As the spring 2007 semester quickly passes its mid-point, signs of the fruitfulness of faculty members’ labor in developing and implementing assessment plans are beginning to appear. This electronic version of the NCATE Update highlights some of the well-deserved progress that is occurring.
Professional Education Unit’s Initial Programs Lead the Way in Assessment Plan Implementation [Top]
Programs in NAU’s Professional Education Unit are among those leading the University’s assessment and continuous improvement processes. For the first time the process of collecting data on outcomes for all program candidates has begun by professional education unit faculty in initial teacher preparation programs at NAU. Never before at NAU has such a large unit been in position to collect and evaluate outcome data from all students in all sections of specified courses. In addition to being crucial for NCATE accreditation, reporting on the assessment of student learning by degree programs is required by both ABOR and The Higher Learning Commission of the North Central Association (NCA). Although most signature assignments will be due after spring break, several faculty members have already collected these assignments and evaluated them in Taskstream. At the end of the semester, the data recorded from faculty members’ evaluations of these assignments will be aggregated and reports will be prepared for department and program level review. The faculty can use these reports to evaluate the progress of its candidates as well as the effectiveness of certain program components. Data collection in advanced programs has begun this semester for most programs and will be fully implemented by all programs in Summer 2007.
Efforts to Improve Communication Among Faculty Turn to Making Key Committees’ Members and Minutes More Accessible [Top]
If you have experienced frustration because you were not aware that a committee was discussing NCATE-related issues until they were presented for a vote at a faculty meeting, you will be glad to know that efforts are being made to resolve these issues and improve communication among faculty members. In an effort to make discussions of practices and policies more transparent and open for comment, the names and contact information of chairs and members on committees involved with assessment-driven policies and procedures will be posted on the “General Assessment Resources” page (http://coe.nau.edu/aci/gen_resources) of the Assessment and Continuous Improvement (ACI) web portal (http://coe.nau.edu/aci/) along with minutes of the meetings. Minutes from the Student Teaching Committee are currently posted and information from other committees will be posted in the near future. If you want to keep apprised of certain committee discussions and/or would like to contribute ideas or information, you can use this site to find the person who you should contact.
A Renewed Presentation of Student Teaching Requirements Results in an Organized Student Learning Project [Top]
Student teachers are piloting Student Learning projects this semester. The purpose of these projects is to evidence the impact they have on the learning of their students and reflect how they might become even more effective teachers. Some programs refer to these as “Teacher Work Samples”, and others refer to them as “Significant Units of Instruction”. Regardless, the standard components of this project include: the pre-assessment of their students’ knowledge and/or skills, planning that is based on the pre-assessment information, implementing the plan, assessing students after the instruction has taken place, evaluating the assessment information, and reflecting on the instruction’s effectiveness. These tasks were previously included in the student teaching handbook, but were not organized in such a way that the result was a coordinated project. The Student Teaching Committee has done an outstanding job with the challenging task of developing the instructions in such a way that communicate these standard component requirements while allowing flexibility for students to address them appropriately for their specific teaching situation. While not due until mid-April, a couple of enthusiastic students have already submitted their project, and they are pretty impressive.
The Office of Academic Assessment Accepts a Revised Schedule for Programs Submitting NCATE-Related Reports – Several Faculty Members are Close to Completing Their Reports [Top]
Since the assessment reports required by the Specialized Program Associations (SPAs) ask for much the same information as does the Office of Academic Assessment (OAA), OAA will accept the same assessment plan and report that programs submit to their SPA. The University Assessment Committee (UAC) has determined that not only should programs submit their SPA report to the committee in place of the OAA report format, but also that the timelines of report submission should coordinate. Therefore, programs may submit their SPA report to OAA at the same time as they submit it to their professional organization, by February 1, 2008. Because of this change in submission date, as well as the fact that most programs have probably developed new assessment plans, programs need not submit a full report based on their old program assessment plan to OAA on the traditional due dates in April or November. Rather, the new assessment plan should be submitted at this time. Sections I, II, III, and IV.1, 2, and 5a & b of the SPA report format will serve as the new assessment plan. The additional sections that complete the SPA (and OAA) assessment report submitted in February are IV.4, 5c and section V. Cynthia Conn, associate director of OAA, has developed an OAA format consistent with the standard SPA format that programs not having to submit a report to a specialized association may use. This template can be downloaded from the ACI portal (http://coe.nau.edu/aci/gen_resources). Several faculty members have been writing their SPA reports as they developed their assessment plans, and now are close to having them complete with the exception of those sections that reflect on data. These faculty members include Susana Rivera-Mills (Modern Languages), Angie Hanson (English), Leilah Danielson (History/Social Studies), and Pam Stephens (Art). Congratulations for work well done!
Comments Being Accepted for NAU’s Professional Education Unit Dispositions [Top]
Faculty members who have worked to develop the language of the Professional Education Unit’s stated dispositions will be seeking comment. As part of their charge to formalize requirements for admission to student teaching to be brought before the faculty for approval, the student teaching committee had to identify dispositional as well as knowledge and skill requirements. The Committee determined that while possible processes to collect data was important to consider while developing the language that clarified the dispositions, it was important that faculty agree on that language before further discussion of process occurs. Therefore, Committee members will be seeking approval for adoption of this language of their representative faculty departments and USTEC. Please contact your Student Teaching Committee representative if you wish to comment.
System for Modifying Signature Assignments and DRFs is in Place [Top]
After the initial use of signature assignments and rubrics, it is likely that faculty may want to modify them. Since they are already placed in the DRFs, how is this done? In order to avoid confusion and the unnecessary use of time making multiple revisions to a DRF, the following procedures should be followed when faculty wish to modify components of their DRFs.:
- Signature assignment and rubric modifications should be submitted to Cynthia Conn with a very clear statement of whether the submissions are drafts for which you would like feedback or final documents to be posted on Taskstream. In cases where several faculty members teach the same course, a lead faculty member should be designated to communicate with Cynthia.
- The appropriate department chair will be notified that documents noted as final will be posted on Taskstream.
- After the documents are posted, the faculty member who submitted them will be notified and requested to proof them.
It is important to remember that major modifications in assignments or rubrics will hinder programs’ abilities to collect consistent data over the period of a year. Therefore, unless the data reported at the end of this semester are problematic to use, faculty are encouraged to wait until spring 2008 to make major revisions.
Unit Assessment Council Formed to Help Cmplete the Feedback Loop of the Assessment and Continuous Improvement Process [Top]
In order to most effectively make appropriate data-driven improvements in NAU’s Professional Education Unit, a Unit Assessment Council is being formed. The charge of this council will be to review and evaluate Unit data, make recommendations regarding Unit needs and possible needs of programs, and communicate this information to the faculty. Following recommendations of the NAU NCATE Steering Committee, the Council will consist of representatives from every COE department, a representative from USTEC, and a representative from those committees that have been working with assessment related policies and procedures in the Unit. The Council will have an organizational meeting during the first part of April and will meet again close to finals’ week to review available data reports from the spring semester. Because of the data collection cycle, most of the meeting dates of this Council will take place at the very beginning and very end of semesters. If you are interested in serving on this important Council, please contact your department chair (COE programs), USTEC chairs (secondary education programs), or the chair of the committee you wish to represent.
Catching Up on Your “NCATE-eese” [Top]
As faculty members in NAU’s Professional Education Unit become further engaged in the process of assessment and continuous improvement particularly related to NCATE, a new “lingo” is developing. Are you up on what some have identified as “NCATE-eese”? Although most of the new terminology that is being heard comes directly from NCATE, several terms we have begun using do not. Try to identify the terms in the following quiz to see how well you would understand what is being said in a typical committee meeting related to the Unit’s assessment process.
Answers:
- ACI is an acronym for “assessment and continuous improvement”. The ACI portal is a website that contains helpful information regarding assessment in general as well as program specific assessment resources (http://coe.nau.edu/aci/). On this site you will find links to past presentations, forms, guidelines, examples of rubrics and syllabi, Taskstream related resources, and other valuable information.
- The assessment system is the comprehensive and integrated set of evaluation measures that provides information in monitoring candidate performance and managing and improving Unit operations. Transition points are an integral part of this system. The assessment system provides the structure for operationalizing the conceptual framework. Related are “assessment plans”, which are the details put in writing of how the assessment system will operate, and “assessment reports” which usually include the assessment plan along with data and an explanation of how those data were used as they informed the program. Both of these are required by the Office of Academic Assessment.
- A candidate is an individual admitted to programs for initial or advanced preparation of teachers
or other professional school personnel. They are distinguished from “students”, who are the P-12 learners.
- Dispositions are the professional values, commitments, and ethics that are demonstrated in
behaviors toward students, families, colleagues, and communities and affect student learning, motivation, and development of the candidate’s own professional growth. They are guided by attitudes related to values such as caring, fairness, honesty, responsibility, and social justice.
- INTASC stands for the Interstate New Teacher Assessment and Support Consortium. It is a project of the Council of Chief State School Officers that has developed model performance-based standards and assessments for the licensure of teachers. Many of our initial teacher preparation programs have aligned their assessments to the INTASC standards.
- KSD is the acronym for “knowledge, skills, and dispositions”. The KSD of candidates is central to NCATE Standard #1.
- NBPTS stands for the National Board for Professional Teacher Standards. It is an organization of teachers and other educators that has developed both standards and a system for assessing the performance of experienced teachers. It offers national accreditation for individual teachers. The Arizona Board of Education is considering using the NBPTS standards and system to inform advanced teacher certification.
- The NAU Professional Education Unit refers to all of the programs in COE as well as CAL, CENS, and the Consortium that directly prepare professionals to work in schools. You might find the acronym, PEU, used when an acronym might be more effectively used than the whole phrase.
- Evidence that candidates have professional knowledge is required by NCATE. It includes the historical, economic, sociological, philosophical, and psychological understandings of schooling and education. It also includes knowledge about learning, diversity, technology, professional ethics, legal and policy issues, pedagogy, and the roles and responsibilities of the profession of teaching.
- Contrary to common belief, a signature assignment is not an NCATE term. In NAU’s Professional Education Unit it has come to refer to those assignments that best display the knowledge and/or skills that most closely relate to the objectives of a course or milestone of a program. These are used to measure the appropriateness of candidates’ progress and/or to assess program or course effectiveness. Although most signature assignments are submitted and evaluated in Taskstream, not all of them are. Likewise, although most signature assignments provide evidence for transition points, not all of them do.
- A SPA refers to a Specialized Professional Association. These professional associations establish outcome-based standards for teacher and other school personnel candidates. The term “SPA” has often been erroneously used to refer to the required program report. A SPA is not a report, but the various SPAs require reports having a specific template to be submitted in order for the program to attain national recognition and for NAU’s Professional Education Unit to attain NCATE accreditation.
- Transition points are the significant points in a program at which candidates must have pre-requisite knowledge, skills, and disposition in order to advance. They are broader than course pre-requisites. The general transition points are: 1) admittance to a program, 2) admission to the program’s capstone course, 3) successful completion of the capstone course, and 4) successful completion of the program. It is common that the last two transition points are very similar. Often times Professional Education Unit faculty will refer to each by their number rather than by the description.
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