National Comprehensive Center for Teacher Quality National Issue Forum
National Comprehensive Center for Teacher Quality
Roundtable Discussion
“Preparing Special Educators:
Critical Issues and Emerging Needs”
DoubleTree Hotel, Arlington, Virginia
June 27, 2007
Meeting Summary Notes
National Comprehensive Center for Teacher Quality offered an invitational Roundtable Discussion focused on policy, research, and practice relating to special education teacher quality for regional comprehensive centers and their state and institution of higher education partners. The objective of the roundtable was to share work that National Comprehensive Center for Teacher Quality has engaged in and determine additional technical assistance that National Comprehensive Center for Teacher Quality could offer in the future.
Broad Key Issues
- Develop a common language and allow greater access to the conversation.
- Assist new and veteran teachers with building their profession.
- Emphasize data. We need it, we need to analyze it, and we need to apply the findings to target resources.
- Focus on everything from teacher preparation to induction to professional development—systemic reform to develop teacher knowledge and ability.
- Emphasize the critical shortage of special educators and related personnel through the following:
- Recruitment
- Retention
- Compare certification and highly qualified teacher testing requirements: Are they the same? How can states support special educators to gain subject-matter expertise—high objective uniform state standard of evaluation (HOUSSE), exams, coursework, a combination?
- Focus on collaborative teaching models. What strategies are being developed and “tried out”? What works?
- Engage the community and raise public awareness about the critical need for special educators and related personnel.
- Increase funding for research of special education policy and practice.
- Increase the number of high-quality teacher preparation programs; increase the number of doctoral students to ensure that enough are prepared to teach education courses; and ensure that alternate route to certification programs meet high standards.
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