Regents support teacher "Bar Exam" say more rigorous certification process will help students

[hrmjustin]

ALBANY - The State Board of Regents' Higher Education Committee this week discussed the extensive supports the Department has provided for implementation of the new teacher certification exams, including the edTPA (a performance-based assessment of teaching modeled on the highly regarded National Board Certification), the rigorous basic literacy Academic Literacy Skills Test (ALST), and the Educating All Students exam, which evaluates candidates' readiness to teach in diverse classrooms (including students with disabilities and English Language Learners) and work effectively with students' families. After a discussion of the $20 million in Race to the Top funds the State Education Department has provided for the implementation of clinically rich programs at 13 institutions in New York State and a conversation about the certification examinations, the Committee indicated that the work should continue to move forward.

"The Board of Regents started this initiative in 2009," State Education Commissioner John B. King, Jr. said. "We've invested $11.5 million in Race to the Top funds to help higher education institutions transition to the new requirements. In the past year, there have been hundreds of meetings and workshops conducted all over New York State as a result of the extensive support from the State Education Department along with our partners SUNY, CUNY, and the Commission on Independent Colleges and Universities. We are encouraged by the reports of the P-20 collaboration and stronger partnerships across sectors and the Board expressed confidence in the direction we've taken."

Calls for improvement in teacher preparation have come from the federal government, teacher unions, leadership organizations, and higher education accreditation bodies. Governor Cuomo last year called for an increase in "standards for teacher certification…by requiring passage of a bar exam." Last year's enacted budget committed to "a teacher and principal bar exam certification program that would include a common set of professionally rigorous assessments to ensure the best prepared educators are entering the public school system."

http://www.empirestatenews.net/News2014/20140314-1.htm

[upaloopa]

1. Teach prospective teachers to pass a test

So they can teach kids to pass a test.
You just can't put everything in a test.
I went to Catholic grade school in the 50's some of my best teachers did not have a degree. One was 18 and I met her later in life and thanked her for being my teacher.

[Smarmie Doofus]

3. Infinitely better system. I went thru RC schools and am a confirmed secular and agnostic.

But they knew how run schools.


And it's not like it's brain surgery. There's just less bureaucracy, less politics, less corruption and more accountability to the consumer. (The parent will pull the kid if the school sucks.)

[hrmjustin]

4. I went to RC school as well and they are good at teaching.

I ha e to say they were not all that conservative either.

[Smarmie Doofus]

7. That's interesting. My grade schoolteachers, all female, ( nuns ,mostly) I assumed to be....

... Republicans. I'm not sure why. Maybe 'cause the 5th grade teacher told us to tell our parents to vote for Goldwater because (DEM veep cand.) Humphrey was a communist.

But it's not like they spent class time talking about politics.

My HS teachers were all males... about 1/2 priests. In the early seventies everything in the culture was political... or it sure seemed like that. Opinions were very polarized. I'd say the priests on average were to the left of the lay teachers. A number of priests were in the Berrigan mold... i.e pretty left wing.

And of course you had your neanderthals. Most of the left/liberal priests were purged from the church when the next pope came in. That would have been late seventies.

[hrmjustin]

9. I went to RC elementary school in the 80's and 90's.

Some were nuns but most were lay people. As I look back at them they seemed to give us a realistic view of the world.

[Squinch]

5. But they can also boot the kid if the parents or the kid are uncooperative. That's significant.

My RC school expelled kids who had any behavior problems at all.

[hrmjustin]

6. Mine suspended them but never expelled them.

[Smarmie Doofus]

8. Without a doubt. Funny that in the "old days"....

.... catholic school proponents would boast about how much better and calmer the atmosphere was. How discipline wasn't a problem in RC schools.

3 guesses why?

Charter Schools now are making the same fallacious argument.

The more things change.....

[Squinch]

10. Also, the nuns smacked us around.

[Smarmie Doofus]

11. That'll do it.

I don't think they do that anymore. Probably have to check w. "legal" before cracking someones knuckles w. a ruler.

Did you see Sotomayor's acct of getting smacked in the face in her RC grade school? It had something to do w. her not finishing her school lunch.

[Squinch]

12. Some of them were doozies, that's for sure. But I also have to say that some of my best

teachers, in an education that spanned graduate degrees and an ivy league school, were grammar school and high school teaching nuns.

[Smarmie Doofus]

13. I liked most of the nuns. Even the scary ones worked hard and ....

... wouldn't do less than their best. That was the sort of silver lining of that RC strain of puritanism: responsibility was kind of at the center of that ethos.

I haven't shaken it... nor do I want to; but how they would define responsibility APPLIED would be very different than how I define it.

[Smarmie Doofus]

2. This is such bullshit. I got my teaching licenses in 1985 thru 1987.

>>>The State Board of Regents' Higher Education Committee this week discussed the extensive supports the Department has provided for implementation of the new teacher certification exams, including the edTPA (a performance-based assessment of teaching modeled on the highly regarded National Board Certification), the rigorous basic literacy Academic Literacy Skills Test (ALST), and the Educating All Students exam, which evaluates candidates' readiness to teach in diverse classrooms (including students with disabilities and English Language Learners) and work effectively with students' families. After a discussion of the $20 million in Race to the Top funds the State Education Department has provided for the implementation of clinically rich programs at 13 institutions in New York State and a conversation about the certification examinations, the Committee indicated that the work should continue to move forward.>>>>

Jumping thru all kinds of hoops: interviews and assessments out the wazoo. They've changed the procedures and requirements about 5 times since then.

Why? Does anyone seriously believe that the REGENTS ( appointed by the NYS Assembly. THE MOST CORRUPT LEGISLATIVE BODY IN THE USA) gives a *shit* about the "quality" of NYS teachers. Thank you. You are correct. The answer is NO.

They give a shit about being part of gigantic, lucrative bureaucracy where constantly changing the rules and continually stirring the pot provides for a gigantic, bottomless tax-funded money pit. Constantly reinventing the wheel provides the smokescreen and bullshit that provides the cover. Jobs for the Regents. Jobs for the consultants. Artificial need for more district administrators to administer................ well what, exactly? To administer more administration. More building admins to run around w. clipboards pretending to be necessary.

Think of Christie's and Cuomo's Port Authority. It's like THAT.

Only WORSE.

Want to improve education in NYS? Get Cuomo and corruption and politics out of the classroom and let teachers teach. ( The vast majority of them happen to pretty good at it. Or used to be, anyway.)