One of the ways in which the MACTE Executive Committee (MEC) serves its membership is by keeping them current on the decisions of the Board of Teaching that affect Teacher Education Programs.  Recently, there has been a flurry of initiatives and activities that MEC has been observing closely and providing information to our membership.  These issues are critically important to the State’s Teacher Education Programs because they either affect the program offerings or candidates’ licensing.  The following issues have been discussed at our MACTE Fall Congress and our membership has spoken on how to follow up on each initiative.  

Social Studies – Due to the federal investigation on the broadness of the Minnesota Social Studies license, MACTE institutions have been asked to generate the numbers of courses that a social studies major may take in the areas of civics, history, geography, and economics so that the State can report on how we are indeed preparing highly qualified teachers in these discrete social sciences. We convened a session at the Fall Congress to discuss this process at length.  A sub-committee was created and their task was to create a survey that would allow each institution to report how they fulfill their social studies requirements for licensure through majors and concentrations.  This survey will be shared with BOT officials in order to assist them in accurately collecting the information they need to complete the federal report.

PEPER – All of Minnesota Teacher Education Programs are directly involved in the process of showcasing the SEPBT standards as they are embedded across the licensure and subject matter courses.  This process has been arduous and time-consuming.  MACTE would like to work closely with the BOT to refine this process.  The MACTE Executive Committee met with Karen Balmer on December 14 to discuss the process.

5-8 Specialty Licensure – MACTE institutions are vigilantly awaiting the outcome of the 5-8 Specialty discussions.  A survey was sent to all Chief Institutional Representatives to determine if they are in favor of decoupling the 5-8 specialties and the early childhood specialty areas from the K-6 license.   We are aware that if this happens, the 5-8 standards will be rewritten to be more like the requirements for 5-12 content areas (that is, more content standards to make the 5-8 comparable whether with a K-6 or 7-12).
We will report on our findings in January in our next MACTE minute.

Reading Licensure – MACTE have been following the debate around the cut score for the reading license.  We are in agreement that the score was set too high based on the myriad of reasons as outlined by or colleagues who are reading educators and practitioners.  We appreciate that the BOT is reconsidering this cut score.

MACTE prides itself in being an organization that is aware, active, and advocates for the Teacher Education Programs across the state.  In order to do this, we must vet the issues that are of critical importance to our members as we strategically, collectively, and intentionally voice our support or concerns with the BOT’s initiatives.