Albany is ramping up the pressure to raise the quality of teachers in public schools -- not just current teachers with a rating system, but also new teachers by improving training programs. Since spring of last year, 43 Saint Bonaventure students have taken the educational Teacher Performance Assessment, which is now one of the required tests for prospective teachers. All 43 passed.
Around the state, many teacher training programs aren't doing anywhere near as well and there are complaints about the tests. Interim Education Dean Nancy Casey says this required student teachers doing a lot of classroom work, starting with figuring out what the students' elementary and high school students know.
"We plan to help those students develop a new set of learnings, assess whether or not the students were successful and then reflect on what they did to help their students learn or what they need to do better," she said.
Casey says students spend a lot of time in a classroom before officially going into the mandated student teaching period. That's important because students have to deliver a video tape of part of a classroom appearance for the new test, part of the required portfolio of all the aspects of being a teacher to demonstrate they can do it.
