Assessment Working Group Meeting Summary

Below is a summary of the last Assessment Working Group meeting from John Hoover, the facilitator of the group.

Members of the Assessment Working Group met on November 22 to organize their efforts for the year.  A brief list of activities and topics is provided below.

Teacher Development and Evaluation in Minnesota

The meeting included rousing discussions of the Teacher Development and Evaluation Plan as described in Minnesota Statutes 122A.40 and 122.41.  We agreed to explore the local plans on which partner district representatives have worked. We believe that these plans will affect our ability to document our  candidates’ performance once they are hired.

Revisiting Charges and Milestones & Development of a Short-Term Work Plan

Members of the committee reviewed committee charges and the milestones documented for the Bush Foundation.  Based on these working documents, members of the committee plan to accomplish the following four activities on the short run: (a) undertake a review of teacher evaluation systems in partner districts, (b) provide chapter-by-chapter reports on a highly-regarded text (Danielson, 2013), (c) perform fact-finding on the status of the common metrics instruments, and (d) explore assessment and evaluation needs with the Support Working Group facilitator.

Guiding Principles

Members of the working group developed and approved a list of guiding principles for the work of the committee. 

What other ideas do you have regarding assessment needs at SCSU and in P-12?

Prepare Working Group Meeting Summary - Achievement Gap and Alternative Licensure Pathways

Summary from Nov 19th TPI Prepare Working Group Meeting
Jim Robinson, Facilitator

           We focused our attention on two future activities.  First, an Achievement Gap Summit in Summer 2014 to begin a process to address and to reduce the achievement gap for minority students from African-American, Latino/Latina populations, and Native Americans populations as well as ELLs and Special Education students.  The goal is to bring in local and national leaders who are specialists in reducing the Achievement Gap.  Initial suggestions were for specialists in Response to Intervention or FTI and Generation Next. 

Second, we discussed possible charges for an Alternative Pathways proposal for teaching licenses in ESL, SPED and STEM.  The proposal would focus on who would be recruited, who should be added to prepare for this specific proposal preparation, and what models would be reviewed for the proposal.  The students to be recruited could include non-trad students with two or four year degrees, Paras in our partner districts, veterans, or traditional students who want to be teachers but had not thought about ESL or SPED or STEM students who have not thought about teaching as a career. Possible models could include the following aspects:  online courses, cohort models, fast track models, apprenticeships, and collaborative models with our P-12 partners.  The proposal would also focus on our P-12 partner needs, on mentorship within these alternative pathways, and on financial models to support these pathways.

Who do you think should be invited to speak at an Achievement Gap Summit at SCSU?