A different kind of voucher plan
A pastoral scene in suburban Douglas County.
Parents in Douglas County get their chance tonight to weigh in on the state’s first serious voucher proposal since the Colorado Supreme Court struck down a 2003 law.
Details of the “option certificates” proposal are still in flux and, because of that, so are the legal risks.
“We have not explored what we might do and we don’t have any immediate plans,” said Jeanne Beyer, spokeswoman for the Colorado Education Association, which did much of the legal heavy-lifting to defeat the earlier plan. “But we are saying officially that we are opposing what they are considering doing.”
Discussion by Douglas County school board members during a weekend retreat sparked key questions about
Study: Turn teacher prep “upside down”
A report released today calls for converting teacher preparation to a more “clinical” model and making educator training a shared responsibility of higher education and P-12 schools.
Those conclusions are part of a report by the Blue Ribbon Panel on Clinical Preparation and Partnerships for Improved Student Learning, a project of the National Council for Accreditation of Teacher Education.
The report repeatedly invokes the example of medical education in urging change in the way the nation’s education students are prepared for the classroom.
“To prepare effective teachers for 21st century classrooms, teacher education must shift away from a norm which emphasizes academic preparation and course work loosely linked to school-based experiences. … Candidates will blend practitioner knowledge with academic knowledge as they learn by doing.
“Teacher education has too often been segmented with subject-matter preparation, theory, and pedagogy taught
