PESBA

Professional Educator Standards Boards Association

(President: Mary Vixie Sandy (CA); Vice President: Vacant; Member-at Large: Chris Kenton, (DE)

NASDTEC Board Report

October 2017

General News: The PESBA Board approved the update to the PESBA Report at the June meeting. A copy of that report is attached.

The AlaskaProfessional Teaching Practices Commissionjoined PESBA in February 2017. The Alaska board was established in 1966 and oversees Alaska’s professional practices functions for licensed educators.

The Wyoming Professional Teaching Standards Board hired Nish Goicolea as their new Executive Director. Nish became the Executive Director of the Wyoming Professional Teaching Standards Board in June 2017. Prior to taking this position Nish served as the head of the Foreign Language Department at Western Wyoming Community College, where she taught for 12 years. During her time at Western, she was also the College's Accreditation Liaison and Spanish Club Advisor. Currently, she is the Chair for the Wyoming Humanities Council, on the Board for Kindness Wyoming, and a recent graduate of the Leadership Wyoming program. Nish is finishing her Ed. D. in Educational Leadership from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, she holds an M.A. in Foreign Languages and Literature from the University of Nevada-Reno, a B.A. in Spanish from the University of Nevada-Reno, and a certificate in Community College Leadership from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln.

There are three PESBA states currently in leadership transition:

The OregonTeacher Standards and Practices Commission is in the process of completing a search for Executive Director following the departure of Dr. Monica Beane in August. The hiring committee hopes to have a successful candidate to present to the full Commission at their early November meeting. Currently, leadership of the agency is being shared between Elizabeth Keller and Trent Danowski.

The new MinnesotaProfessional Educator Licensing and Standards Boardis in the process of transitioning into operation following the abolition of the Minnesota Board of Teaching this past legislative session. The board’s first order of business is appointing a new Executive Director, a process that is expected to take much of fall 2017. Currently, the agency is being led by Alex Liuzzi, Interim Executive Director following Erin Doan’s departure as Executive Director in June 2017.

TheWashingtonProfessional Educator Standards Boardhas appointed Alexandra Manuel as the Acting Executive Director following Jennifer Wallace’s departure in late September. The board has not yet finalized the recruitment process and timeline for hiring a successor.

State Reports: Note: Many boards reported that due to budget issues and leadership transition issues, pursuing “innovations” has become a challenge in the immediate near future. Sustaining current workloads has become the focus for several states.

What is the most important policy issue facing your board in the next 6 months?
Alaska
(Jim Seitz) / Alaska is still working on revising the code of ethics. We have had about 80% of our proposed changes approved in regulations in the past year. We are specifically working on language that prohibits sexual conduct with students that have recently graduated. We have not yet found the legal framework within which we can adopt and enforce such a regulation.
California
(Mary Vixie Sandy) /
  • We have undertaken restructuring of teaching licensure standards andwe are in the process of implementing those standards. The first round has been focused on multiple subject and single subject credential holders. We are now pushing into the next tier of teacher licensure: Special Education, Career and Technical Education and Bilingual Education all of which present much more complex issues. We are deep at work on how to make Special Education more seamless and where we can come to a place where all teachers realize they are teachers of all children.
  • The prohibition against bilingual education was removed by California voters (after 18 years). The CTC is expecting a huge demand for bilingual teachers – we still need to create the infrastructure to handle that demand.
  • We are also looking at subject-matter requirements for teacher licensure and considering whether a subject-matter major in a designated content area would suffice to waive the current content test requirements.

Delaware
(Chris Kenton) /
  • We are closely examining the alternative routes to teacher licensure and certification. We are currently trying to ensure that state approved programs are properly preparing teachers in accordance with adopted statutory and regulatory requirements.
  • We are implementing both the edTPA and the PPAT. Delaware has four preparation programs. We are challenged with out-of-state applicants (holding only initial licensure) and the current statutory requirement that new out-of-state applicants must take a performance assessment within one year. Recent changes now allow up to two years for these applicants to take the assessments.

Georgia
(Kelly Henson) /
  • GaPSC is making decisions regard the state’s relationship to CAEP.
  • GaPSC is currently considering raising the passing standard of the state certification content assessments. There is an Induction level passing standard and a professional passing standard, which are aligned to the state’s tiered certification model for teachers. The induction passing standard is under consideration to increase. Input is being collected from representation from across the state to inform the Commission’s decision.

Hawaii
(Lynn Hammonds) /
  • We are revising our administrative rules – which is our overall biggest undertaking this year. We are making sure our rules are current and accurate for our processes. These changes will improve out of state reciprocity – we are revising the regulations to ensure we achieve our intent.
  • We are adding two new members to board: One from Native Hawaiian community; and one preservice candidate (on a one-year rotating basis). The requests for these positions came from the licensees.

Iowa
(Ann Lebo) / We are working on a Computer Science endorsement in response to legislation passed last year. The endorsement aligns with our recently approved CTE Information Technology endorsement in response to newly legislated CTE Redesignwhich allows districts to use Carl Perkins funding to support this newly added service area. (The link above shows Iowa’s CTE Service Areas in a chart.)
Kentucky
(Jimmy Adams) /
  • We continue with the development of our Kentucky Educator Preparation Accountability System (KEPAS). We will be including the ability to review small “n” count programs using our newly developed method of review, no longer allowing these smaller programs to bypass the process.
  • Our board is moving in the direction of completely redesigning our career ladder on a teacher competency model. We will put together a task force and develop the outcomes and we have support from a wide variety of constituency groups. We anticipate it will take us a year to develop a new system, and three years to redesign the teacher ed programs and achieve full implementation.

Minnesota
(Alex Liuzzi) / Minnesota’s board is totally restructuring with a new board just being constructed. The board’s first meeting was held October 12, 2017. A timeline for the new board’s transition can be found on the board’s web site.
North Dakota
(Rebecca Pitkin) / North Dakota is reviewing the Model Code of Ethics for Educators as well as our current ND Code of Conduct for possible adaptation/adoption/revision. We are including multiple stakeholders in this work.
Oklahoma
(Renee Launey-Rodolf) / Extreme teacher shortage/ budget crisis.
Oregon
(Elizabeth Keller) / Finishing licensure redesign which was started in 2015. The Commission is working to finalize and align administrative licensure, then will move on to school psychologists and school counselors.
Washington
(Alexandra Manuel) / n/a
Wyoming
(Nish Goicolea) / We are still working on getting into our online credentialing system.
Any innovations you are undertaking:
Alaska / n/a
California /
  • We have always had a designated endorsement for the multiple career areas (shop). People from industry, with nine (9) hours in pedagogy have been allowed to teach “shop”. With the new college and career ready standards, having college and career technical education (CTE) programs has become a significant credentialing area we need to examine. The state has invested hugely into career and technical education program development. Most teachers credentialed to teach CTE do not have a college degree. Most college educated teachers don’t have the industry experience to teach college-level technical education courses. We are trying to find the middle ground between what courses in CTE programs can be taught by people without direct industry training and what college-ready courses can be taught by industry prepared teachers.
  • We are building our first ever administrator performance assessment. We have had performance assessments in teaching for over 10 years. We are getting push-back from school districts fearing future administrative shortages from the field. CA still allows people to test into the administrator field and that is why we are building an appropriate assessment for this field. The assessment will be imbedded in preparation programs.

Delaware / We are re-writing our licensure regulations to ensure that the specific requirements for each license can be found easily within the regulations. [Earlier regulatory revisions consolidated language to such an extent that it was not clear to many what the specific requirements were for different licensure areas.]
Georgia /
  • GaPSC’s Certification Renewal rule became effective July 1, 2017, after a two-year grace period for conversation, outreach, and planning for this job-embedded professional learning reform. Individualized Professional Learning Plans (PLPs) or Professional Learning Goals (PLGs) are required for all teachers. For Induction-level teachers, emphasis is placed on using pre-service data and experiences, including what candidates learn about their practice from their state certification assessments, to inform these customized professional learning plans.
  • GaPSC has moved to a two-tier performance-based leadership certification and preparation model. The accompanying performance-based leadership assessment will be implemented spring 2018, after a two-year scaling up process. A professional virtual learning community was formed, hosted by the GaPSC and the Georgia Educational Leadership Faculty Assn, to address leadership needs, including successful implementation of the certification assessments.
  • We are expanding our interactive, instructional ethics assessments that are currently required for teachers and leaders. As there is a higher percentage of paraprofessionals sanctioned in Georgia, an assessment is under development for paraprofessionals. The development of these instructional assessment modules will conclude in 1.5 to 2 years.

Hawaii / We are doing some workgroups on clinical experience. We are going to participate in the Association for Advancing Quality in Educator Preparation (AAQEP) accreditation initiative. We are looking at ethno-mathematics.
Iowa / We are working with the Governor's Future Ready Iowa initiative to promote work-based learning opportunities in schools, to include apprenticeships. Here is a link to information about this initiative.
Kentucky / We are in discussion with all constituency groups and our legislature about redesigning our career ladder to align with a competency-based system. This is in the very early stages, but it looks like favorable legislation to support this effort may be introduced when our general assembly reconvenes in January.
Minnesota / n/a
North Dakota / n/a
Oklahoma / Educator prep programs will have access to evaluation data on their graduates (3 years out) working in the state. This data will be used for continuous improvement and meeting accreditation requirements.
Oregon / n/a
Washington / This past month we had our first Paraeducator Board meeting in addition to the Professional Educator Standards Board meeting. PESB now administers both boards. The Paraeducator Board is the first state board focused on paraeducators concerning standards, professional development and the career ladder. In addition, PESB is hosting a work group focused on the professional continuum, a collaborative discussing continuing education following the changes to second-tier licensure. We are also growing our alternative routes providers and working on several initiatives with districts focused on growing our own educators for dual language and special education.
Wyoming / There are a number of innovative projects we are working on including an alternative route to licensure, examining requirements for CTE educators, and considering microcredentialing for individualized professional development tracks.
Any challenges you are facing:
Alaska / Budgetary challenges (staff support cut in past 18 months). Only one staff to support all the board’s functions.
California / Teacher shortages are the biggest challenge. These shortages put pressure on every quality measure we are trying to uphold.
Georgia / Georgia’s state system also impacted by pension-fund deficits. GaPSC is still hopeful that a new investigation position will be funded in the next legislative budget cycle.
Delaware / Mandatory expenditures were more than incoming revenues prior to starting the current annual budget cycle. Thus, the agency received zero discretionary funds. In other words, only sufficient funding to support current staffing was included in the agency’s budget. Any ancillary work or expenditures must be found in other areas within the Delaware Department of Education. Educator hearings for misconduct have sky-rocketed. Unfortunately, these hearing costs must be borne by DOE funds due to lack of funds in the standards board’s budget.
Hawaii / The teacher shortage. Not just shortage of candidates, although preservice candidates have dropped, but retention is also a problem. Teachers are leaving the profession in droves. We have had to rely on too many emergency hires.
Iowa / We are recovering from recent budget cuts, which caused a significant reduction in staff, but we have stabilized and we are nowmoving forward in conjunction with finalizing our transition to an online licensing system.
Kentucky / The biggest issues being faced currently are around the state pension systems and the state budget. The effects of potential cuts between 15% to 20% have been requested by the Education and Workforce Development Cabinet.
Minnesota / n/a
North Dakota /
  • The recent legislative session looked at teacher retention and recruitment and ESPB is responding to this by working to maintain quality standards and examining additional alternate routes as well as piloting some high school courses in teacher preparation using the Rising Educator's standards.
  • The session also brought forth an “innovation bill” and the current Governor's platform calls for ESPB to investigate micro-credentials and endorsements that align with the Department of Education’s focus.

Oklahoma / Lower enrollments in ed prep programs and more graduates teaching out of state. We had another 1000+ emergency certificates issued again this year.
Oregon / n/a
Washington / n/a
Wyoming / n/a
Anything else you would like the NASDTEC board to know about what is happening with your Standards Board:
Alaska / The board will be hiring a new director for the agency effective June 2018.
Delaware / The Delaware Legislature required the state to eliminate the general knowledge content test. It started with the school nurses – prior to the legislation, the state board of education required them to pass the education general knowledge test. That test has now been eliminated for all educators.
Georgia /
  • We have a good relationship with the state’s general assembly and the Governor’s office. We aren’t experiencing any difficulties beyond the usual and routine issues that face our agencies.
  • The edTPA passing standard increased effective September 1, 2017. A two-year scaling up period was provided with collaborative structures of support provided to ensure successful implementation.

Hawaii / We are continuing our study of the Model Code of Ethics. The board has endorsed the Model Code for preservice preparation and for professional development of in-service teachers, we are hoping to adopt the Code as Hawaii’s professional practices model code.
North Dakota / In 2017-2018, the first four (4) North Dakota educator preparation programs will be evaluated/accredited using CAEP standards.
Oregon / Despite challenges, the Commission has been able to eliminate the email backlog and reduce their phone call abandonment rate to less than 3%! Changes in licensure rules, the online application system and other innovations have allowed us to bring our customer service rates to nearly current.
Washington /
  • The Board will continue its role as policymaker, through educator preparation oversight and licensure for educators. PESB will continue to advance educator workforce development and pursue policy and innovations that are responsive to the educator shortage, continuing education and increasing the diversity of the workforce.
  • We are continuing to work on our indicator-based program review and will be starting work on developing a culturally responsive indicator piloted by preparation programs.
  • This fall we are forming two work groups: One considering testing policy and program barriers for educators; and another work group examining career and technical education policy. We look forward to a busy legislative session advocating for the expansion of alternative routes, grow your own initiatives, and state loan forgiveness.

Wyoming / In house we are working on a digitizing project to eliminate and replace the paper filing system.

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