Standard 3

Conclusion and Next Steps

Looking across the findings from the self-study conducted by the preliminary administrative services, reading/literacy specialist, school counseling, and school nursing 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 four advanced 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. In doing so, faculty 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. They 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. Site-based supervisors are also critical to this process. As highlighted in their responses, faculty from both School Nursing and School Counseling have created orientations for site-based supervisors to ensure they have the necessary knowledge to carry out their role as supervisors and to open the door for ongoing communication and collaboration. 

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 highlighted 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, as highlighted by the School Nursing Program through their internal audit, faculty work with candidates to revise timelines or to provide additional support when unexpected challenges arise for candidates. Similarly, the Preliminary Administrative Services Credential responses highlighted that program faculty meet one-on-one with candidates who do not pass a portion of the CalAPA to provide them with the necessary support to ensure that the candidates do pass. Findings from the internal audits conducted by both School Counseling and Reading/Literacy Specialist program faculty also documented reports from students who discussed how faculty had supported them to be successful in their programs. 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 advanced credential programs and our students 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. This is especially true with faculty in our Preliminary Administrative Services Credential program and our School Nursing program. Other faculty continue to engage in research directly related to the programs in which they teach, as is the case with faculty in the Reading/Literacy Specialist program and the School Nursing program. 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.

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 know that we could be doing more to ensure that our programs truly are representative of the students in our region. Moving forward, each program intends to do a 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. One program for which this will be more challenging is School Nursing, as individuals who apply to the program are already employed as school nurses in schools and districts across the state. Still, the program will begin to do more targeted recruiting within Fresno State’s undergraduate nursing program to help potential applicants see school nursing as a viable option.

One of the primary ways that our advanced credential programs can begin to increase their recruitment efforts is through targeted work with partners. Across all four programs and the educational unit as a whole, a primary finding was the need to be more strategic in developing partnerships and then in using those partnerships to improve program practices. For some programs, like the Reading/Literacy Specialist and School Counseling programs, the first step is to develop an advisory board and to begin to hold regular meetings. In all cases, programs realized that they could be doing more to involve their strategic partners in informing the work of the program. Future plans include the sharing and analysis of data and seeking feedback on program practices. Overall, the goal is to build more collaborative partnerships where both sides see the relationship as mutually beneficial. 

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 this process on an annual basis, with a plan to review findings from the audit 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