| Louise
Meyer: Welcome, everyone. My name is Louise
Meyer and I am the Senior Project Associate with the
Council of Chief State School Officers (CCSSO). CCSSO is
one of six partners that form the National Transition
Alliance. Each month, NTA conducts an audio conference on
a topic of interest to professionals and organizations as
part of our technical assistance component. This month's
presentation is entitled Professional Development:
Licensing Standards for New Teacher Preparation. Today,
we will hear from speakers presenting information on the
standards for the licensure of new general and special
education teachers. Our
first speaker is Ms. Kathleen Paliokas, Senior Project
Associate with the Interstate New Teacher Assessment and
Support Consortium, also called INTASC, at CCSSO. INTASC
is a consortium of thirty-three states that are committed
to improving the preparation, licensing, and ongoing
professional development of teachers through
standards-based reforms. Ms. Paliokas is overseeing
INTASC's development of model teacher licensing standards
for various subject matter areas and specific student
populations, including special education.
Our second speaker is Dr.
Richard Mainzer, Assistant Executive Director for
Professional Standards and Practice for the Council for
Exceptional Children. Dr. Mainzer has worked in the field
of education for over thirty years. His experience
includes secondary classroom teacher, state level project
director, special education administrator, and higher
education faculty member. Recently, he delivered the
keynote address at the Forum 2000 hosted by the National
Institute for Special Education in Japan. Currently, he
is helping CEC realign its professional standards with
the framework used by INTASC to prepare for
performance-oriented accreditation of special education
teacher preparation.
We welcome both of our speakers
today and we will start with Ms. Paliokas. Kathleen,
would you like to start?
Kathleen Paliokas:
Sure. I am happy to be here. I'm going to go ahead and
describe the Interstate New Teacher Assessment and
Support Consortium from square one since I'm not sure how
familiar many of you are with us.
Basically, we are a group of
thirty-three states that are interested in reforming
their teacher licensing systems around performance-based
standards. We hold three general meetings a year for the
states to come together and share ideas around policy. We
are developing model licensing standards and assessments
that states can use in designing their own licensing
systems.
Let me tell you a little bit
about how INTASC began. Basically, INTASC got started
when both California and Connecticut were under
legislative mandates to reform their teacher licensing
systems, so they decided to start working together. They
were working with Lee Shulman out in California on
a grant provided by the National Governor's Association.
That grant ran out and then the two states came to the
Council of Chief State School Officers and asked us to
house a project where they could continue that dialogue
and bring in other interested states as well.
So, INTASC took the framework
for the National Board for Professional Teaching
Standards — which is set up to provide certification
for expert teaching — and adapted it for beginning
teachers. The states were anxious to move into
assessments right away, but the first thing we asked them
was, “Do you know what it is you want to test
teachers for?” The first step is to come to some
consensus around what beginning teachers should know and
be able to do.
So, we convened a group of
national experts from across the country to articulate a
common core of knowledge that the beginning teacher
should have. We published that in 1992 and that is known
as our Blue Book, our Model Core Standards for Beginning
Teacher Licensing and Development. Some of you may be
familiar with these as they are fairly widespread in use.
The standards defined what a beginning teacher should
know and be able to do across all subject areas and
across all grade levels. That was our starting point. It
gave us some vocabulary and dialogue to begin talking
about the development of assessments for teachers.
What we are doing now is we are
taking that general description of good beginning
teaching and saying, what does that look like when you
are teaching a specific subject area or when you are
teaching a specific student population? We have
identified seven areas that the states told us constitute
the highest percentage of certification areas. So far, we
have completed standards in math, science, and
English/language arts. We are currently developing
standards for social studies, the arts, elementary
education, and special education.
Basically, we bring together
experts in these subject areas — practicing teachers
and teacher educators — and have them use the core
principles as their framework to define what beginning
teachers need to know in each of these subject areas or
when working with specific student populations.
We tell the committees not to
reinvent the wheel, but to use the good thinking that has
already been done out there by the professional
organizations and others. A lot of work has been done in
these areas already. The committees use as resources the
work of the professional organizations (the student and
teaching standards), the National Board standards, and
various state standards.
Then, once we have a set of
standards, we begin developing assessments. We are
developing portfolio assessments based on the National
Board portfolio with similar artifacts.
Let me back up here a minute and
say that INTASC recommends that states use three
assessments for licensure. One assessment is a test of
teaching knowledge, which is the basic pedagogical
knowledge that the teacher should have. The second test
is the subject matter knowledge. The third test is a test
of ability to perform in the classroom, to take what they
know and actually apply it in the classroom. We would
measure that through a portfolio.
The portfolio has a series of
artifacts that the beginning teacher would have to
complete and these include a description of their school
and the demographic area, a lesson plan, a videotape of
them teaching that lesson plan, an example of student
work, their evaluation of the student work, and then a
self-reflection piece on their teaching. Those are the
five components in our portfolio. The portfolio is mapped
against the core and subject matter standards.
We have in development right now
— with the Education Testing Service — a test
of teaching knowledge, which is mapped against the INTASC
core principles. It is performance-based to the extent
that it's a constructed response exam, not multiple
choice. What the test-taker will have in front of them is
a series of documents that will be a folio or a case
study followed by a series of questions where they will
have to apply their knowledge to a specific instance that
they might run across in real life. The exam also
includes some short answer questions. The goal of the
exam is to get beneath the factual knowledge and get at
the application of theory.
INTASC has also set up training
academies around our portfolio where we invite teachers,
teacher educators, and state policy people to come out to
Milwaukee in July for a week-long training session. The
academy provides an introduction to the portfolio and to
the INTASC core principles, and then takes participants
through the beginnings of scoring the portfolio so they
can get inside and see exactly how the standards play out
in the assessment.
That's kind of a very quick look
— and I hope I haven't given you too much
information — at INTASC. What I would like to talk
about now, briefly, is our Special Education Committee.
We have convened a committee of twenty-five experts made
up of practicing teachers and teacher educators, in both
general education and the various subdisciplines of
special education. The committee has met three times
already. Their charge is to draft a set of standards that
define what all general education teachers should know
and be able to do when working with students with
disabilities, and also what all special education
teachers should know and be able to do.
The reason that INTASC is doing
special education standards is because nine national
education organizations that were interested in starting
a dialog around special education and developing
standards came to us. They came to us and asked us to
cosponsor this process with them.
The unique part of the process
is that we are addressing what general education teachers
should know and be able to do. CEC and other
organizations have addressed the issue of special
educators. With the new federal legislation around IDEA,
it has become more important, with the move toward
inclusion, that general educators have some sort of
foundation in special education. It's important that we
try to define what it is reasonable to expect a general
educator to know. Our committee is struggling with that
issue right now. Again, they are mapping it against the
INTASC standards.
We are hoping to come up with
finished standards by next summer. The process is that
the standards will be a draft document that will then be
read by a small group of experts in the field, again, to
give it a careful once-over. Then it will go out for
widespread public comment. We will send the standards out
with a survey included to collect feedback. We will run
structured focus groups in the INTASC states to collect
feedback. All of this feedback will go toward the
validity study on the standards. More importantly, the
process is designed to generate dialogue and get everyone
talking around these issues to see if we can't come to
some consensus.
The goal of the INTASC standards
is to embody the recommendations of the profession and
articulate them in a way that makes sense to
policymakers. This is a chance for the profession to
speak to the policymakers and hopefully influence the
process of licensing teachers.
I think I'm going to stop right
there and let Richard take over. Richard will talk about
what the Council for Exceptional Children is doing in the
areas of special education and standards. Richard?
Richard Mainzer: Thanks,
Kathleen. That was a really good synopsis. CEC, the
Council for Exceptional Children, has been around a long
time. Back in the original meeting in 1923, one of the
primary aims of CEC was to give voice to the professional
standards for teachers in the field of special education.
We have been doing that most actively in the past ten to
fifteen years. CEC also does the ethics and professional
practice standards, along with standards for entry and
continuing practice and so forth.
I was in a meeting with Joe
Terrazzi this morning in which he said, “Hey, the
professionalization of teaching is really not rocket
science. It really has to do with having good teaching
and good teachers.” This was at a meeting of the
executive directors of NCATE. It recalled for me the
National Commission: what teachers know and can do is the
most important influence on what students learn. If you
look at the context of special education for our standard
setting and what we need to address, we are looking at at
least three different forces interplaying here: quantity,
quality, and diversity.
In the area of quantity, there
are over thirty-three thousand people teaching without an
appropriate quality credential in special education
today. When you look at that in terms of the number of
kids, the impact is enormous. Then, the Department of
Labor is moderately projecting that we are going to need
over two hundred thousand new special education teachers
within the next five years. Put on top of that the fact
that our universities right now are not producing a
sufficient number of special educators. In addition, what
the researchers call the reserve pool, the people out
there that we can attract back, is going dry.
On top of that, the problem of
reciprocity of licensure in the states is the most
idiosyncratic of any discipline out there. It's sort of
like everybody is doing their own thing. There are a few
commonalities, but when you look at the data from the
National Association of State Directors of Teacher
Education and Certification, the number of terms and the
number of categories and the number of frameworks are all
over the place. It's not cost efficient. It reduces
opportunities for recruitment across regions. It's
frankly professionally demeaning. I always remember the
story of the teacher who was fully trained and fully
certified in Pennsylvania. She came down to Virginia and
they wanted to hire her, but she had to take six
additional courses to be qualified to teach in special
education in Virginia. It really doesn't encourage
professionalism or quality.
In addition, you have the
problem of retention, which is nothing new. However, it's
especially bad in special education. Special educators
are leaving the profession at about twice the rate of
general educators. By the fifth year, almost half of
special education teachers, who we have shortages of to
begin with, are not there. They have left the profession.
Then, of course, there is the issue of diversity.
We have got to burn the candle
at both ends. We have got quantity and we've got quality
problems and we can't do one in lieu of the other. One of
the things that we believe here at CEC is that states and
provinces have the authority and the responsibility for
licensing teachers, but the standards for the profession
must come from the profession itself. There are many,
many opportunities for consensus-building alignment.
That's what we are about and what we have been trying to
do here at CEC for the last several years.
One of the ways we are doing
this is we took a look at our standards that were,
frankly, perceived as very categorical. In some ways they
were, in terms of program accreditation. So, a couple of
years ago we developed a new framework, a
multicategorical framework, so that in those cases where
you are licensing teachers or you want to accredit
programs in a multicategorical fashion, you have a
recommendation from the profession around which to begin.
Hopefully, there can be some coalescence if you are going
to do a multicategorical licensure framework.
In addition to that, you heard
from Kathleen about the important work that INTASC is
doing. Of two pieces, the first is, frankly, earth
shattering. I am in awe. CEC, along with the eight other
organizations, approached INTASC because we needed an
outside organization. CEC is not in a position to dictate
to other disciplines what their knowledge and skill
standards ought to be in terms of teaching exceptional
children in regular classes. Certainly, we have some
input on that, but we needed an agency or an organization
like INTASC. If INTASC is successful on part one, those
knowledge and skills should reverberate through every
discipline and every state and in every professional
organization as they look at standards for program
accreditation. On the second piece, we are very
interested in the coordination of CEC standards with what
it is that special educators ought to know in addition to
those standards for general education. We expect that
there is certainly a large overlap there but not a
perfect coalescence.
CEC publishes its standards and
its ethics and practices in one publication entitled
“What Every Special Educator Must Know.” We are
in our third edition, heading towards a fourth edition,
frankly, because it is a dynamic document. We are
revising and adding new standards as we talk. All of our
standards, by the way, go through a large-scale field
validation before they can even be considered for
inclusion in “What Every Special Educator Must
Know.”
One of the areas where we have
recently added new standards is special education
technology specialists. It has become clear that we have
moved beyond simply the assisted sort of technology and
into instructional and management technology or case
management technology. More and more school systems are
adding that kind of person, so we have developed and
field-validated standards in that area. All of these
standards are beginning-level standards. Even if they are
not beginning-level teachers, this would be a
beginning-level special education technology specialist.
The other area has to do with
our common core. We have a piece of our framework that we
expect that all special educators must be able to know or
do. We have just recently completed validation of
multicultural standards into the common core area.
There are several areas in which
we are planning new standards. Plans and validation for
those areas are underway. Frankly, we would welcome input
from any of you to help us in identifying the knowledge
base or ideas you have for knowledge and skills in those
areas. The first is the whole area of transition
specialist standards. We are just about at the end of
completing that validation process. The committee is
doing the finishing touches. This is going to be a set of
standards that will help you to look at the quality of
your transition specialists.
The next area would be a whole
set of revisions we are doing to the common core; three
of which I think you are going to have particular
interest in. One is in the area of collaboration between
general educators and special educators. The second is in
the area of technology. Technology has moved from a
nice-to-do level to a must-do. Teachers now must have the
knowledge and skills to include technology in a number of
ways in their instruction. The third area is that of
access to general curriculum.
Kathleen mentioned the
Individuals with Disabilities Education Act of 1997. That
law really does put general curriculum in the forefront.
It's really clear that special educators are looking or
will be looking for kids with exceptionalities, not
simply to be in the rooms or in the schools, but to have
genuine access to the general curriculum. For this to
happen, special educators must be collaborators and
partners in helping the content specialists.
Finally, an area that we haven't
started to look at but that is becoming clear through the
work of the National Commission here at CEC is the whole
area of educational leaders and administrators. We have
got principals and supervisors and coordinators and so
forth who are having more and more responsibility for
supervising and evaluating special education teachers and
programs and they really don't have the knowledge and
skills that they would like to have or need. When you
look at the programs that prepare administrators, the
knowledge and skills in the area of exceptional
education/special education is meager.
Another area that I want to tell
you about is our work with the Educational Testing
Service. ETS has just recently made an agreement with
NCATE. They are going to be redoing the PRAXIS series and
for that they are going to be working very closely with
each of the professional associations. For example, the
PRAXIS in special education will be based on or highly
coordinated with the CEC standards. That work has begun.
Another area that you are
probably aware of is the NCATE 2000 project. We are
moving from accrediting programs on inputs and processes
to a much more results-oriented accreditation system that
asks the question, “How well is a program preparing
prospective special education teachers for the roles that
they will assume in schools?”
Before I finish my comments
here, I want to go back to the importance of the INTASC
project. One of the things we are doing at CEC is taking
our standards and reworking them into the INTASC
framework and the INTASC principles. We are really
committed at CEC to trying to offer an alignment and a
consensus-building process among the National Board for
Professional Teacher Standards, INTASC, and each of the
states, and NCATE. It's our belief that program
accreditation and licensure really ought to be
hand-in-glove so that universities can prepare for a
folio and don't have to prepare for two or three
different folios. If a person does the proper things to
become licensed in a state, then we can have a much, much
broader reciprocity across the states and hopefully, one
of these days, even across the nation in the area of
special education.
Let me end by making a couple of
comments. We need to have beginning special educators who
have a firm grasp on the core of the general curriculum
and can strategically alter instructional variables in
response to the needs of kids with exceptionalities. We
need to have general educators who have a firm grasp on
the general education curriculum and a core understanding
of all of those instructional variables for accommodating
the curriculum to kids with exceptionalities. We need to
have general and special educators who are steeped in the
practice of their disciplines, who value each others'
disciplines, who are comfortable in both disciplinary and
cross-disciplinary learning communities, and finally,
that can collaborate and give the overwhelming majority
of students with exceptionalities genuine access to the
general education curriculum.
That's my real quick version so
we can get to the questions and answers that you might
have in response to what both Kathleen and I have put out
there.
Louise Meyer:
Thank you, Kathleen and Richard, for your excellent
presentations.
Does anyone have a question or
comment?
Carol Ann Bryer (Florida): This
is Carol Ann Bryer in Florida. We finished our systems
change grant, but one of the things that we put in as a
recommendation — and I'd like a comment,
particularly from Richard because you touched on it
— is the need for inclusion of transition skills in
special needs teacher accreditation. We did this because
we are finding that the area of special education and
transition is becoming one more burden to these
individuals rather than something intrinsic to their way
of handling their profession. Could you comment on how
you might be doing that? We have some interest from our
board of regents in terms of adding that component, but
we need some help.
Richard Mainzer:
You are right. It's one of those areas, as the kids with
exceptionalities grow up and we have learned that the
transitions don't happen naturally, that we do have to
plan explicitly. IDEA makes that more and more clear.
Frankly, we have to start that earlier and earlier if we
are going to be successful.
As I said, we are adding the
technology specialist knowledge and skill standards. We
do have transition knowledge and skills in our beginning
teacher framework. So, you might want to get together
with some of your special education folks and get our
standards, or we can send them directly to you. You could
begin to look at them and we could begin a dialogue. I
would very much welcome that.
Carol Ann Bryer
(Florida): Good.
Gina Sands
(Colorado): This is Gina Sands and I am the Coordinator
of the Special Education Program at the University of
Colorado at Denver. My question goes out to both Richard
and Kathleen. We have a federal grant project right now.
One of the goals of that project is to merge our initial
license in teacher education with the initial license in
special education. In fact, one of the activities that we
are about to embark on is to conduct a series of focus
groups across the state where we go to the questions,
Kathleen, that you are looking at. What is it that
general education teachers need to know and be able to
do? What do special education teachers need to know and
be able to do? Basically, we want to look schematically
at the overlap there as well as to look at what falls out
as being distinct to those two groups of teachers.
One of the questions that I have
is whether or not you have a set of questions that you
have already developed and are using with your committee
of twenty-five that might be useful to us as we conduct
focus groups with students with disabilities, family
members, teachers in both general and special education,
principals, and directors of special education.
Kathleen Paliokas:
What I do have is a draft progress report of the
committee's work. I have identified questions that have
come out of the discussions. I would be happy to send you
that as it might stir up some thoughts for you. It's a
very, very interesting discussion. We do not have a
specific list of questions that we are structuring
discussion around, but I could see why you would
definitely, in a focus group, want a little more
structured discussion.
I would be happy to send this to
you. I think you're on the right track in terms of having
some questions to kind of keep the discussion focused and
on track. What we have found in our discussions is that a
lot of people tend to get off the topic at hand, although
anecdotes can be very helpful. One thing that we're
trying to do that is very specific to our standards is to
get the committee to give us very concrete and specific
examples from the classroom to demonstrate the standards
in action. If you're going to say there is a distinction
in the pedagogical knowledge between special education
and general education, give us an example of exactly what
you mean. Is there a difference in pedagogy or is it just
that special educators have knowledge of more strategies?
Does the general educator have the skills that they need
but have to understand how to apply them in a different
context? Those kinds of subtle distinctions are what
we're after.
That gets very, very
interesting. Then there are the questions concerned with
sheer volume: How much is it reasonable to expect the
general educator to know about all the different
disabilities? What do they need to know to recognize that
they need to go for help? What kind of characteristics in
a student should be a trigger for them to seek
assistance?
Let me go ahead and tell you my
e-mail address and that way, if any of you are interested
in getting our progress report or more information about
INTASC, I'll be happy to send it to you. It's
kathyp@ccsso.org.
Debbie Parsons (Missouri):
This is Debbie Parsons. I am the Director of Special
Education Program Development with the Missouri
Department of Education.
In listening to the descriptions
that you have all gone through, this is just really
great. Several years ago, we used the CEC competencies as
we were reviewing our special education certification
here in the state. Given that, trying to get standards
approved for teachers is kind of a lengthy process. We
completed the process two years ago and those standards
are due to go into effect in the year 2004. Obviously,
the institutions of higher education need time to begin
instruction based on those competencies. They need time
to gear up as well as to bring a class through the
university system that would then be eligible for
certification.
There were areas that we
wrestled with more and more at that particular time in
the area of transition and assistive technology. I was
both happy and a little frustrated to hear that there are
now some standards that are being developed along those
lines. I guess my basic question is, what do you see
happening in some of the other states on utilizing
standards? We are probably in a position now of needing
to redesign what we're going to call our certificates.
Within our state, it is very difficult to review and
revise so that the updates are in place for teacher
standards. Do you have any suggestions for how to do
this? How do you recommend utilizing some of that
information?
Richard Mainzer:
You have got a couple of good questions there. By the
way, I think Missouri did a really good job with that.
Dr. Michael Horvath is the chair of one of our standing
committees and he was active in your process and kept us
well apprised of the good work that Missouri was doing.
In terms of how you utilize
those standards or how states are utilizing them, if you
look at program accreditation, forty-six states now have
some sort of partnership with NCATE. In a state like
Maryland, if you are going to be accredited by Maryland,
you have to come through the accreditation process, not
just at the unit but at the program level. Then, in
states where they have retained their responsibilities
for evaluating programs for accreditation, we are working
with them right now and they have made a commitment to
move towards the professional association standards.
That's not always easy, but we welcome that negotiation.
So, that's happening in the area of program
accreditation. The NCATE cycle is basically a ten-year
cycle. Of course, we update and change standards more
frequently than each ten years, but we honor the
standards that are in that ten-year cycle so we don't
throw states for a loop in between. Some states really
have wanted to move ahead of their ten-year cycle and,
for instance, use the multi-categorical framework for
program accreditation because they do their licensing in
the multi-categorical way. It's just made a whole bunch
more sense in those states to do that.
What was your other question?
Debbie Parsons (Missouri):
It was: “How do we incorporate some of the changes
in those standards?” We have incorporated some of
the CEC standards for our certification already and they
are set and due to go into play in 2004. As we continue
to add things to the core, it is not easy to go in and
add new things for requirements. I am wondering, are
there other ways of certifying special education teachers
out there? We still have some of the categorical areas
here in Missouri. Are you seeing some designs on teacher
certification that tend to be more flexible so that you
can go in and add those standards more easily?
Richard Mainzer: Aside
from putting requirements in bylaw or in statutory
language, that gets to be really hard to change from year
to year. Even in the NCATE cycle, I have indicated we do
that on a ten-year basis because we really want to honor
the level of difficulty involved in making the changes in
the state that you are talking about.
A lot of states are doing a lot
of work collaboratively between the state department and
the higher education entities and the programs to move
programs along in ways — whether it's PDS or
whatever — that may not be part of NCATE or may not
be part of your state mandates. If you begin to get a
common vision going among your deans, you can accomplish
a lot through collaborative training efforts. Maybe some
grants also encourage that.
Debbie Parsons (Missouri):
Are most states moving towards more of a
multi-categorical approach?
Richard Mainzer:
Well, it's an interesting thing. If you look at
the number of states that license multi-categorically,
it's overwhelming. About ninety percent of the states
have a multi-categorical framework, but if you look at
the states that have also retained categorical licensure
in special education, it's about at the same level.
As I talk to my colleagues in the states, the thing
that I hear most often is, yes, we are moving towards
multi-categorical. First, that is really what inclusion
in IDEA is all about; and, second, that's the reality of
the way kids come to us. They don't come to us with just
these nice little categorical disabilities. They come as
little human beings. However, we have to retain the
categorical teachers either because of grandfathering or
the politics in the higher education institutions.
Gina Sands (Colorado): This is Gina
Sands again from Colorado. I can tell you that Colorado
is moving in a very interesting direction, although we
have got some state politics in terms of the state board
of education and the commission of education that make me
unsure of how they are going to respond.
We are moving toward basically one licensure, which is
called a generalist. We'll always have hearing and we'll
always have vision as separate, I'm quite sure, but we
are moving in a direction where they might eliminate the
profound needs specialization and incorporate that into
this generalist position, at least for the initial
license, for the provisional license. There is discussion
at the professional or Master's degree level that we
might move to some categories that would be more
specialized. However, it would be specializing around
either affective needs or cognitive needs and then
potentially having profound needs as a specialization.
Richard Mainzer: In that case, you
would reference it to the curricular or instructional
need of the child rather than the diagnostic category.
Gina Sands (Colorado): Exactly. We
haven't had categorical certification since 1980 and so
we are moving toward a generalist approach. I think it's
also a response to the political environment in terms of
trying to get more people out there. We have also got a
state that's telling us that we have to be able to train
initial teachers in thirty credit hours, and yet we have
also had to have eight hundred hours of practicum and
internship responsibilities attached to that.
It's moving very quickly and I can understand
Missouri's frustration. As we are talking right now, I
can think of many things that are changing in the state.
It takes a three- to five-year cycle to bring about
change.
Our University's response to
that is anything that comes out of the state is viewed as
the minimal standards that we have to abide by. We always
look at what is best practice in terms of new things
coming down the line, in terms of the technology
standards that CEC will be issuing, and more details
around the changes in specialists. I think at the
university level there is a bit more latitude in terms of
being able to go back in and add things that, again,
would be considered adding on top of what the minimum
standards are that come out of the state, or out of CEC
for that matter.
Richard Mainzer: That's correct. I
would be remiss not to say right up front that CEC's
position on going multi-categorical is one that should be
retaining the richness of all of the knowledge and skill
that we have gleaned over the years in terms of educating
different exceptional children. If we are going to
license or accredit multi-categorically, it's really to
come up to the bar rather than to come down to the bar.
Generic doesn't mean basic or watered down. It means
really retaining that richness. That's what a
multi-categorical framework really tries to do: to retain
that richness while providing a framework that makes a
whole lot more sense to a whole lot of folks out there.
Gina Sands (Colorado): The other
thing, Richard, that just occurred to me, is that you
could take some of these new standards that are coming
down the line and possibly incorporate those into the
CSPD at your state level and target those until you can
get a new cycle of standards adopted at the state level
or at IAG. You could also use some of those newer areas
for ongoing professional development activities within
the state.
Richard Mainzer: In the spring of
2001, we are doing our submission to NCATE of all of
these standards for redo in moving to the performance
orientation. So, to the degree that your universities
come through NCATE accreditation, they will be measuring
up to the new standards also.
Gina Sands (Colorado): Right.
Richard Mainzer: Thank you all very
much.
Louise Meyer: I think it would be a
good time to close. We thank Kathy and Richard for
offering their time today. You may contact me if you have
any questions. I can get you any of the resources,
addresses, phone numbers, fax numbers, or e-mails of
anyone that presented or other information you would like
today. My number is 202-336-7057.
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