ABCTE

The next deadline to apply for ABCTE's Teach & Inspire Scholarship Program is fast approaching.

If you're interested in teaching in a high-need school and subject in Florida, Mississippi or South Carolina, Teach & Inspire provides accepted participants with a full scholarship and materials needed to become certified teachers through the ABCTE program. Once ABCTE certification is obtained, candidates are eligible for an additional $1,000 stipend for completing classroom observations.

If you subscribe to the monthly ABCTE Circular email, then you may have read about this in the edition that came out last week.

We receive a huge response anytime we offer a discount on the ABCTE program and we’ve decided to try something new—-we will now hold special one-day sales, during which you can save $150 on an ABCTE enrollment.

Here's how the ABCTE one-day sales will work...

The blog has undergone a couple of changes but, before I write anything else about that, I want to take a minute to recognize Dave Saba, our former CEO who has been blogging here in this space for the last few years.

Among the many things Dave accomplished at ABCTE was growing this blog into a great communication tool for our organization. He posted here regularly, keeping people informed about education news and helping to get out the message about what we're working to accomplish.

As many of you know, I will be moving on next week to the American College of Education. For those that I have followed this blog, please continue to follow as the ABCTE team will keep you informed on education reform.

For those that wish to continue to follow me, please go to my new blog on Virtual Learning. I have moved over and will keep you posted on our progress to increase educational access for all!!

Thanks!
Dave Saba

I decided to spend my Friday afternoon reading through some Race to the Top applications. I focused on states where ABCTE is accepted as a TRUE alternative route to teacher certification and read through Pennsylvania, Florida and Oklahoma.

First - this was a TON OF WORK for these states and the people that put these together must have spent some very long hours getting it done.

Second - these states proudly mention ABCTE is a route to certification and they meet the point requirements of Race to the Top! Yay us!!

Joanne Jacobs writes up some of Andy Smarick’s great work in her Show me the reform blog. Andy sees a lot of toothless reforms in Race to the Top and Joe Williams over at DFER thinks that NYC just blew chunks. They are right on the money, so to speak and it is a case of history repeating itself.

The political divisions in education continue to erode in this new era. With Race to the Top forcing more states to adopt progressive education reform initiatives, party lines are getting blurry.

ABCTE was once known as an education reform pushed by the right and opposed by the left. No more. In the past year we have had Democratic legislators introduce bills on behalf of ABCTE and now two different Democratic Governors have issued proclamations supporting ABCTE’s efforts at teacher recruitment.

There is an outstanding op ed by Carolyn Bucior in the New York times on substitute teaching. it is outstanding because the facts are just incredible and it is extremely well written by someone who is has been a substitute teacher for years.

So let’s review the facts:

• 77% of school districts give no training to substitute teachers at all - throw 'em in and hope for the best

At ABCTE we are continuing our quest to recruit 900 New Teachers into the program. It is pretty exciting to hear and see the level of enthusiasm in this team in getting this done. With a "free one week enrollment" to see our amazing teacher preparation resources and $150 off the price, recruitment is working hard to field all the calls and questions.

Every state is asking two critical questions right now; how do we increase our chances at Race to the Top funding and how do we find new ways to cut education budgets? The guidelines from the US DOE and a new study show that having non-university based alternative teacher certification is the answer to both questions.