The A+ Challenger

If you hold a bachelors degree and are interested in teaching at a Houston ISD school, you may be eligible to seek certification through the district’s Alternative Certification Program (ACP).

A general information meeting about ACP will be held Thursday, January 17, 2008 at Waltrip High School, 1900 West 34th Houston, TX 77018 in the auditorium from 5:30-7:30 p.m.

This meeting is only for non-certified professionals interested in teaching. For more information call (713) 556-7300.

To help overhaul teacher education and encourage some of the nation’s most talented college graduates to seek long-term teaching careers in high-need classrooms, the Woodrow Wilson National Fellowship Foundation has launched an unprecedented teaching fellowship program at the state and national levels funded initially at $17 million by leading philanthropies.

In addition to the state-based model being started in Indiana, Woodrow Wilson also announced the creation of a national “Rhodes Scholarship” for teaching. The new Leonore Annenberg Teaching Fellowship, funded by the Annenberg Foundation and Carnegie Corporation of New York, will provide a $30,000 stipend and one year of graduate education at four of the nation’s top teacher-education programs to candidates who agree to teach for three years in low-income schools. The participating education programs are based at Stanford University, the University of Pennsylvania, University of Virginia, and University of Washington.

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In a recent interview with Edutopia.org, renowned futurist and “Future Shock” author Alvin Toffler offers this provacative view of the school he’d create: “It’s open 24 hours a day. Different kids arrive at different times. … I would have non-teachers working with teachers in that school,” and there would be “business offices in the school, from various businesses in the community.” Toffler, a septegenarian, argues that flexible hours of operation, personalized educational experiences for students, an expansion in the number of charter schools, and collaboration between schools and businesses are key to creating a 21st century system “from the ground up.”

Click here to read the full interview.

A new study released today by the Educational Testing Service finds that beginning teacher qualifications have risen rapidly over the past decade, reports Greg Toppo of USA Today. Candidates’ verbal SAT scores are up 13 points, math scores are up 17 points and the percentage of candidates reporting a 3.5 GPA or higher rose from 27 percent to 40 percent.

The gains hold across gender, racial and ethnic lines. Toppo and the study’s authors suggest that tougher requirements at all levels — from the federal government to the local teacher’s college — have forced teachers’ colleges to improve offerings while luring more qualified candidates into teaching.

Community colleges educate nearly half of all undergraduates in the United States, including a majority of the low-income and first-generation college students who are the fastest-growing portion of the young American population, and the two-year institutions must play a key role if the U.S. is to succeed in closing the “degree gap” that it faces in producing a sufficient number of educated citizens, writes Doug Lederman of Inside Higher Ed in his informative synopsis of a federal symposium on community colleges held Dec. 10 in Washington D.C.

While officials from various states, foundations, and advocacy groups promoted what they have done on the three big topics discussed — bolstering initial enrollment, improving students’ persistence once in community colleges, or easing transfer to baccalaureate institutions — many acknowledged that data to prove their success was sometimes in short supply.

Successful programs spotlighted included: an effort in Maryland that over three years increased the proportion of state need-based financial aid flowing to community college students to 15 percent from 8 percent; the California Community Colleges’ “I Can Afford College” campaign that produced a 20 percent increase in the number of two-year college students there qualifying for state aid; and the Northern Virginia Community College’s Pathway to the Baccalaureate Program, which has helped draw more low-income and first-generation students to the institution and seen them stay in college at higher rates than better prepared peers.

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