April 2016 Minutes

COUNCIL FOR TEACHER EDUCATION

Minutes for April 11, 2016

The eighth and final meeting of the Council for Teacher Education for the 2015-2016 academic year was held Monday, April 11, 2016 at 3:15 p.m. in Speight 211. Members present:  Vivian Covington (Chair), Barbara Brehm, Kermit Buckner, Kristen Cuthrell, Ellen Dobson, Lori Flint, Cheryl Johnson, Laura Levi-Altstaedter, Kathy Misulis, Marissa Nesbit, Sean O’Dell, Jeff Pizzutilla, Robert Quinn, Lisa Rogerson, Sandra Seay, Nicole Smith, Shari Steadman, Liz Doster Taft, Michelle Hairston for Cynthia Wagoner, Ivan Wallace, Elaine Yontz, and visitors Laura Bilbro-Berry and Christy Sutton.  Absent were Lena Carawan, Charity Cayton, LCSN-PCS Representative, Cynthia Wagoner, Jamie Williams, and Student Representative Sarah Cope.

Approval of Minutes March 14, 2016 Meeting

Minutes were approved as written.

Announcements

On April 7, 2016 SBE accepted test changes for ELEM and SPED licensure. Currently all or partial tests for ELEM and SPED program areas had to be passed prior to recommendation.  Now tests for a continuing license are still required, but SBE delayed the time period for having passing scores on those tests.  Beginning July 1, 2016, ELEM and SPED individuals may be recommended for a license without any testing, just like all other programs have been allowed to do.  All individuals in all areas must attempt the test(s) in the first year of teaching and pass all tests by the end of the second year of teaching. B-K, Dance, and Theatre are exempt as NC does not require tests in these areas.

By legislation, the GPA requirement for admission to educator preparation programs must be a 2.7 or a cohort minimum of 3.0 by July 1, 2017. Dr. Covington will be attending a meeting April 19, 2016 with other IHEs and DPI representatives to receive an interpretation on these matters and will send further clarification to program areas.

Margaret Spellings, UNC System President, visited ECU recently and asked questions about educator preparation programs and how to she could effectively communicate needs to the legislature. A handout of her remarks was distributed.

Title II, HEA 2015 State Report Cards are posted and can be viewed at https://title2.ed.gov/public/home.aspx. Click on the desired state from the map to view more information. This is a required report for all educator preparation programs. Institutions that prepare traditional route and alternate route teachers have two separate reports.

UNC GA has created the UNC Educator Quality Dashboard, an interactive on-line tool for viewing and analyzing data in recruitment and selection, educator preparation, performance and employment and university-school partnerships. More information may be viewed at http://eqdashboard.northcarolina.edu/.

UNC GA has also created a recruitment site, called Teach Now NC, found at http://teachnow.northcarolina.edu/ which has links with information and videos covering Watching Real Teachers, Finding Scholarships or Financial Aid, Finding a Teaching Job in NC, Finding a UNC Teacher Preparation Program, Alternative Licensure, and Great Teachers Matter. The Great Teachers Matter link contains Cartwheels for Great Teachers, a social media campaign. This campaign challenges everyone to video then upload a short segment on a great teacher that inspired them, and ending with a cartwheel (or other joyful act) and a challenge to friends, family or other teachers to do the same. (Think ALS Ice Bucket Challenge – very similar idea). ECU had the most videos posted at the time of this meeting. Dr. Bilbro-Berry asked for all faculty to take the challenge and/or have students take the challenge and post videos relating Great Teachers Matter. Instructions can be found at the website above.

For the first time, NC-ACTE will present the Outstanding Student Teacher of the Year (STOY) in North Carolina Award at the Fall NC-ACTE meeting. Each member institution may nominate one candidate for the award.  The criteria for being nominated includes a minimum GPA of 3.25, three recommendation letters corroborating the student teacher narrative from a university faculty member, university supervisor, cooperating teacher and/or the principal at the school where student teaching was completed.  The narrative should be no more than 2500 words.  Nominations are due May 10, 2016.  The Admissions and Retention Committee will select ECU’s STOY, and submit this person as our nominee for the State STOY to the Secretary of the Executive Board at NC-ACTE by May 20, 2016.

Degree hours are being reduced from 42 to 40 hours by decreasing required semester hours of foundations education, in Humanities and Fine Arts from 10 SH to 9 SH; decreasing Natural Science from 8 SH to 7 SH (retaining the requirement of one laboratory hour); decreasing Social Science from 12 SH to 9 SH from at least two different areas; and requiring a 3 SH “general education elective” from one of the following categories (humanities/fine arts, social/behavioral sciences or natural science/mathematics). Curriculum changes are due by October 17, 2016. Changes will be made to the catalog for all by the Registrar’s Office.  Changes will be effective Fall 2017. Given these changes, EPP programs will need to come through CTE and faculty should begin work now on how they would implement this in their programs. There will little time to get this done come fall given the 10-17-2016 deadline. Programs with more than 120 hours, may not add the “released hours”, as described above, to their programs. Programs with 120 hours will have to maintain 120 hours and will need to be sure they have captured the hours sufficiently.

Standing Updates from the Office of Assessment, Accreditation and Data Management

Ellen Dobson, Interim Director of OAADM, reported that NC DPI is seeking input from educators, parents, students and other stakeholders of NC public schools to help guide development of the state’s plan for complying with the new federal education law, Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA), a reauthorization of the 1965 Elementary and Secondary Education Act. This law replaced No Child Behind in December 2015.  States are required to develop their own ESSA plan to comply with the federal law.  The next session will be April 27, 2016 at North Pitt High School in Bethel, NC from 4-6 p.m.

Via UNC GA requirement, all public IHEs will be expanding the use of edTPA. It is a reliable and valid performance assessment measure, which is required in the legislation for all EPPs. Several ECU faculty have been asked to present and share what ECU has been doing for the past four years to support candidates in the edTPA submission. Our faculty are seen as leaders in this arena on state and national levels.

Steve Lassiter, ECU Alumnus, State Principal of the Year, and current principal at Pactolus Elementary School (Pitt County) was just named the new Associate Superintendent of Elizabeth City/Pasquotank Schools.

Standing Update from the Office of Clinical Experiences & Alternative Licensure

Plans of Study are being revised during spring 2016. Thank you to all program areas for scheduling meetings to review and update the Licensure Only, Lateral Entry, and Add on Plans. These meetings will conclude in April with the final revisions sent out to program areas.

OCE has begun processing Intern I fall 2016/Intern II spring 2017 applications from Round 1, which were received April 4, 2016. Round 2 applications are due by May 10, 2016 and the final round is due by July 1, 2016 at 5:00 pm.

April 13, 2016 was the spring Intern II the early release date for qualifying candidates. Fourteen requests were made and ten were approved.  Of the 4 not approved, two had not completed the edTPA at time of requested release date.  Some discussion about early release varied by program areas due to the return dates of the edTPA results.  LCSN will be notified about edTPA due dates in future semesters by program areas (ie – April 13th is the ER date; however, HIED/ENED/MUSC edTPA results will return on April 21st).  The districts are aware that edTPA must be passed as one of the requirements to early release an intern.

Old Business

Graduate Evidences

Students who wish to transfer a graduate course to ECU to be used in lieu of an ECU course, that contains a graduate evidence, must do one of the following with program area approval:

  1. If the transferred course came from another IHE that requires the same or similar evidence, the candidate should upload the evidence in Taskstream, have it scored by a faculty member in the program area using the ECU scoring rubric for that GE, and achieve a passing score/meet the standard for the evidence.
  2. If the transferred course does not have an evidence, the candidate must do the evidence assignment, upload the evidence in Taskstream, have it scored by a faculty member in the program area using the ECU scoring rubric for that GE, and achieve a passing score/meet the standard for the evidence.
  3. If the evidence does not meet the minimum rubric standard, the student must take the ECU course.

Failure to do one of the above will mean the candidate must take the course at ECU. Program areas reserve the right to require an evidence course be taken at ECU; however, program areas must do everything possible to apply this option fairly across all requests for substitutions for graduate evidence affected courses.

New Business

Terms for CTE representatives are expiring in May 2016 for the following individuals. Barbara Brehm, HHP/HDFS; Charity Cayton, COE/MSITE; Kristen Cuthrell, COE/ELMID; Cheryl Johnson, HHP/HDFS; Marissa Nesbit, FA/DANCE; Lisa Rogerson, COE/ELMID; Sandra Seay, COE/SEFR; Shari Steadman, COE/LEHE; and Liza Doster Taft, COE/MSITE. Members are selected by the faculty from the department for a two year term, but may be re-elected by their department as there are no term limits.  Reminders will be sent to each department/program area at the beginning of the fall 2016 semester.

Two student representatives in an undergraduate educator preparation program are needed. The students should be officially admitted to a teacher education program and not completing Intern II in the fall or spring.  Two graduate representatives in an educator preparation program are needed also.  One in each category will be an alternate.  You may send nominations to covingtonv@ecu.edu.

Standing Committee Reports

Curriculum Committee

Vivian Covington reported for Chair, Jamie Williams. The committee met and approved the following with minor editorial changes from Business and Information Technologies Education, Interdisciplinary Professions.

Request #1: Discontinuation of the MAEd in Business Education

Request #2: Discontinuation of the MAEd in Marketing Education

The report was accepted.

Evaluation & Planning Committee – No report

Admissions & Retention – No report.

Policy Committee– No report

There being no further business, a motion was made by Shari Steadman and seconded by Lori Flint to adjourn at 4:20 p.m.

The next meeting will be held in September, 2016, TBA.

Respectfully submitted,

Sherry S. Tripp

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