Your CMAE February Newsletter!!!

 

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what CMAE has going on and the many ways you can be

 

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newsletter is ready for you to see!! Take a look at

CMAE February 2012 Newsletter 

 



Seeking Reviewers and Participants for Science Standards and Geographic Education

We are seeking reviewers for (1) the Next Generation of Science Standards and (2) participants in the National Geographic’s Road Map project for the Improvement of K-12 Geographic Education.  Would you pass along the information and help identify teachers for these projects?

 

Here are a few more details:

 

(1)     Achieve, Inc. under the guidance of Stephen Pruitt, VP for Content, etc. is releasing the first draft of the Next Generation of Science Standards.  So, we are looking for a team of teachers, K-12 with expertise/specialty in science(s)to help review.  We should have at least one member of the team from each of NEA’s 6 regions, and we should also cover all grade bands (elementary, middle and secondary schools), along with the high school subject areas.

 

                It seems that most of the review at this point will be through a survey instrument provided by Achieve.  I have a confidentiality agreement           from Achieve that I will send to each teacher to sign.

 

(2)    National Science Foundation Grant Award:  Establishing a Road Map for Improvement of K-12 Geographic Education. 

The details are highlighted in yellow below.  We need at teacher for each of the three committees:  Assessment, Professional Development and Instructional Materials and Geographical Sciences Education Research. Once I have the three teachers, I will send the list to the team at the National Geographic.

                The National Geographic Society has received a 2-year, $2.2 million grant from the National Science Foundation to develop a strategic plan                for improving geographic education for the nation.  Entitled “Establishing a Roadmap for Large-Scale Improvement of K-12 Education in the           Geographical Sciences”, this project will bring together experts in geography, education, and research from across the U.S. to create          landmark reports focusing on key issues for educational improvement: instructional materials for students, education of teachers, assessment, research, and public attitudes. 

                This project responds to the growing recognition among business leaders and policy makers that Americans lack the critical geographic    understanding and reasoning skills that will be required for careers and civic life in the 21st century.  The National Geographic Society is       looking to use this growing awareness of the “crisis in geo-literacy” to accelerate the pace of the efforts to improve geographic education        that we and our collaborators have been conducting for more than two decades. 

                For this project, the Society has partnered with three societies that share National Geographic’s concerns with geographic education, the           Association of American Geographers, the American Geographical Society, and the National Council for Geographic Education.  Together,      these four organizations will select and support three blue-ribbon committees to create “road map” reports that will guide K-12 educational            reform in both physical and human geography. 

                These road map reports will be addressed to two audiences.  The first is policymakers and funders.  The reports will make     recommendations to them about critical priorities.  The second is educators and educational reformers. The reports will make             recommendations to them about how to implement change.  By creating a shared agenda for improving geographic education, National                 Geographic and its partners hope to avoid the uncoordinated and competing efforts that have often undermined reform efforts in other        curriculum areas. 

                The work of the project is being done by three committees that are synthesizing existing research and one project team that is conducting                 new research. One committee is focusing on assessment. It is developing a framework for assessing progress toward geographic literacy    across the progression from kindergarten through high school.  A second committee is focusing on teacher professional development and             instructional materials.  It will make recommendations about the design of instructional materials and the education of teachers.  The third                 committee is focusing on research.  It is developing an agenda for educational research that will lay out questions about learning, teaching,             and educational change that must be answered to maintain the effectiveness of geographic education into the future.  The three    committees will solicit input from experts and the public, and will conduct systematic surveys of the relevant research literature.  In addition               to the three committees, the project is conducting a study on public perceptions of geography and the importance of geographic      education. 

    The road map reports and the study results are scheduled for release in Fall 2012. 

Thank you.

Mike

 

Michael J. Kaspar, Ph.D.

Senior Policy Analyst

Center for Great Public Schools

1201 16th St. NW, Suite 310

Washington, DC 20036-3290

(202) 822-7793 (o)

(202) 300-1765 (c)

(202) 822-7482 (f)

mkaspar@nea.org

 

 



NCAE State Board Review

Accountability and Standard Issues
1. The State Board of Education is still discussing how the NC High School Accountability Model data will be reported. The US Department of Education has granted NC a NCLB wavier allowing the elimination of the 10th grade English Writing assessment due to the fact the ACT has a writing component.
2. Approved the new Articulation agreement with North Carolina Community College System. The first agreement was in 1999, with each of the 59 institutions that endorsed, adopted, and accepted the North Carolina High School to Community College Articulation Agreement. In 2004, eleven cur-riculum teams for each CTE pathway reviewed the curriculum. In 2005 the following definition was approved: Articulation is a systematic, seamless student transition process from secondary to postsec-ondary education that maximizes use of resources and minimizes content duplication. The following criteria will be used to award college credit for identified high school courses: 1. Grade of B or higher in the course, and; 2. A raw score of 80 or higher on the standardized VoCATS post-assessment. Continued on page 3...

Race to the Top News 

 Amended the Race to the Top (RT3) Detailed Scope of Work (DSW)to address modifications for SAT and ACT tests and the high school accounta-bility model.

 

 Continuing the planning and implementation of having a cadre of educators as ambassadors in each school to help communicate relevant RT3 issues.

 

 DPI is co-hosting with NCAE webinars to help inform educators about the IIS tool that will be part of the NC CLOUD.

 

 Completed comprehensive assessments in several of the lowest-achieving schools.


 SBE approved the sanctions for non-compliance of school systems not following their DSW plans. 

Received the following reports which are part of the RT3 work in NC:

 

 Addressing Teacher Effectiveness via Designing NC's Measures of Student Learning (MSL) by creating common exams for all subject areas. McREL is working with NC DPI and standards VI (Teachers) and VIII (Administrators) should be added to the online evaluation tool in January. The teacher work groups helping to design MSL will meet in March to address what the test ven-dor created. MSL are measures of what students know and are able to do after completing a task or course, linked to instruction delivered by the teacher, ONE part of how NC will evaluate teacher effectiveness and similar to common summative assessments. MSLs ARE NOT multiple choice standardized exams for all areas of the NC Stand-ard Course of Study (SCS), assessments delivered in the same manner as EOGs & EOCs, designed without teacher input, the only source of data used to make a decision and are not part of the school accountability model. The timeline for implemen-tation will be a rolling one depending on the type of data/assessments connected to a teacher and the school. The data must be collected over 3 years to be considered part of the standard VI for a teacher.


 Building LEA and Regional Professional Develop-ment Capacity (a baseline report). SERVE and NCSU are evaluating professional development connected to RT3 initiatives and providing forma-tive data, analyses and recommendations to im-prove ongoing work. The Regional Professional Development Leads are impacting school systems. The NC DPI Summer Institutes were a huge suc-cess with over 2,200 attendees. Recommendations to the SBE is that as statewide PD efforts continue keep in mind each LEA is in a different place and one size does not fit all. Continue the blended approach as it helps with cost savings. Create co-herent programs that address PD needs and differ-entiated PD for elementary, middle and high school teachers. The next report will hopefully provide specific data on how the PD has impacted the students behavior.
www.ncpublicschools.org/rttt/ visit for more detailed information on North Carolina RT3 work. 

 

The following NC DPI/NCAE webinar: Instructional Improvement System (formative assessment tool) will be on 2/21/12: goo.gl/QQEzE to register. Or check out the NCAE web page for more information. 

 

Continued from page 1;


To receive articulated credit, students must enroll at the community college within two years of their high school graduation date. Process to document credit; the official high school transcript and all official standardized VoCATS post-assessment scores will be required to verify that the criteria to award credit for articulated course work 

has been met. Where indi-cated, students will submit supporting documentation to the community college. The change to the articula-tion agreement includes 50 Career and Technical Edu-cation (CTE) programs of study that match the knowledge and skills taught in similar community college courses. The agree-ment also ensures that if a student is proficient in their


high school course, the stu-dent can receive college credit for that course at any North Carolina community college. This streamlines the student's educational path-way by eliminating the need to take multiple courses with the same learning outcomes. A school system can add other CTE pathways for consideration; such as the NC Teacher Cadet Program. 

 

Charter School News  

Discussed the following charter school requests for enrollment increases: Arapahoe Charter School in Pamlico wants to increase grades offered from K-8 to K-13. They want to begin an Early College for grade 13 (would need special legislation ). Kestrel Heights School in Durham was denied last year for an enrollment increase, but academic progress has been made so the Office of Charter Schools approved the request. Southern Wake Academy in Wake wants to add grades 6-8. 

The other requests were for charter renewals: Cape Lookout in Morehead City, PreEminent Charter School in Durham, and STARS in Moore County. The SBE will vote on these requests in February.   

 

Other SBE Actions 


1. Approved the North Carolina New Schools Project: STEM Teacher Education Program, an Innovative Pathway to STEM Teaching Careers (IPSTC) which is a statewide program providing an alternate route to teacher licensure for Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics college graduates. This proposal, submitted to the US Department of Education, was recently funded for five years under the Transition to Teaching grant opportunity. The proposal seeks to address the need for STEM teachers in North Carolina school districts that are challenged with recruiting and hiring. In year one, the program will begin by placing 16 prospective teachers as interns in four NC NSP Learning Laboratory Initiative (LLI) Schools; Cross Creek in Fayetteville, Caldwell Early College, Hillside High School and Goldsboro STEM High School. Each year the cohort group will grow by 16 teachers having support from ASU, EUC, FSU and NCCU. The 15 month program includes mentors, 2nd semester intern work as a Teacher of Record, their own iPAD, a $2,500 sti-pend and blended professional development support/classes. Successful STEM teachers must work for the LEA for at least 3 years once they earn their license. 

2. Approved the NCVPS standards for online courses. And received infor-mation on the new semester enrollment. There are 43 courses being offered this semester and 1,741 students enrolled across the state.

 

3. Good news sessions included presentations from Jones County on how they are collaborating with the NC DPI Transformation team and supporting staff in schools with quality professional development. Another good news session was from Alexander County on how they have used the five professional days to ensure teaches are prepared for the implementation of the common core and Essential Standards next year. Their team consists of Central Office and teacher leaders represent-ing all content areas by grade levels. Jack Hoke, former Superintendent of the Year from Alexander County announced that he is retiring in February and will become the Executive Director for the NCASA as Jim Causby is retiring from that post.


4. Received information on the AIG Program Standards based on the 2008 audit. An overview of the Program Standards can be found at www.ncpublicschools.org/docs/stateboard/meetings/2012/aig-standards.pdf  
 
To view the actual PDF document please click on the link below.
 



Invitation to The State Healthcare Listening Tour

Please join State Treasurer Janet Cowell and other members of the State Health Plan in a discussion on how your health plan can better serve the health and

wellness needs of you and your family. 

 

As you may know, the State Health Plan will become a division of the Department of State Treasurer effective January 1, 2012.  Treasurer Cowell will be traveling across the

state to host The State Healthcare Listening Tour series. These tours will allow members of the health plan an opportunity to provide their feedback to the Treasurer as she

develops a framework for future operations and communication of the State Health Plan.

 

Attend The State Healthcare Listening Tour event near you:

 

Dates                                                                    Locations

 

January 11                     Raleigh                  Wake Technical Community College

                                                                          9101 Fayetteville Rd., Raleigh

                                                                              Student Services Building

January 17                     Jamestown               Guilford Tech Community College

                                                                      601 High Point Road, Jamestown

                                                      Percy H. Sears Applied Technologies Center

January 31                     Wilmington               Cape Fear Community College

                                                                   411 North Front Street, Wilmington

                                                                            McLeod Building

February 8                    Lenoir                         Caldwell Community College

                                                                        1913 Hickory Blvd S.C., Lenoir

                                                                          J.E. Broyhill Civic Center

February 28                  Winterville                        Pitt Community College

                                                                         1986 Tech Rd., Winterville

                                                                           Goess Student Center

March 1                          Charlotte             Central Piedmont Community College

                                                                   1206 Elizabeth Ave., Charlotte

                                                                   Tate Hall in the Overcash Building

 

All events will start at 5:30 p.m. and end at 7:00 p.m. 

No registration necessary.

Parking is free.

 

 

N.C. Department of State Treasurer

325 N. Salisbury Street

Raleigh, NC 27603-1385



The ACT is coming for all 11th Graders - Get prepared Teachers!

As NC gets ready to administer the ACT to all 11th graders this year for base line data and to replace the English I writing test – you might find this link useful.  I believe that Testing Coordinators have been provided this link, but thought high school teachers might find it useful as well. 

 

The North Carolina landing page for the ACT is at  http://www.act.org/aap/northcarolina/