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What's Going On at NCTR?

On Monday, NCTR's Strategic Consulting team led California State University (CSU) campuses and their district partners through their final Learning Institute. The institute, held in Monterey, provided time for CSU Monterey Bay, CSU Fresno and their partners to reflect on strengthening their clinical teacher preparation and residency program. Participants also analyzed data from NCTR’s Partnership Health Survey to identify successes and next steps for the coming year, and they dug into the CSU Educator Quality Center's DataView to identify areas for programmatic improvement. NCTR's work with these partnerships is supported by the New Generation of Educators Initiative (NGEI). 

Institute III was followed by NGEI's Annual Convening, a two-day professional learning series. The convening focused on refining the teacher candidate experience through the alignment of coursework and clinical experiences, and improving the feedback and coaching teacher candidates receive. Representatives of the 11 CSU campuses participating in the initiative attended the first day of the convening, including the five campuses supported by NCTR. The second day included deans from the entire CSU system. 

NCTR's Program Director Kathlene Holmes and Program Manager Sarah Cohen presented with CSU Stanislaus on Tuesday. The session sought to clarify the processes of teacher preparation programs through the lens of teacher candidates. Today, CEO Anissa Listak will provide an overview of NCTR and its work across the country. The Strategic Consulting team will join CSU Bakersfield on a panel to discuss the hallmarks of effective partnerships.
Dr. Joan Bissell from the CSU's Office of the Chancellor welcomes guests at today's NGEI convening. 
Partner Updates

Our Strategic Consulting partner, St. Louis Teacher Residency, was featured in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch as a possible solution to the city’s long standing teacher turnover problem. St. Louis Public Schools’ Special Administrative Board on Tuesday approved a one-year, $80,000 partnership with the St. Louis Teacher Residency.

Memphis Teacher Residency and Nashville Teacher Residency were highlighted in a Chattanooga Times Free Press article about the expansion of the residency model in Tennessee. The story cited the two programs as being "some of Tennessee's most highly rated preparation programs.”

The Alder Graduate School of Education is looking for an Associate Dean. Qualified candidates should be experts in the field of teacher education, DEI-focused, and collaborative. Read more about the position here.
Resources and Events

Call for Proposals
The American Association of Colleges for Teacher Education is now accepting session proposals and reviewer applications for its 71st annual meeting. The conference will be held Feb. 22-24 in Louisville.

The deadline for reviewer applications is May 15. Session proposals are due May 29. Learn more and start an application. 

Webinar
A Baseline for Student Success: Designing and Implementing an Evidence-Based and Standards-Based Teacher Induction Program
Contented provided by New Teacher Center
March 29 at 2 p.m.

“New Teacher Center (NTC) established the Teacher Induction Program Standards (TIPS) in an effort to create an industry standard that can be adopted by school districts, educational institutions, state agencies, and policymakers as the benchmark for success…" This webinar will cover:
  • An overview of the 10 components of the TIPS
  • The challenges school districts face sifting through what works and investing in induction programs that increase student learning and achievement
  • How TIPS can be leveraged to inform the design and development of high-quality programs to increase student learning
Featured News

Teacher Coaching and Its Impact on Instruction and Achievement

A new study from Harvard and Brown Universities showed that teacher coaching greatly improves classroom instructional practice, especially in the first year of teaching, and positively impacts students’ academic achievement. In “The Effect of Teaching Coaching on Instruction and Achievement: A Meta-Analysis of the Causal Evidence,” researchers found that the instructional and academic gains resulting from coaching were better than other costly district-funded professional development seminars and workshops. 

The researchers studied 60 teacher coaching programs to understand their effects on instruction and achievement. The study found that pairing coaching with group trainings improved both instructional quality and student achievement, but revealed that teachers might benefit from building baseline skills, like content knowledge, prior to engaging with a coach. Similarly, pairing coaching with instructional resources and materials was also associated with greater instructional gains. The researchers found no evidence to indicate that coaching must be high-dosage to be effective.

The high costs of coaching, and the decreased return on investment when moving coaching initiatives to scale, were of concern to the researchers. The study recommends that practitioners should continue to innovate and scale programs, and explore ways of minimizing costs while maintaining the efficacy of coaching. Innovative strategies offered by the researchers include pairing teachers that have different strengths and weaknesses together to coach one other, and folding coaching into observation systems, although research suggests having the same person serve as both coach and evaluator can be detrimental to coaching relationships. 

Read more about the study in U.S News & World Report. 

Additionally, Education Week released an opinion piece about the Mind the Gap thinking tool, which supports teacher coaching. The tool is aimed at helping coaches identify learning gaps in their mentees. Read more here. 
In the News
Listening Is a Teacher’s Most Powerful Tool
Opinion, Education Week
A teacher discusses the motivating power of listening to students, and its beneficial result: encouraging more classroom discussion.
Education Secretary Betsy DeVos Stumbles During Pointed ‘60 Minutes’ Interview
The Washington Post
Betsy DeVos appeared on CBS’s “60 Minutes” and stumbled when answering pointed questions.
            
Please note that the articles and events in the NCTR E-Blast do not reflect the opinions of our organization, but rather represent information that we believe will be relevant to you and your programs.

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