November Update 2017

Jennifer Beasley, Office of Teacher Education

On Friday, November 17 the Arkansas Council of Education Deans meeting was held in North Little Rock. Here are the highlights:

• On December 18-21, the LETERS Training will be offered at ADE. This training is a part of the Arkansas RISE initiative. {FYI, we have two faculty attending this}
• New competencies for both Special Education and Elementary Education have been published. Our programs will need to align all of their courses to these new competencies. Programs will need to use the new program approval forms, found HERE. All programs will need to be aligned by 2019.
• Joan Luneau spoke about the status of the extensive licensure changes (public comments ended on November 18). There were many comments (nothing too surprising)---and this will result in the changes going back to the Governor again for approval. This will delay any changes until possibly March or April. As soon as the rules become official, Ed. Prep. will send out guidelines to all institutions to implement all the changes.
• Want to keep up on Ed. Prep. news monthly? Take a look at the Education Preparation Updates here.
• The rest of the meeting was spent listening to a presentation by North Little Rock Middle School on Opportunity Culture schools. Many ADE staff were there to support this presentation and many spoke about this being something our schools will be looking into across the state. Want to know more about this type of school? Look HERE.