December 14 Meeting Minutes

Lehigh Valley Meeting
Wednesday, December 14, 2005
Carbon Lehigh Intermediate Unit (CLIU)

Present at Meeting

Judith Sargent	Schuylkill Valley School District
Mike Grabarits	Step By Step Learning
Divonna Stebick	Gettysburg College
Bill Foreman	Gettysburg College
Sam Hausfather	East Stroudsburg University
Melvin Riddick	Allentown Education Association
Sandra Fluck	Moravian College
Camie Modjadidi	Moravian College
Joseph Muldowney	Blue Mountain Middle School
Myron Yoder	Allentown School District
Rita Perez	Allentown School District
Susan Kegerise	Paxtonia Elementary School, Central Dauphin School District
Ellen Kern	Senator Browne's Chief of Staff
Caroline Allen	Commissioner
Robert Feir	Executive Chair
James Gearity	Commissioner
Richard Kneedler	Commission Chair
Michelle Tarlecki	Commission Administrative Assistant

The Lehigh Valley regional meeting was held at the Carbon Lehigh Intermediate Unit (CLIU) in Schnecksville on December 14, 2005. There were 18 people in attendance. A variety of pertinent issues was raised with the Commission, as follows:

• There is a gap in teacher training.
  • School districts are being asked to fill the gap when teachers enter the workforce.
  • A question was raised, “What is the impact of the teacher training process on the students’ progress in the classroom?”
  • Teachers need to be trained properly so that students can learn at the appropriate level in the classroom.
• There was a concern about the placement of student teachers and first-year teachers and what the school district perceives a master teacher to be.
• New teachers need to be well-versed in standards before coming into the workforce. Most are unfamiliar with curricula and textbooks that are common among school districts.
• A college course is needed in professionalism for teachers, including behaviors both in school and out of school.
• Special education law course is needed. If a university does offer such a course, it is often not specific enough.
• Professional development is a long process, but “it would be nice to have new teachers hit the ground running.”
• Special education is a major issue.
  • “Who is highly qualified and how did they become that way?”
  • How is higher education preparing special education teachers?
  • With policies changing, fewer and fewer people are becoming qualified to teach special education.
  • How fast can universities change with policy changes? New teachers are not being trained to meet the policy guidelines and are not available to be hired.
• There should be an obligation for teachers to have moral and ethical training.
  • Teachers should understand the code of ethics developed by the Professional Standards and Practices Commission (PSPC).
  • To establish a college course or an in-service module there must be input from the K-12 schools.
  • Many teachers in the workforce today do not know about ethics.
  • PSPC is seeking state funds to develop such a course or module.
• At East Stroudsburg University, both students and faculty spend time in K-12 classrooms through in-depth partnerships.
  - Teachers in the schools, faculty from the university, and students in the university all learn from these interactions.
  - It is challenging to create such partnerships. It is time-consuming, and the work is intensive. The faculty must be dedicated for it to work.
  - The time that the faculty spends in the classrooms in PK-12 schools is not recognized at the university level. The faculty needs to find a balance between work in the PK-12 classroom and their work at the university.
• At East Stroudsburg University, student teaching is a year-long experience.
• No matter what field a college graduate goes into, he or she is a rookie. We should not forget that in the teaching field.
• If people want new teachers to know everything, more than four years of teacher preparation will be needed at the university level.
• Teachers are being explicitly prepared for the elementary and high school levels, but not for the middle school level.
  • The pedagogy for this level does not exist within the universities in Pennsylvania.
  • An understanding of early adolescence is needed.
  • Most students who become teachers do not know if they want to be middle-level teachers until they are already in their student teaching.
  • Studies say that the middle school years are the last years to get a child the help that is needed for success in high school (e.g., adolescent literacy)
  • If a problem is not caught by the time a student is ready for high school, the student may have trouble in his content classes. The content teacher is not likely to help the student.
  • Most states have a certification for middle level education. (One person said at the meeting that 47 states have a middle level certificate.)
• When comparing the education field to the medical field, relative to the way in which they prepare their professionals, they are not equivalent. In the medical field no one questions the quality of an internship. All hospitals where the internships take place are relatively equal. Neither of these statements is true for the education analog.
• Partnerships between universities and school districts would help to ensure that students have better student teaching experiences. Currently the system is more random and it is often a matter of luck whether a student will have a good experience or not.
• The partnerships do not necessarily have to be formal.
• At Moravian College the students are usually hired by the school districts the college has partnerships with. Their field experiences are early and diverse. This gives the students the ability to see what best suits them.
• There is not enough time for faculty to help with everything. If the time it took for a faculty member to go into a classroom to help students who are in their field experiences were substituted for teaching a course, the faculty member would be able to help more students.
• There is a greater weight on testing in the field of education than on practice in Pennsylvania.
  • The system should be built around practice, not PRAXIS. PRAXIS should play a part in the education system; but the system should not be built around the test.
  • In Ohio a PRAXIS 3 test is used. This exam tests students on actual classroom teaching, rather than testing their knowledge on paper.
• For the 24 credits of professional development, the state should designate what should be included in those credits.
• The University of Pittsburgh has no baccalaureate program in teaching. Its students all have baccalaureate degrees before they do work toward certification and/or a master’s degree in education. Schools look for these students because they know that they will be good teachers.
• Teachers with master’s degrees are well prepared in both subject matter and pedagogy.
• For a teacher with a master’s degree, it is not hard to find a job, but it is hard to find a job with an appropriate salary for a master’s degree.
• Some schools have mentoring programs that have been very successful. Other schools have mentoring programs only on paper.
• In Ohio there is a Peer Assistance and Review Model. If the Commonwealth would fund such a model in Pennsylvania, it would be successful. There are aspects of this model for both veteran teachers and new teachers.
• Many people come from other states to obtain Pennsylvania certification. The reason is that Pennsylvania certification can be transferred to almost any state in the northeastern United States.
• Most attendees agreed that the PDE Form 430 (for evaluating student teachers) presents substanital problems of interpretation, application and training.
  • There is no systematic training in use of the form.
  • If people were trained on the form, there would be a standard, fair rating system.
  • An example of the difficulty in interpreting the form’s wording is, “What is the difference between superior and exemplary?”
• The Danielson model is good because it is based on good instructional practices, but it is complicated and cumbersome.
• Universities tend to have a form with a rubric that is aligned to the PDE form. This allows the universities to increase the standards for themselves.
• In Georgia there is an endorsement that is attached to the state certificate for mentoring. Mentoring is acknowledged as a credential.
• The best PDE education program reviews at colleges and universities happen when there is a great chairperson of the review team and a great PDE liaison.
• The person who is conducting a review of a specific area must be highly qualified in that area. The Commonwealth needs to spend money on training the reviewers.
• Sometimes it is hard to get information from universities when they are being reviewed.
• The President of the university needs to be involved in the review.
• NCATE and PDE reviews are very expensive for universities. A team of reviewers is very large and the university must pay for the hotel, food, technology, and anything else the team may need. Some universities consider it appropriate to give welcome gifts to PDE reviewers, adding another cost that is forbidden by the Middle States Association during its accreditation reviews due to concerns about any appearance that reviewers might be swayed by such considerations.
• Teams of 18 or 27 people are very costly to the universities, especially the smaller universities with less money.
• PDE is currently working on letting the universities send materials to the department in advance of their reviews. This will hopefully save money for the universities, shorten the length of time the reviewers need to be there, and cut down on the number of people who need to go on site visits.
• Some felt that the PDE standards were outdated and did not push for the quality that can be achieved.
• There are 18 universities in Pennsylvania with NCATE accreditation. Is it possible for those universities to be reviewed by NCATE (or TEAC) alone, since PDE is only reviewing the same standards NCATE reviewed? This may be an incentive for more schools to become NCATE (or TEAC) accredited.
• “What makes good practice is a good foundation.”
  • The core practices should be taught in university courses. Then the school district will not have to teach the new teachers the practices and the new teachers will be able to learn new programs/products faster.
• A considerable challenge for students going into secondary education is that they have to take an arts and sciences major while in college. The education department does not have the authority to alter the curriculum set by the arts and sciences department for the student. Major departments are content driven, while education departments are more pedagogically driven.
• Another problem also exists in major departments. The faculty do not necessarily know about pedagogy themselves. They do not want to be told that they are teaching their students in a manner that will not help them to teach the content effectively, themselves.
• There is a need to know where graduates of PA universities are placed. This would allow the universities to get feedback from them.
  

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