Data Driven Decision Making Action Plan

Program/Department/Committee: Early Childhood NAEYC

Members Present: Rosemary Omniewski, Maureen Walcavich, Mary Jo Melvin, Ginny McGinnis, Tina Carter, Gae Anderson-Miller, Michelle, Amodei, Sandra Waite-Stupiansky (Facilitator)

Date: 4-19-2011

Assessments Examined:

Assessment 1: State Licensure Test: Category V: Understanding Professional and Legal Responsibilities

Assessment 5: Instructional Assessment

Assessment 6: Case Study

Assessment 7: Family Literacy Bag

Concerns raised by NAEYC:

Summary of Data Analysis: Need data for infants and toddlers and working with children with special needs; need data for working with families; need data for working with diverse populations and children with special needs; need data that indicate age of children and geographical area; need to improve scores on ethical code and legal responsibilities, which was the only area below state average on the PRAXIS II

Proposed Actions:

  1. Add an observation of infants/toddlers to ECED 120
  2. Keep the infant/toddler observation in ECED 110, although the dual majors do not take ECED 110.
  3. Candidates in PreK/K block need to do something with infants and toddlers.
  4. Observations, volunteer hours, and field must include all three groups (infants/toddlers, PreK, and K-4). We need to make sure to document experiences with all three age groups.
  5. We need to come up with a new rubric for field in our new program. The rubric needs to record the age/grade of the children, the type of program (child care, public school), and the geographical category (rural, urban, suburban)
  6. We need to train adjuncts on how to look at instructional assessment plans in student teaching.
  7. Conceptual Framework reflections done at key points: ECED 120 (entry), each of the blocks, and end of the program. Faculty members other than the ones teaching the course should evaluate the CF reflections. In block, the reflection could be on the entire block experience and two instructors can read and evaluate each student’s CF reflection.

Transition to New Program:

We are moving from our old program to our new program, and collecting data from both programs. The three areas that were targeted as needing minor improvements are improving in the new program. NAEYC has the option of submitting a dual special education/early childhood education SPA, which might be the route to go with the new program since there are so few early childhood majors without the dual certification option.

  1. Rubric for case student standard 6 needs to include a component of candidates educating parents on assessment results.
  1. Assign a mentor who has taught the course to every adjunct professor. Give a syllabus to every adjunct who comes on board, and have the mentor explain and guide the adjunct. Syllabi could be reviewed by the mentor BEFORE being distributed to the students.
  1. Letter to parents needs to be a part of the assessment in the family literacy bag.
  1. Child Development needs to be addressed in all course descriptions for all our new courses.

Questions:

  1. Do we want to use grades again as one of the 8 assessments? They weren’t our strongest assessment. The scoring guide has to be clarified if grades are used in the future.
  1. Can our field experience rubric address standard 5 (content knowledge)? Instructional plan and PDE 430 will in student teaching, but what can we do in field.
  1. Can we use the PDE 430 and an Advocacy Plan to address standard 6.
  1. Visit a local elected official and interview them (Standard 6-Professionalsim).

Other Issues:

  1. We need to decide what Live Text assessments to put on Live Text for each course in our new program. Everyone who teaches a particular course uses the SAME rubric and the same assessment. The committee recommends that ALL courses have at least one LIVETEXT assignment and all instructors must use this assessment as part of the course.
  1. Objective tests are important so our students have higher pass rates on Praxis 2 tests. This needs to be clearly presented to new adjunct faculty members.
  1. Relevance to Conceptual Framework: Belief Statement A. Diversity, Belief Statement B: Pedagogical Skills, Belief Statement J. Adapting Instruction, Perhaps we can have the CF posted on LIVETEXT by belief statement. The students can click on the relevant belief statements for their reflections. That way, we can track which belief statements are reflected upon for each course.

Desired Outcomes: We will address all the concerns in our SPA report (even though no changes were required. We will make sure our new program improves all the areas of concern. The actions listed above will be taken starting in Summer, 2011.

Standards Addressed: NAEYC Standards 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 (new standards)

Criteria for Success:

  1. A special dept. meeting will be called early in the semester to review our new programs and address data from prior semester and suggest improvements. Require adjuncts to attend these meetings.
  2. Packets will be prepared for adjunct professors that include the course outlines, sample syllabi, LIVETEXT assignments and rubrics, and other relevant information.
  3. Continue looking at Praxis 2 results, especially in Professionalism.
  4. Review data on stages 1,2 3 for age levels (including infant/toddler) and rural, suburban and urban placements

Time Table: early Fall 2011 one meeting to review data, prior to Oct. (our second departmental meeting in Sept. 2011)

Person(s) Responsible for Data Collection and Analyses: Dr. Lisa Brightman overseeing each individual instructor. Dept. Chair or Assistant Chair will be responsible for recruiting mentors and getting packets to adjunct professors.