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AAQEP Accreditation 2022

Standard 3

Conclusion & Next Steps

The program has the capacity to ensure that its completers meet Standards 1 and 2

Looking across the findings from the self-study conducted by the Multiple Subject, Bilingual Authorization, Single Subject, Agriculture Specialist, and Education Specialist programs highlights that, based on the available data sources, overall, our programs have the capacity to ensure that our completers have the capacity support all students’ success and to adapt to working in a variety of contexts and grow as professionals.

Areas of Strength:
In fact, as our program faculty engaged in self-study related to the Standard 3 Aspects, they realized a number of strengths in the work our programs do, as was demonstrated in the responses to the aspects.

To begin, it is worth noting that all five preliminary credential programs highlighted here do align with the standards set forth by the California Commission on Teacher Credentialing, as documented by our ongoing unit-wide accreditation. Faculty within each program continue to work to ensure that the coursework and field experiences provided are aligned with the expectations set forth in their appropriate state program standards.

Additionally, faculty from all programs regularly work to provide high quality field experiences in a range of local contexts that support candidates in their development and that reflect the diversity of the region. As highlighted in the program responses, the schools in which candidates are placed for their field experiences have learners who are, overall, representative of the demographics of the region. This means that candidates have the opportunity to engage with learners in contexts very similar to the contexts in which they will begin their teaching careers. Faculty also work to ensure that fieldwork experiences are integrated with coursework so that candidates have the opportunity to apply what they are learning in a real-world setting. Candidates then have the chance to bring that learning back to the classroom and reflect on it with the support of their classmates and instructors, as demonstrated in the responses. 

Across all programs, the responses to Aspect D demonstrate the ways in which programs work to establish clear admissions requirements with the goal of providing equitable access to all interested students. And in fact, the analysis of the demographics of candidates enrolled in our programs highlights the diversity of candidates who ultimately enroll in and complete our programs. Given the diverse range of cultural backgrounds of students in our region--students our completers serve in their roles as educational professionals--we see this finding as particularly noteworthy.

Once candidates are admitted, programs then employ a number of support systems to ensure all candidates are successful in completing the program, while still maintaining a high level of rigor. In fact, one of the findings from the audit processes was the way in which support staff--including faculty members, advisors, the admissions analyst, and the credential analyst--work together to support candidates through their appropriate programs. Additionally, findings from the internal audit conducted by the Bilingual Authorization Program highlighted the advising program faculty provided to candidates to ensure their success. These findings demonstrate our faculty’s ongoing commitment to ensure that all candidates are successful. 

Finally, the responses to Standard 3 also document the strong institutional commitment Fresno State has to our preliminary credential programs and our candidates as a whole. To begin, each program documented the high qualifications of our faculty, who represent a wide range of cultural backgrounds and who bring with them a wealth of experiences. As documented, the majority of our faculty have experience serving in the roles they are now preparing candidates for. As a requirement, our program faculty must have experience as K-12 educators. Additionally, on an institutional level, Fresno State provides our students and our faculty with a wide range of resources to help ensure their ongoing success. Recent shifts to the Teacher Education Program as a whole, including the creation of the Office of Clinical Practice to oversee field placements and the creation of the Assistant Director of Teacher Education position, demonstrate the institution’s ongoing commitment to the work we do.

Areas for Growth:
While we believe that much of the work program faculty did in presenting the findings of their analyses in response to Standard 3 allowed us to document the overall strengths of the work we do, engaging in the self-study process also allowed us to uncover particular areas where growth is needed. 

A primary take-away from our work on Standard 3 was the need to be more strategic in our efforts to link recruitment to admissions to enrollment to completion. One of our biggest findings was that programs do not record who attends recruitment events. Lack of data collection at these events is critical because we have no way of tracking whether or not the events are successful in assisting with recruitment efforts. As an educational unit, we are currently working with our Communications Coordinator to create a system that will allow us to more strategically collect data at recruitment events and then track who from each event applies, is admitted, and enrolls in our programs. At the program level, we then want to analyze this dataset on an annual basis in order to be more strategic in our recruitment efforts.

Related to this, while we do pride ourselves on the diversity of candidates we enroll, we would like to examine more closely sub-groups not represented in data collection in an effort to ensure that our programs truly are representative of the students in our region. Moving forward, each program intends to engage in more focused analysis of the demographics of who is admitted. In cases where the demographics are not representative of the region as a whole, the program will work to plan more strategic recruitment events to bring in candidates from unrepresented backgrounds. In particular, while our programs enroll a large number of candidates who identify as Latinx, the number of candidates who identify as black is very low. This is clearly an area where our programs need to consider more focused recruitment efforts. Additionally, our region is home to a large population of Southeast Asian individuals. While we do make an effort to recruit candidates who identify as Southeast Asian, including through our Hmong Bilingual Authorization Pathway, this is still an area where we could target additional recruitment efforts.

In response to Aspect C, our programs were able to document many ongoing partnerships with local schools and districts. However, within most of these partnerships, data has not been shared and analyzed in strategic ways--either from the program to partners about program practices or from partners to the programs about completer performance once they are in the classroom. Moving forward, each program articulated the goal to either establish an advisory board or to become more strategic in developing a true collaborative relationship with current partners. 

Another key finding of all programs was the value of engaging in the internal audit as a way to evaluate the work of the program. Again, this was the first time programs had undertaken this process, and it led to authentic findings about where programs were excelling and where they might be able to do more to better support candidates. Moving forward, programs intend to formalize their processes and engage in an audit on an annual basis, with a plan to review findings at program meetings. These findings can then be used to support ongoing continuous improvement into program practices.

Finally, preparing the responses to Standard 3 allowed programs to realize their need to investigate the reliability, validity, trustworthiness, and fairness of the instruments they use throughout their programs on an ongoing basis. In future years, program faculty will continue to engage in these investigations, working together to evaluate tools such as surveys or focus group protocols and analyze student work in response to key assignments across different sections of courses. As a unit, we intend to support these efforts by making this a focus of future Data Summits.

Standard 3: Quality Program Practices Program Next Steps

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Heading Content
Multiple Subject
Action to Take Rationale for Action Steps w/Proposed Timeline
Develop a plan to hire Black Indigenous faculty of color to teach/coach in the program.  Standard 3f indicates that we need to continue addressing the teacher educator diversity gap that exists between the demographic backgrounds of our faculty and the students in our credential program. 

Fall 2021-Spring 2022:

  • Work with Kremen Leadership to develop a strategic vision for hiring practices and look to universities and Kremen programs (e.g., Counseling) that have a stronger track record of hiring and retaining Black, Indigenous faculty of color. 
  • Reach out to local partners for recommendations of BIPOC, social-justice oriented educators who would be willing to serve as coaches
  • Begin to implement new approaches to recruitment and hiring
Build a system for student teacher placement data to be updated each semester and assessed especially in terms of looking for trends where high numbers of students are placed in high income schools. Standard 3b data in the Partnership Table was time consuming to compile. If collected as a regular routine then we would also have it to assess trends in our placement practices.  

Fall 2021:

  • Discuss with the Office of Clinical Practice and Kremen Leadership how this responsibility could be taken on by a student employee (Fall 2021).  
Implement the new formative rubric adapted from the New Teacher Project (TNTP) Core rubric Standard 3e points to our need to pick up from the pause COVID-19 put on our implementation plan for the new formative rubric. 

Fall 2021-Spring 2022:

  • Implement Coach training and norming practice 

Spring 2022

  • Implement new rubric; begin reliability testing 
Bilingual Authorization
Action to Take Rationale for Action Steps w/Proposed Timeline
Expanding bilingual/dual immersion classroom placements and hiring more bilingual coaches  Standard 3 requires information on candidate placement. At the moment, given state known challenges with placing BAP candidates in bilingual/dual immersion programs, Fresno State strives to place candidates in DI settings at minimum their last semester, though there is also limited classrooms locally.  Program coordinator is working with the credential coordinator, and Office of Clinical Practice (OCP) staff to collaborate and attempt to grow our list of partners with DI classrooms. 
Inviting more stakeholders to advisory board  Standard 3 questions made program coordinator realize she is working with stakeholders that she has not yet formally invited to join the advisory board and whose voices should be heard.  Program coordinator will send out personalized email invitations to these individuals. 
Formalizing audit process  A streamlined formal audit process is needed.  During the 2021-2022 academic year, the advisory board will collaboratively work on formalizing this process. 
Single Subject
Action to Take Rationale for Action Steps w/Proposed Timeline
Expand the current Single Subject Advisory Group.  Standard 3C data revealed that the current Single Subject advisory group needs to be expanded. 
  • Discuss possible board members with the current SS Advisory group (Fall 2021).
  • Invite the new advisory board members to the first advisory meeting of the semester (Spring 2022). 
  • Continue to hold advisory board meetings each semester.
Institute a system to collect demographic data of our Single Subject Teacher Credential Candidates both at recruitment events and at the time of admission.  Admitted, enrolled, and completed demographic data is not currently collected by the Single Subject Teacher Credential Program. Add demographics to our current initial EHD 155A spreadsheet. 
Increase data improvement discussions within the Single Subject Teacher Credential Program It was evident from Standard 3F that the Single Subject Teacher Credential Program does not hold enough data improvement discussions.
  • Begin regular data improvement discussions (Fall 2021).
  • Continue these discussions every semester
Agriculture Specialist
Action to Take Rationale for Action Steps w/Proposed Timeline
Develop and implement a plan for adding new faculty and for securing replacements for vacant faculty positions. The agricultural education program will be losing two of the current faulty members within the next two years. Our enrollment continues to be very large for the number of faculty members. Due to our enrollment numbers, we have added additional sections of some courses and still have some classes with 50 or more students in them.
  • Develop a position description and a request to replace one faculty member who will retire at the end of this academic year. 
  • Submit a replacement request to conduct a search during 2022 with a goal to have a replacement hired before the end of 2022. 
  • Develop a plan to add a faculty member to replace a member that is currently on the faculty early retirement program (FERP) whose ability to teach part-time through this program will end in spring 2023. 
  • Submit a request for a new position for appointment in fall 2023. 
Engage the Agricultural Education Program Advisory Board and other stakeholders in the analysis of program data and the action planning process. Our data review revealed that several of our data sources need to be updated. In order to ensure the updates are valid our stakeholders need to be involved in analyzing our data sources and approving any changes made before we implement revisions.
  • Agricultural education faculty will continue to review our data sources during the 2022-2023 academic year. 
  • This topic will be placed on the advisory committee agenda at the end of this academic year and will be an ongoing agenda topic until revisions are completed. 
  • The goal will be to have the revisions completed for the fall 2024 semester.
Agricultural Education faculty meet at the end of each academic year to reflect on the performance of our students and to develop strategies for program improvement. In past years our faculty held at least one meeting each year to reflect and develop strategies for program improvement. During COVID this practice was not followed. We need to engage in this process in the future.
  • Beginning with the spring of 2022, we will meet to reflect and develop ideas and strategies for program improvement. 
  • Our plan is to continue to meet at least once each year to make this an ongoing process. 
Education Specialist
Action to Take Rationale for Action Steps w/Proposed Timeline
We see the need to focus on candidates engagement with community and cultural organizations within scope of Special Education in school districts and the community Comments from program completers

Fall 2021:

  • Fact finding with school partnerships, Residencies, and administration about the potential community engagement opportunities for candidates

Spring 2022:

  • Look to Residencies, ITEP, partnerships, and advisory board input for potential community engagement opportunities for candidates

Fall 2022: 

  • Build in opportunities to program and Coaching 
Create program that aligns to the new Teacher Preparation Standards for Ed Specialist New program does not currently exist

Fall 2021: 

  • New program outline delivered to CCTE 

Spring 2022: 

  • Review of program by CCTE and Fresno State faculty and staff

Fall 2022: 

  • New program goes into effect, with revisions as necessary
Focus groups with representatives from the community to provide input on program strengths and areas for improvement Advisory board has not met since 2018. New advisory committee needed.

Fall 2021: 

  • Discuss possible board members in program meeting
  • Begin to recruit potential advisory board members

Spring 2022:

  • Hold first advisory board meeting (discuss program goals, share program data, get feedback from stakeholders on program)

Fall 2022-onward:

  • Hold advisory board meetings each semester (discuss program goals, share program data, get feedback from stakeholders on program)