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Mark LaCelle-Peterson, President & CEO
While each year's fall schedule is packed with state association conferences and gatherings, winter and spring bring some important national ones. Ready for some acronyms? AAQEP staff have been out and about attending the meetings of PESBA (the Professional Education Standards Board Association—the group that represents the 18 or so states with independent standards boards that guide educator preparation and licensing), NASDTEC (the National Association of State Directors of Teacher Education and Certification—where all states are potentially represented), and AACTE along with its constituent meetings. We enjoyed seeing many of you at the various venues!
The theme running through the meetings that I have attended could be summarized as “hopeful planning for the future.” NASDTEC is embarking on an effort to define essential competencies for novice educators as a complement to the InTASC standards. AACTE has released a call to action for federal support for educator workforce design and development. At PESBA, I participated in a panel discussion on the future of educator preparation. It seems that whenever educators gather, we can’t help thinking about tomorrow—as Fleetwood Mac put it, “It’ll be here, better than before!”
Many of us will get together at the end of this month in the same spirit at the Quality Assurance Symposium in Irving, Texas. In sessions and at roundtable discussions, we’ll hear from each other what we’re learning and how we’re improving. And in plenary sessions, we’ll hear about national and state efforts to build a better ed prep future. One thing that sets accreditation apart from other types of empirical investigation is its mutuality. We develop standards together, we invite peers to review our work and supplement our own inquiries, we work toward shared professional judgment and collaborative continuous improvement. I’m very much looking forward to celebrating all of that with you soon!
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