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Maryland State Department of Education
Baltimore, MD
1999 Catalyst Grant
Annual Education Degrees Awarded: 2500 teacher candidates
(22 colleges and Universities in MD with teacher education)
PT3 abstract - PT3 website
Project Contact:
(410) 767-0424
In Maryland, Standards to Evaluate Teacher Candidates Are Key
The Maryland State Department of Education's (MSDE) 1999 PT3 Catalyst grant award came at a fortuitous time.
The State Board had already adopted The Maryland Plan for Technology in Education, and local school systems were integrating technology within The Maryland Content Standards for K-12 students.
A group led by Susan Arisman, dean of the College of Education at Frostburg State University, were meeting to develop the Maryland Teacher Technology Standards with indicators for teacher candidates.
The missing piece in the equation was performance assessments with which to evaluate teacher candidates. The PT3 grant provided the resources to complete that task, and the Maryland State Department of Education was designated as the organization to lead the effort.
Including Stakeholders Adds Value
The three goals of the grant are:
- To align higher education curriculum and practicum experiences with the Maryland Teacher Technology Standards.
- To create consistent and credible performance assessments to measure technology proficiencies.
- To incorporate the Maryland Teacher Technology Standards in teacher candidate electronic portfolios.
Needs assessment research revealed disparities in the quality and scope of technology integration in Maryland's teacher preparation programs. With the grant award, the consortium was expanded to include several two- and four-year colleges and universities, local school systems, the Archdiocese of Baltimore (Division of Catholic Schools), the Maryland Higher Education Commission, the Maryland State Department of Education, and the Human Resources Research Organization (HumRRO), Maryland's outside evaluator.
Community college inclusion was important, as nearly 60 percent of Maryland's teacher candidates begin their college careers at a two-year college. K-12 collaboration was essential, as well, for supporting the grant goals. Not only do the professional development schools where preservice teachers intern use the standards, but also the local school systems support a high number of provisional teachers, and Maryland wants to ensure that this population also is prepared.
Performance Assessment At the Core
The core of the grant project has been the refinement of the seven Maryland Teacher Technology Standards and the creation of the performance assessment tasks. The standards are aligned with the International Society of Technology in Education's (ISTE) National Education Technology Standards for Teachers (NETS), with the addition of a separate standard for assistive technology. The topics are as follows:
- Information, Access, Evaluation, Processing and Application
- Communication
- Legal, Social and Ethical Issues
- Assessment for Administration and Instruction
- Integrating Technology into the Curriculum and Instruction
- Assistive Technology
- Professional Growth
Approaches That Worked
- Regular team meetings. The performance assessment tasks were created in monthly face-to-face consortia meetings that were well attended by members. MSDE found that the group enjoyed the networking and camaraderie of the monthly meetings.
- K-12 community participation. The inclusion of the K-12 community was invaluable. "There were times when the teacher educators would question whether teachers really needed to know a particular skill," PT3 project director Louise Tanney said. "But the K-12 teachers would explain that in the 'real world' of teaching, that particular skill was vital. We found that the K-12 teachers were, in many cases, two or three steps ahead of the teacher educators in terms of technology equipment and integration."
- Workshops, retreats. After piloting the assessments, MSDE conducted a shadow scoring workshop to re-score the student products for reliability and to select student products as future benchmark samples for the final performance tasks. This workshop, the monthly meetings, and two retreats were cited by members as valuable inservice for them.
- Sub-grants. The state grant also gave each of the consortia members the opportunity to apply for small sub-grants. The funds have been used in many different creative ways, and members had an opportunity to share their experiences at the monthly meetings.
After two years of development and piloting, the standards and performance assessment tasks are now finalized. They will be disseminated to all teacher preparation programs to ensure that Maryland's teacher candidates graduate with the necessary skills to integrate technology into K-12 instruction to improve student learning.
"Maryland has spent a lot of money on infrastructure in local schools," Tanney says. "Now it is time to ensure that all teacher candidates and teachers are proficient in integrating technology in the classroom for teaching and learning." Institutions must now align their curricula so that the standards are taught, and their students will be assessed on those standards. The performance assessment tasks that the consortium created are optional: the institutions may use them or develop their own. In the end, however, they must assure that all teacher candidates have achieved satisfactory performance on the standards before graduation.
Next Step Is Integrating Standards
Tanney credits several factors for the project's success, not the least of which is integration of the standards into the Maryland program approval requirements. First, all teacher preparation programs in Maryland must include the Maryland Teacher Technology Standards as one criterion for program approval.
Also, all programs at four-year colleges and universities in Maryland with more than 2,000 students must be accredited by the National Council for Accreditation of Teacher Education (NCATE). Smaller schools (less than 2,000 students), must complete Maryland's own program approval process.
Another factor are the new federal "Title II" requirements from the Higher Education Amendments. Title II requires states to develop criteria for evaluating low performing colleges and universities. Maryland has included the technology standards in component four, Linkage with K-12 Priorities, which states that all teacher candidates must demonstrate competency on the Maryland Teacher Technology Standards.
Instituting Electronic Portfolios
One of the objectives of the grant has been to increase the use of electronic portfolios by teacher preparation programs statewide. Maryland sees the standards-based e-portfolio as the embodiment of the principle of demonstrating technology proficiency. Many students have created e-portfolios to demonstrate how they have achieved the technology standards, including videos of lessons, development of home pages, etc.
Several consortium members are developing model e-portfolios, which are shared in the monthly meetings so that those who have not developed their own can adopt or adapt one best suited for their campus.
Sustainability
The culminating activity of the Consortium is four statewide regional meetings to share the standards, and the performance assessment materials with all two- and four-year institutions. The complete set of standards and performance assessment tasks are distributed in digital format (CD-Rom and on the Internet). A collection of benchmark products from the pilot is housed on the web.
Lessons Learned
As with many grants, Maryland reports that the performance assessments took longer to develop than it had anticipated. But now the standards are finalized, the assessments have been developed, piloted and revised, and benchmark products are available to assist teachers and teacher candidates.
Aspects of the project that worked particularly well include the monthly meetings, which allowed productive time to share products and programs and develop the rigorous assessments. A members listserv helped facilitate frequent communication across the state. The evaluator not only helped evaluate the grant as a whole but also helped pilot and evaluate the assessments. Consultants knowledgeable about performance assessments and scoring tools were brought in to help at specific stages of the grant. Giving each member the opportunity to apply for subgrant funds allowed for projects such as aligning curriculum, encouraging faculty involvement and developing e-portfolios models.
May 2002
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