Santa Fe/ Gov. Susana Martinez: Extra $4.75 Million Proposed for Public Education Department
By Hailey Heinz
ABQ Journal Staff Writer
December 18, 2012
Gov. Susana Martinez plans to ask the Legislature for $4.74 million in targeted funding for programs at low-performing schools, state education chief Hanna Skandera said Monday.
If approved, the funds would not flow through the state formula, which funnels money to districts on the basis of size and need.
Instead, the money would be used to fund specific programs chosen by the Public Education Department.
Skandera said $2.5 million of the funds would be used to train principals and district leaders through the University of Virginia's program for education leadership.
- The program, a partnership between the university's education college and business school, emphasizes using data to make decisions and bringing businesslike efficiency to school leadership.
- School leaders in Las Cruces, Los Lunas and at Laguna Acoma Junior/Senior High School are using the program.
Las Cruces superintendent Stan Rounds called it a "game changer" in his district.
Rounds said the program emphasizes "diving deeply" into data to find problems and deficiencies, then finding ways to solve those problems. He said the program also emphasizes solving problems right away instead of waiting to bring in a new program.
- "If you have a situation that isn't working well, rather than go through an entire year languishing with it, you do a rapid reset and make the change immediately," Rounds said.
The $2.5 million will not be enough to train all the state's principals, so districts will apply for the money to send their principals and district leaders to the training, Skandera said. She said she hopes to make the money available every year, so an increasing number of New Mexico educators will be trained.
The program will target the principals of schools that received "D" or "F" grades under the new school grading system.
- "We want to invest in our own, we want to deepen our bench," Skandera said.
She said Martinez hopes to put another $1.24 million toward a mentoring program that will pair principals at low-performing schools with principals at higher-performing schools with similar demographics. Mentor principals would receive stipends through the program.
Lastly, Skandera said the governor hopes to put $1 million toward regional training sessions to help local educators improve their use of data.
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Santa Fe/ NM Secretary of Education-Designate Skandera Asks LESC to Back Increased Education Funding
By Robert Nott
The New Mexican
December 17, 2012
New Mexico Secretary of Education-designate Hanna Skandera asked the Legislative Education Study Committee on Monday morning to support the Public Education Department's request for a funding increase of about 5 percent - or an additional $140 million - for public schools in fiscal year 2014.
The request includes $20 million to purchase about 250 new school buses.
The additional monies, if approved by the Legislature, which convenes Jan. 15, would cover expected costs for such items as external audit reports, general materials and supplies, emergency distributions, and dual-credit instructional materials.
Skandera proposes investing:
- $13.5 million of the new money in early-childhood reading initiatives, such as hiring regional reading coaches.
- $11.5 million would go toward expanding the K-3 Plus movement, which extends the school year for K-3 by 25 instructional days, and
- $11 million would be directed to pre-K programs.
During the roughly two-hour morning presentation, Skandera argued that the PED needs extra money to help improve the state's graduation rate (about 63 percent), close the achievement gap, raise academic achievement, and reward the state's most effective teachers and school leaders.
- Rep. Dennis J. Roch, R-Texico, an educator himself, said since New Mexico is expecting an additional $280 million in revenue this coming year, it is "important that a significant portion of that pot go to education."
But Roch, like several other legislators, had concerns about PED's plan to use more than $11 million of the requested money to reward highly effective teachers and principals.
- The new evaluation system, being implemented under an executive order, relies heavily on student test data to rate teachers.
Roch said he is not a fan of merit pay based on student test scores and would prefer that PED reward teachers who work their way up through the three-tier teacher compensation system.
Under the plan, about 675 teachers would be considered exemplary and receive an extra $7,500 each, according to a PED report. Another 1,125 teachers were rated as highly effective and would receive $5,000 supplements.
- Rep. Mimi Stewart, D-Albuquerque, asked Skandera how the PED estimated these costs. Skandera and her deputy secretary of finance and operations, Hipolito "Paul" Aguilar, acknowledged the figures are "a guesstimate."
Some legislators asked Skandera whether it would be better for the state to dole out money for new buses over several years instead of issuing a lump $20 million sum. (Close to 140 of the state's school buses are operating past their estimated life span of 12 years.)
Last March, Gov. Martinez appropriated $5.6 billion of the state budget to education - an increase of about 4 percent, or some $220 million - over the previous year's education budget. Martinez has touted educational reform as one of the cornerstones of her governorship.
The Legislative Education Study Committee meets again on Tuesday and Wednesday, Dec. 18 and 19, to discuss other education issues including potential legislation. Visit www.nmlegis.gov/lcs/lesc/lescdefault.aspx to see an agenda.
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Santa Fe/ SFPS, City & County Response to Connecticut Shooting
By Robert Nott
The New Mexican
December 17, 2012
Santa Fe Public Schools, the city of Santa Fe and Santa Fe County will host a memorial service Friday on the Santa Fe Plaza to honor and remember the students and staff of Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn., killed Dec. 14 by a 20-year-old gunman.
The school district, city, and county sent out a joint letter (in both English and Spanish) to parents Monday expressing condolences to those affected by the tragedy and to emphasize that every school in the district is looking out for the safety of students.
- "It's inevitable for people to have questions and concerns when you see something so unspeakable like this occur in a school," Superintendent Joel Boyd said by phone Monday afternoon. "This is every parent and every educator's worst nightmare. It is our responsibility to share with them anything we can to ease any anxiety."
He added that he was confident the district has the proper safety procedures in place, "but it is always important to reflect on past and current practices, particularly when you hear of a situation like this."
While media outlets reported that a few schools around the country either closed or went under "lock down" procedures after suspicious activity was reported in their neighborhoods on Monday, Boyd and several principals interviewed said it was a normal school day for most staff and students in Santa Fe.
- Acequia Madre Elementary School principal Bill Beacham said school personnel dealt with the situation as called for based on student reactions. "We let them bring it up and discussed it at the appropriate age level," he said. "You never know how much information kids received over the weekend or whether they were insulated at their homes. A couple of parents came in and cited some websites and resources for support, but otherwise we didn't have much feedback or concern and that's probably a good thing."
- At Sweeney Elementary School, principal Theresa Ulibarri said, "It was very quiet. One student in the second grade brought up seeing it on the news. There was not a lot of interaction about it, not a lot of discussion. Our teachers were more vigilant today, there was a lot more reviewing of procedures and making sure they knew where our kids were."
One teacher, she said, asked her whether staff members can lock their classroom doors in such a case. But, she said, district policy does not allow that.
Locking classroom doors might prevent emergency personnel from getting inside to help or students from evacuating in case of a fire or other event, Boyd pointed out.
He said the district may revisit this issue in future discussions about school safety.
Boyd said he held a conference call with district principals Monday morning to go over safety procedures and field questions about the shooting. He said as of Monday afternoon he had not received one call regarding the district's safety procedures, but said he had gotten messages from concerned staffers and citizens asking how the district can offer support to the Newtown community.
He said Mayor David Coss called him Saturday to offer support - including a promise of increased patrols and vigilance around schools by local law enforcement agencies.
Boyd stressed that the district has counseling and support services available for families and students. "This has an inevitable impact on their work as school educators and teachers," he said. "When a tragedy occurs in a school, regardless of where that school is located, it hits home for teachers everywhere."
The Plaza memorial service will likely start at about 9 or 10 a.m., Boyd said. The public is invited, and Boyd is asking schools located within walking distance of the Plaza to take part.
Friday, Dec. 21, is the last day of school for the district before winter break begins. Schools reopen on Jan. 7, 2013.
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Alamogordo/ Amid Sadness and Anger, a Closer Look at Alamogordo Schools
By Duane Barbati, Staff Writer
Alamogordo Daily News
December 14, 2012
With the fatal shooting tragedy at a Connecticut elementary school Friday, Alamogordo Public Schools Superintendent Dr. George Straface wanted to assure the community that APS has an emergency plan for every building in the district, and for students and staff.
Straface said:
-he is really conscious of school shootings because he was near Columbine in 1999.
- "I was a superintendent of a district next to it," he said. "I am very conscious of it. If something should happen at the school, we would close the campus and lock it down. We would have police involved. We have sign-ins at every building.
- If we should have a shooting here, we have evacuation plans where parents could go and pick up their kids at every building.
- If we should have an emergency, we would know who was in the building and who to account for."
-the plan is really detailed.
- "It's been worked with Alamogordo Department of Public Safety," he said. "If we have an emergency, we have a plan on how to deal with it that includes a shooter.
- We have two police officers at Alamogordo High School and one officer at the middle school, but we do not have police officers at the elementary schools."
-the district also has trained security personnel.
- "They're not police officers, but their job is security," he said. "We also have security liaisons at each middle school. We have police plus our own employees who are designated security people. In the elementary school, we have principals and staff. They all have an emergency-response plans. We have lockdown plans and where to go for students and staff in case of an emergency."
-he believes there is another piece of the puzzle with all of the above said.
- "If you have somebody who wants to do harm or is not balanced, unless you have a configuration of a fenced campus with one entrance with somebody to do surveillance and metal checks, you could have somebody come on to school grounds and cause havoc," he said. "It could happen at any school ground in America unless you had those kinds of restrictions. I don't know of any school that does."
-any visitor, at any school district building including the district administration building, must sign in and get a pass.
- "They're mandated to sign in at the office," he said. "Our staff is alerted if they get passes. They (visitors) get a name-tag that sticks to their shirt and reads visitor. Part of our plan is if a staff member sees someone without a pass or sticker, then it's reported immediately. We deal with it right there. There's some preventiveness if someone bypasses it. It still doesn't mean they couldn't cause harm, but at least, we would be aware of it."
-he and all staff working for the district are trained in the emergency plan and briefed on it every school year.
- "It's not something that sits on the shelf," he said.
- "We also practice our emergency plan periodically and review it. If we have a tragedy, we also have our psychologists available. We have emergency counseling teams available to go in to help students or staff to deal with the issue. We'll pull counselors from other schools to go in. We also have an arrangement with the Counseling Center."
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Deming/ Schools, Police React to Connecticut Shooting
By Matt Robinson
Deming Headlight Staff
December 17, 2012
In the wake of the Newtown, Conn. tragedy in which 26 children and adults were killed in an elementary school by a 20-year-old gunman, local law enforcement officials are reassuring the public that they regularly train to respond to a mass shooting in a school.
On Monday, Deming Public Schools officials met to review safety measures.
- According to a statement, they said meetings are being scheduled with local law enforcement to review emergency procedures.
- The statement also said the district has access to grant funds to train all staff in emergency procedures.
Police and the school district have already experienced responding to gun-related violence within a local school.
- In 1999, 13-year-old Araceli Tena died after being shot at Deming Middle School.
- The memory is still fresh in the mind of Luna County Sheriff's Office Special Weapons and Tactics team member Joseph Carlos, who was a sixth grade student at DMS when the shooting occurred.
"I remember when that happened, it was chaos," he recalled. "When they heard that gunshot, they scattered."
Following the shooting, funds were secured to place school resource officers within buildings to react to incidents and to show a law enforcement presence.
Superintendent Harvielee Moore said economic pressures resulted in less funding for the program, which forced local resource officer numbers to drop from six to none.
"That could always be an option with city, county and schools," she added.
- For now, though, the LCSO and Carlos have been in communication with local schools to help get the SWAT team access to vital information and access to buildings.
- His department and the Deming Police Department's Special Response Team have floor plans for local schools and routinely train in the buildings to better know the layouts, because in an emergency, they cannot wait for backup from other counties or agencies.
"If something like that happens, we have to respond right away; we don't have time to call for help," he said. "They say in these active shooter situations, one person dies every 40 seconds."
Undersheriff Arturo Baeza said his department has plans on the table to try and do further training at Smith Elementary School and Red Mountain Middle School.
- "They had already planned on doing that and then this happened," he said.
Carlos said he hopes the entire department can go through the school training following the SWAT team.
Deming Police Chief Michael Carillo says his officers also undergo training to respond in schools or other places in which large groups of people gather, but added that the state mandates law enforcement officers receive training to deal with someone with a mental illness. Law enforcement sources have reported the Newtown, Conn. shooter had been diagnosed with Asperger's, a form of autism.
Chief Carillo said parents and other individuals who own guns need to take personal responsibility for their weapons and the damage the guns can cause. He stressed that firearms need to remain locked in a safe place and away from ammunition to keep the guns from being stolen or used by a child.
Chief Carillo and Carlos also spoke on gun owners who might be carrying a firearm when a shooting takes place. Both stopped short of suggesting a lawful firearm carrier should intervene, but they said preservation of life should be the number one priority.
- "If we get into a situation where there's a crowd and you do make the decision to discharge your firearm, you are going to be responsible," he said. "It's a double-edged sword, because it is good individuals are able to carry a weapon for their defense."
Their best piece of advice for anyone is to be aware of the current situation and to report suspicious behavior to authorities.
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ABQ/ APD Trains Hope Christian Staffto Fight Back Against Gunmen
Hope Christian staff given training in possible shooter emergencies
KOAT-TV, Channel 7 Report
December 17, 2012
In the wake of the Sandy Hook school shooting, school officials across the country are scrambling to find ways to make their schools safer.
At least one school in New Mexico is moving in a radical direction - training teachers to go after gunmen.
The Albuquerque Police Department is working with the Hope Christian School to equip teachers with the skills to deal with a shooter.
"Hiding under a desk isn't an option anymore. You've gotta fight back," school resource officer James Vautier said.
Instead of running or hiding, teachers were trained to actively go after shooters in their schools.
The APD held the training a few weeks ago. They ran the school's staff through various scenarios involving a possible shooter on site.
The department said it believes the training is the first of its kind in the state.
Hope Christian parent April Baca said she's comforted knowing teachers have this skill. Still, she said she worries about what would go wrong if teachers couldn't get hold of the gun.
"It can also cause a lot more danger to themselves and to the children if they can't," Baca said.
Hope Christian's director of academic affairs said APD asked Hope to participate in the training, adding that it really opened the eyes of the staff. Even substitute teachers and custodial staff were invited to be trained.
School officials said parents were alerted of this new tactic in an email recently sent out.
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Farmington/ City- Halliburton Energy Services Bond Issue May Have Cost Schools
By Greg Yee
Farmington Daily Times
December 17, 2012
Halliburton Energy Services, Inc. is repaying $22 million in industrial revenue bonds, and its lawyers have acknowledged the company hasn't made required payments in lieu of taxes to area schools.
The City Council will decide how to get the funds back at today's 9 a.m. work session.
The oversight appears to have cost Farmington Municipal Schools and San Juan College, but no one seems to know if-or how much-money was lost.
On March 12, 2008, City Council approved a $22 million bond agreement with Halliburton to encourage construction of a new $24 million facility on Troy King Road.
By passing the bond agreement, the city took over the 40-acre lot until the 30-year bond was repaid. This gave Halliburton an annual $15,000 annual tax break until it completed the project.
The facility was supposed to stimulate economic development in San Juan County and create jobs. It was never built.
Halliburton officials couldn't be reached Monday for comment.
Councilwoman Mary Fischer was a member of council when the bond agreement was passed.
"I was opposed to this project from the very beginning," she said. "The (proposed) site had so many negatives. Halliburton chose to steamroll the process. It only proved that they really shot from the hip. There was nothing about that site that would have worked for them."
If construction of the new facility had gone as planned, the city would have had to build an additional $500,000 to $600,000 in water and sewer infrastructure, according to City Council discussions at the time.
The city would have also made improvements to Troy King Road, Fischer said.
"We would have had to improve Troy King Road on our nickel," she said. "It would have cost the city a lot of money. Fortunately, we didn't do the improvements prior to (Halliburton) moving in."
Halliburton, in the meantime, has been paying off the $22 million bond.
While reviewing the agreement, company officials found they had not made payments to the school district and the college as required.
"Halliburton has told me that they did not make that payment in lieu of taxes when they should have," said Jay Burnham, city attorney. "They've said they will."
Burnham and other officials said they didn't know how much Halliburton owes the schools.
He will present an amendment today to the 2008 bond agreement that he says allows Halliburton to make those payments after the agreement ends.
The payments might come as a windfall for the school district and the college.
Randall Bondow, Assistant Superintendent of Finance at Farmington Municipal Schools, said he was not aware of any lost property tax revenue and that he would need to investigate the situation before further comment.
A spokeswoman for San Juan College said much the same thing.
"College officials are currently looking into the matter," said Rhonda Schaefer, the college's marketing and public relations director.
Mayor Tommy Roberts said the city is working to get the schools the money they're owed.
"From our perspective, the city's simply facilitating payment of the hold-harmless funds," said Roberts, who was not mayor when the original agreement was made.
Roberts said he is reviewing the original bond agreement and Burnham's proposed amendment.
The blame for the project's failure does not all rest on the company, Fischer said.
"The city didn't do its due diligence either," she said.
Fischer says that the city did not adequately go over the site's disadvantages during discussions with Halliburton.
"Fortunately, the taxpayer didn't pick up much of the tab," she said. "My position is that Halliburton should pay what (they owe). While they have been a very good employer, they need to step up to the plate like everyone else. I don't know that we should give them preferential treatment."
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Questa/ PED Decision: School Board Suspension to Continue
By Matthew van Buren
Taos News
December 17, 2012
State Education Secretary Hanna Skandera has ordered that the Questa school board's suspension continue.
According to a decision and order released Monday evening (Dec. 17), the suspension will continue until new board members are "installed and sworn in" following the Feb. 5 election.
The board was suspended in September, with a suspension letter from Skandera accusing several board members of harassment, micromanaging and otherwise hindering the educational process of the Questa school district.
The decision follows a Dec. 10 hearing at which the board members had an opportunity to answer the allegations. Several board members and interim superintendent Lester Beason recommended the suspension continue until March, when four new board members will be seated following the Feb. 5 school board election. The hearing officer also recommended the suspension continue in a letter to the secretary.
Skandera's decision and order also notes that "citizens of the community overwhelmingly requested that the suspension of the board continue until a new board is reinstated after the elections in February 2013."
According to the decision, the Public Education Department "proved by preponderance of evidence that the current suspension of the board should continue."
The board may appeal the suspension to a District Court.
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Washington DC/ Resources for Schools to Prepare for and Recover from Crisis
By Arne Duncan, U.S. Secretary of Education.
This post is adapted from a message sent to all U.S. school districts on Dec. 17.
U.S. Department of Education
December 17, 2012
All of us who work in education have broken hearts and are haunted by the tragedy visited on the educators, students, and families of the Newtown Public School District and Sandy Hook Elementary School. Whenever a school experiences violence and the lives of children and adults are lost, we struggle to find words to express our emotions and explain how this could have happened.
Schools are among the safest places for children and adolescents in our country, and, in fact, crime in schools has been trending downward for more than a decade.
Nationwide statistics, however, provide little solace when 20 first-graders and six adults are senselessly gunned down in a small town's elementary school. Accounts from Sandy Hook indicate that the school's heroic principal and her staff had safety measures in place and had practiced their emergency procedures. As a result, children's lives were saved and an even greater tragedy was averted.
Not all tragedies can be prevented. But schools and districts need to be ready to handle crises, large and small, to keep our children and staff out of harm's way and ready to learn and teach, and to recover from such tragedies should they occur. As we reflect on what happened last week in Connecticut, I want to share some resources from the U.S. Department of Education's Readiness and Emergency Management for Schools Technical Assistance Center [rems.ed.gov] that may be helpful to you and your team, now and in the future.
As hard as it is to talk among adults about such a tragedy, it can be even more difficult to talk with students and our own children.
- Helping Youth and Children Recover from Traumatic Events is a compilation of resources from the Department of Education, other federal agencies, and counseling experts. [It is so important to give children the chance to talk, write, or draw to express their emotions. Please create the time and space for them to do that.
- For school districts and schools, the Department also has several resources on Creating and Updating School Emergency Management Plans. If you do have an emergency plan in place, please review it, update it as necessary, and practice that plan regularly. Knowing what to do when faced with a crisis can be the difference between calm and chaos.
The Department of Education's first priority is to help the Newtown community cope in the aftermath of this horrific event. In the days and weeks ahead, we will work with state and local officials, as well as Congress, to do everything in our power to help Newtown begin the long process of recovery.
As President Obama said, our country has suffered through mass shootings and gun deaths of young people too many times, in too many places. As a nation, we must find the courage and the conviction to take meaningful action to prevent more tragedies - now.
As districts and school leaders take steps to prevent and prepare for possible emergencies in their community, they have my full support and deepest gratitude for taking on this difficult yet necessary work.
Resources for Parents following Traumatic Events
Resources for Schools to Prepare for and Recover from Crisis
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Washington DC/ Newtown Massacre Leads to Security Assessments Nationwide
By Donna St. George and Lyndsey Layton [Emma Brown and Susan Svrluga contributed to this report]
Washington Post
December 17, 2012
For Lisa Betts and her husband, the conversation started Friday at their Silver Spring home, not long after they heard about the massacre that claimed the lives of 20 children and six staff members at a Connecticut school. How safe, they wondered, was the school their two children attend?
They ticked off its safety practices: Doors are locked. There's a buzzer system for visitors. Students practice emergency drills. Video cameras are installed.
"I think it's forced all of us to look at the realities of the world we live in," Betts, the mother of a kindergartner and fourth-grader at Greencastle Elementary, said of the rampage in Newtown, Conn.
Across the region and the nation, similar questions about safety have become more urgent as parents find themselves looking at their schools in new ways after one of the worst mass shootings in U.S. history.
As investigators continue to examine what motivated 20-year-old gunman Adam Lanza, safety experts agreed that school practices are uneven and that improvements may be needed in many districts.
Still, experts emphasized that preventing a tragedy like Newtown's is far more complex than installing locks or metal detectors.
- "Turning our schools into fortresses is not going to solve the problem," said Dewey Cornell, a University of Virginia professor who studies school safety and cautions against solutions too specific to the Connecticut case.
- Federal data show that the number of student homicides at schools has dropped.
President Obama had discussions Monday with White House staff, the vice president and Cabinet members, including Education Secretary Arne Duncan, to examine ways the country can respond to the tragedy, an individual with the administration said.
In communities far beyond Connecticut, school leaders sought to reassure parents and students, and police were posted outside many elementary schools.
- At Armstrong Elementary School in Fairfax, Va., teacher Sharon Burns began circulating a petition asking for security doors on classrooms. In the District, a parent of a student at Deal Middle School asked why her daughter had never participated in a lockdown drill.
Virginia Gov. Robert F. McDonnell called for a review of safety practices at all of the state's schools and a series of other initiatives to examine such issues as funding, threat assessments and emergency plans.
"I don't think we need to throw away the playbook on school safety, but we need to make sure best practices are being implemented," said Kenneth Trump, a school security consultant.
Trump said the deep concern that prevailed immediately after the 1999 massacre at Columbine High School has diminished. "The conversation and the training that we have today is not at the same level of consistency and intensity," he said.
Michael Dorn, executive director of Safe Havens International, a nonprofit that has developed safety plans for thousands of schools, said districts are likely to feel pressure to upgrade security, as they did after the shootings at Columbine and later at Virginia Tech.
"There's a shift from concern to panic, if you will, and you have parents pushing to do something to improve safety," Dorn said.
- Access to schools is a central issue, Dorn said, noting that fewer than 10 percent of schools around the country have strong access control, with locked entries, buzzers, protective laminated glass and camera or intercom systems.
"We have school districts that are incredibly good at this stuff, impressive and advanced," Dorn said. "One district has a gun safe with a tactical gun and a police officer there all day. Other districts are way behind."
- Another big issue is training, many experts agreed.
Dorn said that schools should more regularly drill for emergencies and that all adults in schools should be taught how to respond to a range of events, such as a "gunman at the school, a woman upset with a knife, someone yelling and screaming who appears mentally ill, a kid having an asthma attack. The more you practice a variety of crisis situations, the more you can appropriately match responses more quickly."
Mental health issues are a prevailing concern. Cornell, of U-Va., said that the majority of shootings are preceded by threats that someone knew about and that "threat assessments" help bring attention - and help - to serious cases.
Jon Vernick, co-director of the Johns Hopkins Center for Gun Policy and Research, said some schools may need safety upgrades but "placing the burden just on the schools is not fair."
Schools can only be as safe as their communities, Vernick said, adding that he believes a major part of community safety involves effective gun policies.
"Sadly, our federal and state gun laws are very porous," he said, "and they don't do the things we need to do to keep guns out of the hands of high-risk people."
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Washington DC/ State Chiefs to Examine Teacher Prep, Licensing
By Stephen Sawchuk
Education Week, Vol. 32, Issue 15 [Edweek.org]
December 17, 2012
Twenty-five state schools chiefs are vowing to take action to update their systems of teacher preparation and licensing, with an eye to ensuring teachers are ready the minute they take charge of their own classrooms.
The announcement Monday morning from the Council of Chief State School Officers [CCSSO] is probably state officials' most explicit promise to engage in changes to teacher preparation, and it comes as the latest sign that the topic is likely be a major focus of K-12 policymakers in 2013.
- "Attention to teacher preparation is definitely growing at the state level," said Sandi Jacobs, the managing director of state policy for the Washington-based National Council on Teacher Quality, a group that tracks states' teacher policies. "But it hasn't yet reached the level of interest as other topics, like teacher evaluation."
The participating state superintendents and commissioners of education are in: Arkansas, Colorado, Delaware, Idaho, Illinois, Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Maryland, Massachusetts, Maine, Michigan, Missouri, Nebraska, New Hampshire, North Carolina, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, South Carolina, South Dakota, Tennessee, Vermont, and Virginia. They will implement recommendations in a report, also released Dec. 17, by a task force of the Washington-based CCSSO.
Among other measures, the report says that:
- states should align certification requirements with the demands of college- and career-ready standards;
- develop performance assessments aligned to those new requirements;
- improve the process for approving teacher-preparation programs by raising colleges' and programs' entry requirements and acting on regular reviews to aid or shutter weak-performing ones; and
- provide better pre-K-20 achievement data to the programs to inform such efforts.
The paper doesn't spell out what those policies should look like. The CCSSO plans to provide technical assistance, support, and guidance to the state chiefs as they audit their policies and determine how to make changes.
Janice Poda, the director of the CCSSO'S Strategic Initiative for the Education Workforce, said the task force concluded that reforms to certification are necessary because licensing no longer signals quality.
- "The public does not have a lot of faith in licensure meaning that a teacher is qualified or effective. It's lost its ability to communicate that a person is ready for the classroom," she said. "We will raise the import of what it means. ... It should be more than a completion of a set of courses."
Many Actors
How quickly, and how radically, states can make the changes outlined in the report remains in question.
- The regulatory structure in each state differs, and state chiefs exercise varying degrees of control over licensure, certification, and preparation rules.
- For instance, at least 11 states-California, Georgia, Hawaii, Kentucky, North Dakota, Oklahoma, Oregon, Texas, Vermont, Washington, and Wyoming-have an independent standards board that has direct authority over certification and/or preparation programs, according to the NCTQ.
- Other states have advisory bodies, or share authority among several entities.
"The regulatory landscape is quite varied across the states," said Ms. Jacobs, who served on a separate committee that advised the task force. "There's no one model for how the authority structures play out."
Some state officials say they want to move quickly. Tennessee Commissioner Kevin Huffman said he wants his state's board of education to pass new rules on teacher licensure and program approval by next summer.
"We do not have a rigorous performance-based bar" for teacher licensure, he said. "We have had a convoluted, bureaucratic bar, but not a rigorous one. I think we have it exactly backwards right now."
In Iowa, state Director of Education Jason Glass said he sees the work as complementing policymakers' goals of improving teacher pay and tying it to a career ladder, a priority for the next legislative session.
"It represents one part of a more comprehensive picture of what we have to do to improve educator quality," he said.
While teacher-preparation policy has taken a back seat to other issues, the past few years have seen increased movement in statehouses and education departments:
- Louisiana, Tennessee, and North Carolina now all produce data for education programs based on the performance of their graduates.
- New York state plans to implement a performance-based licensure and recertification system
- Indiana recently completed an aggressive overhaul of its certification rules, making it easier for teachers to enter through alternative routes.
- Michigan officials acted on accountability data to bar enrollments in certain certification areas at two underperforming teacher colleges, until they successfully strengthen their programming.
- A Kentucky overhaul of state licensing rules increased the minimum grade point average for entering candidates and added new student-teaching requirements.
- Officials of the Illinois board of education, over protests from some education schools, raised the bar on the state's basic-skills exam for teachers and required candidates to achieve a minimum score on all four sections.
- Several states have added stand-alone tests of teachers' ability to teach reading.
Next year will also see the publication of the NCTQ's review of every college of education; the release of new regulations governing teacher-preparation accountability by the U.S. Department of Education; and the unveiling of new standards by the Council for Accreditation of Educator Preparation.
The task force that produced the CCSSO report included nine current or former state schools chiefs: Virginia Barry of New Hampshire; Mitchell Chester of Massachusetts; Terry Holliday of Kentucky; Tom Luna of Idaho; Judy Jeffrey, formerly a chief in Iowa; Christopher Koch of Illinois; Rick Melmer of South Dakota; Jim Rex, formerly a chief in South Carolina; and Melody Schopp of South Dakota.
It also included two members the National Governors Association and three from the National Association of State Boards of Education.
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