On behalf of the thirty-three institutions that make up our organization, a warm welcome to the new members of the Board.   Our MACTE organization stands ready to work collaboratively with you to restore Minnesota to its rightful place as a national leader in education. 

Our teacher preparation programs have been educating high quality teachers for some time, and will continue to reflect on and change our own practices to meet the emerging demands of our profession.  We prepare teachers in accordance with the high standards established by professional associations and the Board of Teaching.  

Teacher professional preparation is a continuum that begins with teacher candidate recruitment and rigorous admission processes and continues throughout the professional career of a teacher through ongoing professional development and advanced certifications.   Pre-service preparation, while comprehensive and complex, is just the first step in the preparation of teachers.  We believe all candidates must meet all the state's standards for subject matter and teaching knowledge before becoming a teacher of record.

We know that quality preparation makes a difference and must include well-defined standards of both content and performance.  Additionally, preparation must involve a substantial knowledge of child and adolescent development, and learning theory.  Furthermore, we believe that our extensive clinical experiences must support ideas and practices presented in coursework.    Most of you were or are teachers.  Imagine your first weeks in this profession.  If you were like most of your peers, you struggled with your new identity as a beginning teacher.  However, with more experience, professional development, and perhaps some good mentoring or induction programming you continued to develop into the accomplished individual you hoped to be when you chose this noble profession.

As you may know, MACTE is currently working with you and your staff to redesign the program approval process.  We are moving rapidly toward a new PEPER program review format.  We welcome revisions to the process and are optimistic about the potential of a new system to provide all of us with valuable data about the effectiveness of our programs and be yet another factor in our continual efforts to improve.   As an organization representing many preparation programs, we urge the Board to hold accountable all preparation programs to the same high standards and processes.