FTF Tuesday: AACTE and Common Core

Have you heard of the AACTE? American Association of Colleges for Teacher Education. Their main goal? Prepping the next generation of teachers to lead in the classrooms. So, how aligned with Common Core  programs are they? Let’s see if we can find out in today’s “From the Files” article.

AACTE:

Founded in 1948 (their 50th anniversary was 1998, in celebration of that, a rather comprehensive book was put together and was said to be free to download for members only.) Included in the book are the future plans of the group as well as their past. Other downloads like the global view of early education, USA and UK education reform, and more innovation via education are on the site as well, but members only.

The CEF (Committee for Education Funding) has the following description of AACTE: “The American Association of Colleges for Teacher Education (AACTE) is a national voluntary association of higher education institutions and other organizations and is dedicated to ensuring the highest quality preparation and continuing professional development for teachers and school leaders in order to enhance PK-12 student learning. The almost 800 institutions holding AACTE membership include private, state, and municipal colleges and universities large and small located in every state, the District of Columbia, the Virgin Islands, Puerto Rico, and Guam. Collectively, the AACTE membership prepares more than two-thirds of the new teachers entering schools each year in the United States.” 

You’ll want to check out the Board of Directors for AACTE, as it is comprised of leaders from various colleges across the USA, so be sure to check to see if your alma mater has become a part of this group OR if the post-secondary school of choice for your students is on this list.

AACTE gives grants to state chapters. State chapter resources include CCSS assessments. You’ll have to be a member, however, to retrieve those resources. See: http://aacte.org/state-chapters/state-chapter-support-grant-program (*Note: scroll down to the bottom of the page to see the state chapter resources.)

AACTE has an official publication titled JTE or Journal of Teacher Education. AACTE and Sage Publishing work together to bring this media source to educators. To access the publications since 1959 to present, see: http://jte.sagepub.com/content/by/year

The funds for AACTE? That’s quite interesting. Here’s a screen shot from their website that details the federal dollars for various projects. If you’d like to see more about the federal funding aspect, http://aacte.org/policy-and-advocacy/federal-policy-and-legislation/437-federal-funding

What’s really interesting is the PDF I found from 1969 which states AACTE is a voluntary consortium. So how do they receive federal money? Big question..no easy answer, from what I can find. Here’s the document for you to have. Maybe you can glean the answer for yourselves. ED034722 I can tell you from the sounds of things, it reeks of another P3 (public private partnership), however, after extensive searching I can neither confirm nor deny this possibility.

Pearson Publishing:

Yes, you can’t get anywhere in CCSS Land without Pearson. Here’s the list of the Pearson co-operative programs the AACTE uses for EdPTA (of which Stanford University is the sole owner of):

• Chalk&Wire
• Data180 (Folio180)
• Digication
• Edthena
• EPCS Online (UW-Madison)
• FolioTek
• ILAT (Pass-Port)
• Lessoncast Learning
• LiveText
• ShowEvidence
• Taskstream
• Tk20What’s an EdPTA? Here’s the AACTE’s description, “edTPA development was led by Stanford University and the Stanford Center for Assessment, Learning and Equity. Stanford University is the author and exclusive owner of edTPA and responsible for ongoing development of the assessment, and implementation support resources for participating states and institutions of higher education. Stanford University is also responsible for the design and development of the online scoring training, including selecting and coding subject-specific benchmarks and other training materials.”

If you’d like to learn more about Stanford, Pearson, the platforms, and EdTPAs, https://secure.aacte.org/faq#will-the-pearson-platform-replace-other-electronic-portfolio-vendors-for-edtpa

More about AACTE’s CCSS/STEM Connection:

AACTE, Congressional hearing and Linda Darling-Hammond..what a combination. See: https://aacte.org/news-room/press-releases-statements/22-nevada-teacher-to-testify-during-aactes-congressional-briefing-on-qpreparing-stem-teachers-the-key-to-global-competitivenessq

For AACTE’s rubber stamp statement of support for CCSS: https://aacte.org/resources/common-core-state-standards

For AACTE’s Letter to Sec. Duncan, aacte-response-with-appendixes (*Note: lots of perspective here, in my opinion. Not so sure if it’s one I like, however. While the Association cries ‘federal overreach’ is needs to remember where the funding connected to those projects from the chart above)

For an view of AACTE we don’t see anywhere on the internet, but you will find revealing: http://www.nctq.org/commentary/article.do?id=147

To see who likes to work with AACTE, be sure to check out this screen shot, then head to Twitter for more.

One more thing, if you’d like to see the 2015 promo that AACTE has on You Tube, it’s below. Freeze the video when you get to the sponsors of the conference which just wrapped up. See how quickly you can connect the CCSS dots between these sponsors.

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fMS4QLP9jC0&w=560&h=315]