COUNCIL FOR EDUCATOR PREPARATION
2019 September Minutes
Speight 203 at 3:15 p.m.
The first meeting of the Council for Educator Preparation for the 2019-2020 academic year was held Monday, September 9, 2019 at 3:15 p.m. in Speight 203. Members present: Barbara Brehm, Ashley Cannan, Charity Cayton, Vivian Covington (Chair), Patch Clark, Bethann Cole, Bernice Dodor, Holly Fales, Nanyoung Kim, LCSN-PCS Representative Robert Johnson, Laura Levi-Altstaedter, Rhea Miles, Mikkaka Overstreet, Jeff Pizzutilla, Chris Rivera, Dawn Shelton, Nicole Smith, Rita Soulen, Christina Tschida, Cynthia Wagoner, and Kevin White. Visitors in attendance were Monisha Atkinson and Shari Steadman. Absent were Kristin Gehsmann, Elondra Napper, Christy Walcott and Stacy Weiss.
Approval of Minutes April 8, 2019 Meeting
The minutes for the April 8, 2019 meeting were approved.
Announcements
- The NC Teacher Education Forum’s Fall NCACTE meeting will be held at the North Raleigh Hilton September 30-October 2, 2019. A flyer was sent to each member earlier this semester. One teacher candidate from the North Carolina Association for Colleges and Teacher Educators member institutions will be recognized as the Outstanding Student Teacher of the Year (STOY) in North Carolina. This recognition will be celebrated at the annual fall NC-ACTE meeting. ECU has one of the five finalists of the 20 submissions. Akira Hall, Kindergarten teacher at the ECU community School and graduate of the B-K Education Program in the College of HHP.
- The new Educator Preparation Handbook commonly referred to as the “Apple Book” is available at the university bookstore or online at https://www2.ecu.edu/COE/Web/OEP/2019_Apple_Book_Final.pdf. A hard copy was given to all “early experience” course instructors and CEP undergraduate representatives.
- The chair reviewed the following licensure updates and the ppt will be emailed to members.
An EPP can be a public or private IHE, a for-profit, and LEAs or any other entity approved by the SBE to prepare educators.
The ECU EPP is a university level program comprised of programs in four colleges and includes undergraduate, graduate, and doctoral level programs that lead to licensure.
Colleges and programs in the ECU EPP:
- College of Education – UG, G, D
- ELEM, MIDG, SPED, MATE, SCIE, HIED, ENED, READ, School Administration, School Counselor, School Librarianship, Instructional Technology (MAEd)
- Harriot College of Arts and Sciences – UG, G, D
- German, French, and Spanish Education and School Psychology
- College of Health and Human Performance – UG, G
- Physical Education, Family and Consumer Sciences Education, Birth-Kindergarten Education, and School Social Work
- College of Fine Arts and Communication – UG, G
- Art, Dance Theatre, and Music Education
Licensure Update
The Professional Educator Preparation Standards Commission (PEPSC) recommended, and the State Board of Education (SBE) approved, a policy that will:
- allow all completers from approved educator preparation programs (EPPs) to be licensed directly through the SBE without EPP recommendation if an LEA has employed them.
- All requirements for the degree/licensure plan must be met, such as successful student teaching, other fields experiences, coursework, etc.
- If testing and edTPA are not required to pass the course or degree requirements, the EPP may not contest the license request from the LEA to the SBE.
What does this mean to ECU?
EPPs will no longer be able to hold candidates to passing licensure exam scores before recommendation with an LEA offer of employment, unless the EPP makes passing the tests and/or edTPA a part of passing student teaching and/or a graduation requirement. Passing licensure exams includes edTPA, as the PEPSC and the SBE consider edTPA an exam.
Testing and edTPA are still required to convert to a continuing license, so the requirement still exists. Employed teachers without passing scores will have 3 years to pass and possibly up to 6 years to pass with a new limited license.
How will ECU move forward?
Current Practice:
- ECU candidates will be held to submitting a scorable passing edTPA (i.e. no condition codes) by the 2nd attempt to receive the full 10% in the Internship II course grade. If the edTPA is not passed after 2 attempts, they lose the 10% on the course grade, but can still pass Internship with a grade of C or higher.
- ECU candidates without passing test scores and/or passing edTPA scores were not recommended for a license.
What did change for Spring and Summer 2019 Grads ONLY:
- Spring and Summer 2019 candidates will not be held to passing tests scores or passing edTPA scores if they have proof of employment, and they will be recommended by ECU to avoid the LEA’s bypass of the EPP’s recommendation. The grade in Internship will reflect the not passing edTPA score (-10%). The edTPA must be scorable (no condition codes) to get the EPP’s recommendation.
Approved by Dean Hayes, July 17, 2019
Challenges for ECU
- Completers who are hired without passing licensure exam scores and/or passing edTPA scores are still required to retake and pass exams as well as to redo and re-submit their edTPAs to Pearson. All scores, regardless of when taken, will count toward ECU’s pass rates.
- Newly signed legislation (SB 219) would allow a new teacher who still hasn’t passed the tests after the initial 3-year license expires, 3 more years to teach on a “limited license (LL)”. In essence, they will have up to 6 years to pass edTPA and tests, if the LEA wants to keep them employed. (new bill, SB 522, introduced to include Residency completers in the LL option)
- Even if the State of NC chooses not to use pass rates for program approval or EPP performance report going forward, Title 2 does, and this could affect our funding and national accreditation (CAEP) as we use several rubric scores as valid and reliable CAEP evidences.
Residency Model for Licensure
- Replaced Lateral Entry as a pathway as of April 15, 2019
- ELMID, LEHE and SEFR did an amazing job, along with the Office of Clinical Experiences and Alternative Licensure Staff to create an ECU Residency Model that is ready to go this fall.
- We have close to 200 residency and pre-residency candidates enrolled, along with 145 TFA Residency candidates, plus we will continue to serve the lateral entry population (250) for the next 3 years until those licenses sunset. (about 600 candidates total in all programs)
- Our alternative population enrollments are growing significantly and our UG enrollments are up slightly. We are well positioned to serve both populations.
Reminders about edTPA and Licensure Exams
For the COE Residency Programs, candidates must pass the appropriate licensure test(s) after Residency I before going to Residency II where they will complete the edTPA.
To date, we know both UNC Charlotte and Western Carolina voted to require a passing edTPA in order to pass internship.
Rubrics from the edTPA are part of our valid and reliable evidences for CAEP. 75% of our assessments must be valid and reliable. CAEP visits in 2022 and ECU’s Self-Study report will be due in 2021, with 3 cycles of data present.
Standing Update from the Office of Assessment, Data Management and Digital Learning
Holly Fales, Director, gave the following updates. Sarah Sconyers is the new edTPA Coordinator hired this semester. Dr. Fales shared the results of feedback from the CPAST pilot implementation in the spring by all programs except B-K, FACS and Special Education. The results were overall positive, with good feedback that the OADD has addressed in additional supports for candidates and faculty. The policy committee will bring a CPAST recommendation forward to the council for a final vote to adopt/not adopt CPAST as the Internship Evaluation Instrument. Dr. Fales also reported on progress with SONIA (the data management system replacing TEMS). To date, the Intern Clinical teachers are in SONIA (no longer in Taskstream) and internship applications have been piloted with MATs this summer and will move that way for the future. The OADD and OEP teams are working towards an Upper Division process and then will move into practica placements in a year or so. The intent is to be as paperless as possible, while be more efficient and effective with processes, procedures, and data management.
Standing Update from Office of Clinical Experiences & Alternative Licensure
Nicole Smith reported that a University Supervisors meeting was held August 15 and 72 clinical teachers were trained this summer. An Intern II Seminar was held August 19 for 90 interns and Intern I Seminars were held on August 23 for 291 interns. Internship application meetings for Spring 2020/Fall 2020 Internships will be held October 10 and 11, 2019. Candidates need only attend 1 session.
Clinical Teachers will complete the Intern I Surveys in Sonia this semester, not Taskstream, as this is part of the SONIA implementation process.
The early release date for Intern IIs will be November 20, 2019, as long as the criteria for release are met, such as edTPA passed, dispositions in good standing, all coursework up-to-date, minimal absences, released only to a full-time position in their content/licensure area, etc.
Currently, there are 72 individuals in the fall 2019 cohort for COE Residency program. The spring cohort application window is open until October 15, 2019. As of the date of these minutes, 210 have been accepted for the spring.
Old Business
The purpose of CEP is to provide avenues of communication among all areas of the University and the public-school community directly concerned with educator preparation and to make recommendations to the Dean of the College of Education concerning needs related to educator preparation at East Carolina University. The Assistant Dean of Undergraduate Affairs and Educator Preparation will serve as permanent Chair of the Council.
Bylaws, members, minutes and committees can be found at https://sites.ecu.edu/cep/. CEP members should report information to faculty in their respective department areas as a primary function of their role on CEP.
CPAST Pilot was spring 2019. CEP will call for a vote to adopt/not to adopt CPAST as the Internship II evaluation instrument at the October meeting.
New Business
A nomination was made by Bethann Cole and seconded by Christina Tschida nominating Charity Cayton for Vice Chair. She was elected by acclimation as Vice-Chair to serve in the absence of the Chair.
Student representatives to CEP are needed. The chair asked for names for two student representatives at the undergraduate and graduate levels to serve on the council, preferably not a student in Intern II in the spring (which would include MAT students). One student in each category would serve as the rep and one in each category would serve as an alternate. UG student representatives must be admitted to Upper Division. Please send nominations to Vivian Covington, covingtonv@ecu.edu or Sherry Tripp, tripps@ecu.edu.
Standing Committees
All CEP members were asked to remain and elect a chair for each Standing Committee. Committees are listed below with the chair indicated.
Curriculum – Jeff Pizzutilla
Evaluation & Planning – Rhea Miles
Admissions & Retention—Charity Cayton reported that the committee met after the last meeting to discuss student petitions for exceptions and found the file provided by the CEP Chair, Dr. Covington to be in compliance with the Chair’s authority to grant exceptions as given to her by the CEP.
Policy – Laura Levi-Altstaedter
The Policy committee needs to meet prior to the October meeting to write a policy recommendation regarding adoption/no adoption of CPAST as the Internship II evaluation. All members were sent documentation to share with faculty members and report decisions/concerns prior to the Policy meeting. CEP will vote on the Policy Committee recommendation at the October meeting.
Charge to Faculty and Policy Committee:
We must come to consensus about if/how edTPA will count in both grading criteria and licensure recommendation and whether licensure exams will be/will not be required prior to licensure recommendation. One policy is needed for the whole EPP.
Decisions that must be made about edTPA
- Maintain current edTPA policy
- edTPA remains as is (10% awarded if passed by 2nd submit), pass internship with maximum grade of B if the score is not passing, and we allow candidates without passing edTPA scores to be recommend if they have an offer of employment.
- We change the %age of how much edTPA counts to make it a requirement of internship. No one passes internship without a passing edTPA score. INC could be given to allow time for retakes but through a specified amount of time/date. If not passed and a classroom assignment is needed, the Internship would have to be repeated. This makes the licensure recommendation without a passing score moot, because the candidate would not graduate without a passing score in internship.
Decisions that must be made about Licensure Exams
- Maintain current licensure exam policy
- Allow candidates to be hired without passing licensure exam(s) scores. Only candidates with a job offer will be licensed without passing scores. If there is no job offer, the testing requirements stand, i.e., we will not blanket recommend at the end of the semester.
COUNCIL FOR EDUCATOR PREPARATION
Committee Membership 2019-2020
** Denotes Chair
| Admission & Retention (5) at least 2 from COE plus DoEP | Evaluation and Planning (6) at least 1 from COE plus DoEP | ||||
| Barbara | Brehm | HDFS, B-K | Rhea | Miles** | COE, MSITE |
| Elondra | Napper | COE, LEED | Cynthia | Wagoner | CFAC, MUSC |
| Holly | Fales | Director, OADD | Bernice | Dodor | HDFS, FACS |
| Charity | Cayton** | COE, MSITE | Stacy | Weiss | COE, SEFR |
| Kristin | Gehsman | COE, LEHE | Dawn | Shelton | COE, ELMID |
| Vivian | Covington | Chair of CEP | Mikkaka | Overstreet | COE, LEHE |
| Vivian | Covington | Chair of CEP |
| Curriculum (traditionally has met 1st Monday) (8) at least 2 from COE, Student, plus DoEP | Policy (5) at least 1 from COE, Student, plus DoEP – | ||||
| Ashley | Cannan | COE, IDP | TBD | Student Rep | |
| Christy | Walcott | HCAS, PSYC | Jeff | Pizzutilla | Curriculum Chair |
| Christina | Tschida | COE, ELMID | Charity | Cayton | Adm & Retention Chair |
| Patch | Clark | CFAC, DNCE | Rhea | Miles | Eval & Planning Chair |
| Bethann | Cole | COE, MSITE | Kevin | White | CHHP, SOCW |
| Jeff | Pizzutilla** | CHHP, KINE | Nanyoung | Kim | CFAC, ART |
| Chris | Rivera | COE, SEFR | Nicole | Smith | Lead Coord., OCE/AL |
| Student Rep | Laura | Levi Altstaedter** | HCAS, FORL | ||
| Vivian | Covington | Chair of CEP | Rita | Soulen | COE, IDP |
| Vivian | Covington | Chair of CEP |
Christina Tschida motioned and Bethann Cole seconded to adjourn the meeting at 4:35 p.m.
Respectfully submitted,
Sherry S. Tripp