mathematical problem solving along with reading and writing complex text through the use of rigorous academic content. Until recently, most teacher evaluation systems in this country did not measure or promote the ability of teachers to practice in these ways.

This report discusses efforts to develop and implement Common Core standards and assessments in the 45 states and the District of Columbia that are initiative members, and outlines how past attempts to enact standards-based reform have been impeded by limitations in teacher evaluation. It also draws on the notion of “standard of care,” from the field of medicine, to note that advances in our understanding of subject matter, pedagogy, how students learn, and technology call for teachers to continually acquire new knowledge and to refine their instructional practices by participating in comprehensive professional development on a regular basis.

Youngs then proceeds to recommend the following as concrete changes that could be made to help implement the reform needed to help bring about a successful Common Core model:

• Utilize school-based instructional coaches in English language and mathematics to provide ongoing professional learning opportunities to teachers related to the Common Core standards and assessments. In addition, districts can support principals’ efforts to connect teachers to relevant external professional development based on classroom observation and student survey ratings.

• Ensure the validity and reliability of classroom observation protocols by implementing a standardized approach to training principals and other evaluators, and monitoring their ratings. In addition, districts can train principals to provide timely, meaningful feedback to teachers based on observational data.

• Provide training to principals to ensure that student surveys are administered in a uniform way across schools and classrooms, and work out specific procedures for administering them to young children and students with disabilities. To address teachers’ resistance to the use of student surveys, districts can educate them about the value of student survey data. Further, districts can train principals to provide timely, meaningful feedback to teachers based on student survey data.

• Use multiple years of value-added model data in evaluating individual teachers. High-stakes decisions such as dismissal, career ladder promotion, or merit pay should focus only on those teachers who consistently receive bottom-quartile or top-quartile value-added model scores over multiple years.

• Combine aspects—or scaled-down versions—of the National Board for Professional Teaching Standards and edTPA assessments with one or more of the other approaches discussed in this report.

For access to the full report, please see:
http://www.americanprogress.org/issues/education/report/2013/02/05/51410/using-teacher-evaluation-reform-and-professional-development-to-support-common-core-assessments/

Webinar: How can Common Core help ELL’s?

Posted on February 17, 2013 by coreeducation

Free Webinar from All4Ed: Building on the Common Core State Standards to Improve Learning for English Language Learners

Please join the Alliance for Excellent Education on Tuesday, February 26, from 1:00 p.m. to 2:30 p.m. (ET), for a webinar on how the transition to Common Core State Standards and Next-Generation Science Standards presents both opportunities and challenges for the growing number of English language learners. A number of initiatives are underway to help English learners access grade-level content while building their language proficiency. Stanford University launched a two-year initiative—Understanding Language—to look at the language demands contained in the new standards. The Council of Chief State School Officers recently developed the Framework for English Language Proficiency Development Standards to help states understand the sophisticated language competencies English language learners will need to perform in an academic area.

Kenji Hakuta and Maria Santos, cochairs of the Understanding Language initiative, and Susan Pimentel and Carrie Heath Phillips, developers of the Framework for English Language Proficiency Development Standards, will discuss these efforts and their respective accomplishments to date along with state and district actions needed to support English learners’ language and content learning. Mariana Haynes, senior fellow at the Alliance, will moderate the discussion. Panelists will also address questions submitted by webinar viewers from across the country.

Date and Time: Tuesday, February 26, 2013; 1:00 p.m. – 2:30 p.m. (ET)

Panelists
Kenji Hakuta, Lee L. Jacks Professor of Education, Stanford University
Mariana Haynes, Senior Fellow, Alliance for Excellent Education
Carrie Heath Phillips, Program Director, Common Core State Standards Implementation, Council of Chief State School Officers
Susan Pimentel, Education Analyst and Standards and Curriculum Specialist
Maria Santos, Deputy Superintendent for Instruction, Leadership and Equity-in-Action, Oakland Unified School District (California)

Update: Access the recorded webinar here: http://media.all4ed.org/webinar-feb-26-2013

New Resources for 21st Century Learning Design

Posted on February 15, 2013 by coreeducation

In 2012, Microsoft announced a new professional development program called 21st Century Learning Design (21CLD), formerly known as “LEAP21”, that helps teachers build innovative pedagogical practices and develop resources for designing learning activities that foster higher order skills. It includes:

practice-based professional development, so new ideas are used immediately in the classroom
collaboration among teachers to share risk as well as motivation
flexible content that can be adapted to meet teachers’ own unique situations
ongoing, structured work that doesn’t end after a workshop
meaningful recognition of progress in teaching and a way to measure its impact on learning

21CDL also includes resources for educators, in the form of rubrics that help them analyze and redesign their own lessons to develop students’ higher order skills. Problem-solving, collaboration, knowledge construction, and communication skills are all needed by students as they prepare for a globalized knowledge-based economy.

Now these rubrics are available under a Creative Commons license globally, so that they can be freely used, republished, and re-mixed to adapt them to local contexts, curricula and pedagogical cultures. The new rubrics include both Learning Activity and Student Work rubrics for:

Collaboration
Knowledge Construction
Self-Regulation
Use of Information and Communications Technology (ICT) for Learning
Skilled Communication
Real World Problem Solving and Innovation

You can find and use the new 21CLD Rubrics that are the foundation of the 21CLD workshops here or at the following URL: http://www.itlresearch.com/itl-leap21

The "Core" of Education

Tag Archives: professional development