TO:         School of Education Faculty and Instructional Staff who teach in a UW-Madison teacher education program.

FROM:  Bob Tabachnick, Interim Associate Dean & Ken Zeichner, Associate Dean

RE:         Important PI34 Related Issues

DATE:   August 10, 2007

Now that we have completed the DPI review of our certification programs (the final report from DPI is attached to this memo), there are certain things that we need to do to keep our teacher education assessment system updated and current. Keeping this system updated and current will NOT involve a lot of work on the part of our faculty, staff and graduate students but it will enable us to be prepared for our next review in 4 ½ years as well as provide data about our programs that can inform our program renewal and improvement efforts.

There are just a few things that we would like to ask you to do. First, we have attached a memo that we have sent to all teaching assistants in the School of Education informing them of the existence of PI34 and of their basic responsibilities in teaching a course or in supervising in a field experience that is connected to our PI34 assessment system. We would like you to please be sure that they fulfill these responsibilities so that all of the needed information about students meeting standards, rules and statutes is recorded in the teacher assessment system. Thus far, the recording of this assessment information has been uneven and we have had to go back to instructors in a number of cases to try and gather the needed information, a process that has consumed much staff time.

If a course that you or one of your teaching assistants are teaching addresses any of the standards, rules, or statutes in PI34, then please make sure that this information is stated on the course syllabus  and that the standards rules and statutes addressed in multiple sections of a course are the same. Also, at the end of the semester, please make sure that you and your teaching assistants have recorded in our teacher assessment system whether or not students have met the PI34 components addressed by the course. Go to the Portfolio Project Website http://portfolios.education.wisc.edu and click on Faculty, TAs, and instructional staff at the top to get instructions on how to record this information.

Both the departments of Educational Psychology and Educational Policy Studies have set minimum grade level criteria for students to meet the standards addressed in their courses. It is very important that students enrolled in or planning to enroll in a teacher education program at UW-Madison be informed about what these standards are and what they need to do to meet a standard if they do not meet it initially. The easiest way to do this is to put this information on the syllabus.

Beginning last year, EPCS developed a way for faculty, teaching assistants and instructional staff to upload their course syllabus and CV within our e-portfolio system to be displayed on the internal password protected PI34 website. We would like to continue this practice so that we always have a current internal picture of our teacher education curriculum. We have also asked all teaching assistants to upload this information for their courses. To upload a course syllabus and to upload or update a CV to the Portfolio Project website http://portfolios.education.wisc.edu and click on Faculty, TAs, and Instructional Staff at the top to get instructions on uploading or updating course and instructor information. Thanks for your cooperation with this and for making sure that your teaching assistants and supervisors also contribute this information.

Everything that has been entered into our PI34 assessment system is a result of decisions by the faculty and staff in our programs and can be revised and updated at any time. To revise any of the information listed on our PI34 site for courses or field experiences (which standards, rules, or statutes are addressed, the knowledge/performance indicators etc) contact EPCS at epcs-online@education.wisc.edu or 262-1755. You can also find information about the PI34 site updates at http://portfolio.education.wisc.edu

Finally, we would like to implement a new administrative procedure for situations when students are denied certification at the end of their teacher education program. To date, programs have made these decisions on their own and some programs have kept records of these cases in their own files. However, because of a recent incident where a written record was not kept documenting the reasons why a certification recommendation was withheld from a student and what he or she needed to do to address the problems, we want to make sure that there is a clear set of procedures to follow. Therefore, in every case where you withhold a name from the certification recommendation list that you send to EAS you must send the student a letter stating why he or she is not being recommended for certification, what he or she need to do to address the problems noted, and what the grievance procedure is if he or she is unhappy with the outcome (see http://www.education.wisc.edu/eas/policies/#grievancepolicy). We would also like you to place a copy of this letter to the student in the student’s file in your program office and send a copy to Jeff Hamm in EAS so that the Deans’ office has a record of each case where a certification recommendation has been withheld. Denying a certification recommendation to a teacher education student is a serious step and we need to be very careful that we document the reasons why this is being done and that students are informed about why certification is being denied and about the appeal process available to them.

Thanks for your cooperation.