The State Board for Educator Certification (SBEC) met on Friday, Dec. 11, for its final board meeting of the year. In our Teach the Vote weekly review last week, ATPE Governmental Relations Manager Jennifer Canaday provided the rundown of a major development from that meeting involving the Standard Superintended Certificate; however, educator preparation, certification, and discipline were also on the agenda. These are highlights of the board's actions. Standard Superintendent Certificate As we reported last week, the controversial proposal that removes classroom teaching experience from the certification prerequisites for some superintendent candidates was again an item on SBEC’s Friday agenda after the original proposal was rejected by the State Board of Education. ATPE again testified in opposition to the proposal, stressing the importance of teaching experience in the success of district leaders. Ultimately, the board voted to pass only a portion of the original proposal. Although an improvement from its original version, the revised proposal still fails to require a principal’s certificate or experience teaching in the classroom. Educator Preparation and Certification The board is currently in the review period for several of its chapters in rule that pertain to educator preparation and certification in Texas. The majority of those chapters of the Texas Administrative Code are still in the early phase of review, but the review of Chapter 227, Provisions for Educator Preparation Candidates, began earlier this year and final revisions were adopted at Friday’s board meeting. Among the changes were revisions required by two House bills that ATPE worked to pass during the recent legislative session. HB 1300 made changes to the individual GPA requirement exception that is reserved for educator preparation program (EPP) candidates who are otherwise exceptional but do not meet the 2.5 GPA required for admission. State law allows EPPs to exempt up to ten percent of their candidates in each incoming class for this purpose. With the passage of HB 1300 and adoption of the revised rule, the candidates admitted under this exception must first pass the content knowledge examination. Those legislatively mandated changes must now be reflected in SBEC's rules within the Texas Administrative Code. Also pertaining to GPA, HB 2205, an omnibus EPP bill, added a minimum cohort GPA requirement, which similarly must be added to SBEC rules. The adopted rule now requires EPPs to ensure each class of admitted candidates averages a 3.0 GPA. The revisions to chapter 227 lay out additional requirements EPP candidates must meet prior to admission and clarify the requirements of both candidates and programs involving formal and contingency admission. The remaining chapters pertaining to educator preparation and several chapters addressing educator certification will be reviewed over the next several months. TEA will conduct a stakeholder meeting to review Chapters 228 (Requirements for Educator Preparation Programs), 229 (Accountability System for Educator Preparation Programs), 230 (Professional Educator Preparation and Certification), and 232 (General Certification Provisions) this Thursday and ATPE will participate. Educator Discipline For roughly the past year, the process by which SBEC handles educator discipline has been in flux. The road to stabilize the process has involved many SBEC board meetings, the Legislature, the creation of the SBEC Board Committee on Educator Discipline, committee meetings, and a stakeholder meeting. At its board meeting last Friday, SBEC voted on several items aimed at re-stabilizing the process. The SBEC Board Committee on Educator Discipline, which is made up of six members of the full board, proposed recommendations regarding SBEC’s process for investigating and disciplining certified educators. The committee presented a list of 17 recommended board directives intended to clarify to TEA staff SBEC’s expectations for sanctioning certified educators. The committee also presented rule text amendments that reflected the board directives. The board agreed to the committee’s recommended directives and took an initial vote to approve the proposed rule text. The rule text will be published in the Texas Register and open for comment Jan. 1 through Feb. 1. The final vote on the proposal will take place at the next SBEC board meeting in February. Additionally, because the board felt comfortable with its directives and rule revisions guiding staff, they also chose to delegate back to TEA staff the authority to sign off on agreed orders, a situation where both TEA staff and the educator agree to the terms of a sanction. For reasons of efficiency and suitability, ATPE supports this change. Other Agenda Items Finally, the board approved a new advisory committee that will review and make recommendations on classroom teacher standards and elected new board officers. We are pleased that three ATPE board members (Carl Garner, Jayne Serna, and Tonja Gray, pictured below) were selected to serve on the Classroom Teacher Standards Advisory Committee; we know they will represent their profession and colleagues well. The SBEC officers are Bonny Cain, chair; Jill Druesedow, vice-chair; and Suzanne McCall, secretary. Tonja Gray, Carl Garner, and Jayne Serna So, while that is a wrap on a busy year for SBEC, next year will bring much more. Stay tuned!