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1 COMMONWEALTH OF PENNSYLVANIA HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES 2 HOUSE EDUCATION COMMITTEE
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5 ROOM G-50 6 IRVIS OFFICE BUILDING HARRISBURG, PENNSYLVANIA 7
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10 WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 2, 2013 9:05 A.M. 11
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13 PUBLIC HEARING ON HOUSE BILL 1623, HOUSE BILL 1512 14
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17 BEFORE:
18 HONORABLE PAUL I. CLYMER, MAJORITY CHAIRMAN HONORABLE RYAN P. AUMENT 19 HONORABLE JOE EMRICK HONORABLE HAROLD A. ENGLISH 20 HONORABLE MIKE FLECK HONORABLE MARK M. GILLEN 21 HONORABLE BERNIE O ’NEILL HONORABLE MIKE REESE 22 HONORABLE DAN TRUITT HONORABLE MIKE CARROLL 23 HONORABLE JAMES CLAY, JR. HONORABLE SCOTT CONKLIN 24 HONORABLE MARK LONGIETTI HONORABLE ERIN C. MOLCHANY 25 2
1 ALSO PRESENT:
2 HONORABLE STEPHEN BLOOM
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4 COMMITTEE STAFF PRESENT:
5 REPUBLICAN CAUCUS: DAVID TRANSUE, SENIOR EDUCATION ADVISOR 6 KAREN SEIVARD, SENIOR LEGAL COUNSEL JUDY M.D. SMITH, ACTING EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR 7 JONATHAN BERGER, MAJORITY RESEARCH ANALYST ELIZABETH MURPHY, MAJORITY RESEARCH ANALYST 8 EILEEN KRICK, LEGISLATIVE ADMINISTRATIVE ASSISTANT
9 DEMOCRATIC CAUCUS: CHRIS WAKELEY, MINORITY EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR 10 TRACEY McLAUGHLIN, MINORITY RESEARCH ANALYST MARLENA MILLER, MINORITY LEGISLATIVE ASSISTANT 11
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1 INDEX
2 NAME PAGE
3 REP. JOE EMRICK 5
4 REP. STEPHEN BLOOM 9
5 PENNSYLVANIA STATE SYSTEM FOR HIGHER EDUCATION 6 CLARION UNIVERSITY OF PENNSYLVANIA
7 DR. JOHN T. GROVES, DIRECTOR 12 RESEARCH, RETENTION AND ACADEMIC PROGRAMS 8 RAY PULLER, ASSISTANCE DEAN AND DIRECTOR OF 23 9 FIELD SERVICES
10 ASSOCIATION OF INDEPENDENT COLLEGES AND 11 UNIVERSITIES OF PENNSYLVANIA (AICUP)
12 DR. CONSTANCE N. NICHOLS, CHAIR, 52 EDUCATION DEPARTMENT, GROVE CITY COLLEGE 13 DR. DIVONNA M. STEBICK, ASSISTANT PROFESSOR, 61 14 GETTYSBURG COLLEGE
15 PENNSYLVANIA ASSOCIATION OF COLLEGES AND 16 TEACHER EDUCATORS (PAC-TE) STATE
17 DR. AMY M. ROGERS, ASSISTANT PROFESSOR, 7 8 CHAIR, EDUCATION DEPARTMENT, LYCOMING 18 COLLEGE
19 PENNSYLVANIA DEPARTMENT OF EDUCATION (PDE) 20 CAROLYN DUMARESQ, Ed.D., 94 21 ACTING SECRETARY, DEPARTMENT OF EDUCATION
22 L. JILL HANS, DEPUTY SECRETARY, OFFICE OF 96 POSTSECONDARY/HIGHER EDUCATION 23 THERESA LYNN BARNABY, DIRECTOR 104 24 BUREAU OF SCHOOL LEADERSHIP AND TEACHER QUALITY 25 4
1 P R O C E E D I N G S
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3 CHAIRMAN CLYMER: We’re going to take on a
4 review. The purpose of this meeting this morning,
5 as I said, is to focus on two — two pieces of
6 legislation, House Bill 1512, introduced by
7 Representative Bloom, which streamlines the teacher
8 preparation and process for teachers,
9 and then House Bill 1623 by Representative Emrick,
10 and it eliminates the Praxis, which is the teacher
11 certification exam, as a condition of receiving a
12 teacher’s degree or as a component of a student’s
13 course grade.
14 So, again, we welcome you all. We thank
15 our presenters for being with us this morning and
16 for the members of the committee that are here.
17 At this time the chair is going to
18 recognize the sponsors of these two bill — bills,
19 Representative Bloom and Representative Emrick.
20 And then, gentlemen, you can -- you can
21 begin. We’ll have Representative Emrick start and
22 then Representative Bloom just fill in and then
23 we’ll go into the agenda of the presenters.
24 So at this time the chair recognizes
25 Representative Emrick. 5
1 REP. EMRICK: Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
2 And thank you for holding today’s public hearing on
3 House Bill 1623.
4 As a former public school teacher, I’m
5 intimately familiar with how students become
6 prepared to enter the noble teaching profession.
7 I am a very, very proud graduate of
8 Lycoming College. I see some smiles out in the
9 crowd. There aren’t many of us, but we are very
10 proud.
11 And — and I had the experience of going
12 through the process of earning my degree and
13 certification in secondary education, specifically
14 social studies. You know, as I -- I think when
15 we’re young, we don’t really fully understand the
16 quality of education we have and the experiences we
17 have until we have a chance to reflect back on it.
18 A n d t h e q u a l i t y o f e d u c a t i o n t h a t I g o t a t
19 Lycoming and how much they actually looked out for,
20 not only the financial investment of the students
21 who attend there, but also the professional
22 development with which they prepared us.
23 And just one example of that, and I didn’t
24 really understand it at the time, but when I
25 decided to go into the teaching profession, I was 6
1 told that, well, you have to major in something.
2 You can’t just be to teach. You have to
3 declare a major. And I said, well, why is that?
4 And basically the answer was we want you
5 to have as much education, be as broad-based and
6 prepared when you enter the world and the workforce
7 as possible. And so we don’t care what you major
8 in, you have to declare a maj or, and then, if you
9 want to teach, you have to go through, which is in
10 essence a double major, of the entire educational
11 program and then achieve certification after you
12 graduate.
13 And so I declared my major in history, got
14 a degree in history, but also pursued the course
15 work for secondary certification which -- which
16 allowed me to basically have one or two electives
17 my entire college career.
18 And so -- so I ’ ve gone through this
19 experience. I’ve taken the Praxis exam, and I was
20 fortunate to learn and succeed, as so many have
21 done in our Commonwealth, through the rich network
22 of teacher education programs we have in
23 Pennsylvania.
24 But unfortunately not all students share
25 that same experience. As a result of the 7
1 experiences of -- of a constitute of mine and
2 anecdotal stories that have been shared with me
3 since I introduced House Bill 1623 both by other -
4 other residents of the Commonwealth and actually
5 other members of this chamber, I am well aware that
6 some teacher education programs wrongly and
7 unfairly utilize the PRAXIS exams, which is a post
8 degree certification test as a precondition and
9 grade qualifier for student teaching and degree
10 completion, and also as a component of student
11 course grades.
12 As the Pennsylvania Department of
13 Education will explain, these exams were never
14 intended to be utilized in this manner. The
15 analogy that most simply comes to mind is a law
16 school requiring a student to pass the bar exam
17 before they can obtain a law degree or an
18 accounting firm or program requiring completion of
19 the CPA exam before ever receiving an accounting
20 degree.
21 It's more complicated than that, but on
22 the surface that is the most simple analogy we can
23 draw.
24 My bill is about fundamental fairness for
25 Pennsylvania students engaged in the teacher 8
1 preparation programs. Unfortunately we know of at
2 least several institutions of higher learning that
3 engage in this terrible, unfair practice which my
4 legislation would bring to an end.
5 Over a year ago the former chancellor of
6 PASSHE, Mr. Cavanaugh, and current vice chairman,
7 Mr. Jim Moran, sat in my office and assured me that
8 PASSHE was changing its policy to forbid its member
9 institutions from utilizing the Praxis as Clarion
10 and other institutions do, to simply make it fair
11 and uniform across the 14 institutions.
12 That was a hollow promise, and that is why
13 this issue has now entered the legislative arena.
14 Sadly, there are institutions engaging in
15 this wrongful practice at a time when students are
16 rolling up tens of thousands of dollars in student
17 loan debt in order to receive their degrees to
18 enter teaching.
19 Apparent l y thi s burden and expens e me ans
20 nothing to some who run our teacher education
21 programs and defend this unfair policy that has
22 absolutely nothing to do with the student's
23 teaching ability.
24 I thank the testifiers here today who have
25 taken their valuable time to share their expertise 9
1 with the committee. I thank those testifiers who
2 are standing with me in recognition of how terribly
3 unfair this practice is.
4 Mr. Chairman, I look forward to the time
5 of the committee vote on House Bill 1623 at some
6 point in the future. So I thank you, again, for
7 bringing this legislation up for a public hearing.
8 CHAIRMAN CLYMER: The chair thanks the
9 gentleman and recognizes Representative Bloom.
10 REP. BLOOM: Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
11 T h a n k y o u me mb e r s o f t h e c o mmi t t e e , c o mmi t t e e
12 staff, for bringing this bill up -- up today at
13 this — this public hearing.
14 My bill, House Bill 1512, basically is
15 designed to remove unnecessarily bureau -
16 unnecessary bureaucratic barriers and impediments
17 to getting qualified educators into our classrooms
18 as efficiently and as cost effectively as
19 possible.
20 I -- I kind of stumbled into this issue
21 and this bill because a constituent contacted me.
22 She was the holder of a master's degree and she was
23 looking to get into the classroom and found out
24 that she would have to take a basic skills test
25 even as the holder of a master's degree and she 10
1 didn’t think that made a lot of sense. And I was
2 kind of curious about that.
3 So I contacted PDE to find out, you know,
4 why would this be. And it turned out that PDE said
5 they — they agreed, that they don’t necessarily
6 think this is the wisest or most efficient process
7 to follow and, in fact, they were -- they were
8 supportive of a change in that requirement and had
9 some other reforms as well that -- that they
10 thought would be fitting and suitable. And we
11 ultimately incorporated that into House Bill 1512.
12 There’s basically five components of the
13 bill. The first one is to waive the basic skills
14 test for students who already hold a master’s,
15 doctorate, or are in enrolled in a post
16 baccalaureate teacher preparation program.
17 The second component is to provide
18 reciprocity for post baccalaureate programs for
19 applicants who received a certification from a
20 state with similar standards to Pennsylvania.
21 Third requirement would be that students
22 who take the basic skills test prior to official
23 entry into a teacher preparation program will
24 require them to take it prior to entry in a program
25 because we’ve heard anecdotally and -- and through 11
1 different evidence -- and I’m sure we’ll hear more
2 on this today -- that -- that some students are
3 actually going through entire baccalaureate
4 programs only to find they can’t pass the basic
5 skills test.
6 So this would be sort of an initial
7 screening process so we don’t lead students down
8 the road that they’re going to pay all these
9 tuition dollars and never actually be able to
10 achieve that certification.
11 Fourth requirement is -- is simply to
12 provide students who attain a degree higher than a
13 baccalaureate degree, such as a master’s, without
14 receiving that baccalaureate degree first, the
15 opportunity to be certified.
16 There are some institutions that actually
17 take a student straight from -- basically straight
18 from high school to a master’s level degree without
19 ever formally granting a baccalaureate degree and
20 there’s been some issues.
21 The fifth requirement, which was to waive
22 a duplicative health testing examination, I’ ve -
23 we’ve actually been able to successfully
24 incorporate into this year’s school code bill,
25 which became Act 82, so I’ll be offering at some 12
1 point a technical amendment to simply remove that
2 part from House Bill 1512 as -- as that’s
3 unnecessary and now already been accomplished.
4 And I thank you, Mr. Chairman, and I look
5 forward to hearing from the testifiers.
6 CHAIRMAN CLYMER: Okay. The chair thanks
7 the gentleman.
8 And we will not take my questions from our
9 two sponsors, but instead we'll move forward to our
10 first testifiers this morning and they are from the
11 Pennsylvania State System for Higher Education,
12 PASSHE.
13 And we have as our first
14 Dr. John T. Groves, Director of Research, Retention
15 and Academic Programs. Come forward. And joining
16 him is Ray Puller, Assistant Dean and Director of
17 Field Services.
18 So welcome, gentlemen. And from Clarion
19 University.
20 We -- does every — you have your -- do
21 you have testimony and do the members of the
22 committee have testimony to pass down? Okay.
23 All right. Whoever wants to begin the
24 conversation.
25 DR. GROVES: Thank you and good morning. 13
1 We appreciate your request for our attendance and
2 for the opportunity to present Clarion University’s
3 practice regarding Praxis II and Pearson testing.
4 Mr. Puller and I were asked to represent
5 the university. I’m John Groves. I’m the former
6 dean for the College of Education and Human
7 Services. I have 33 years of teaching experience
8 in public high schools, community colleges,
9 four-year private, and public universities.
10 I’ ve completed 13 years of higher
11 education and administrative experience, and I am
12 currently assigned to the provost office as
13 Director of Research, Retention, and Academic
14 Programming.
15 My colleague, Ray Puller, is the interim
16 dean for the College of Education and Human
17 Services of Clarion. He has completed 20 years as
18 a K-6 teacher and ten years as an elementary
19 principal in public schools. He has four years
20 experience of teaching at the university level,
21 along with four years of university administrative
22 practice. And as I mentioned, he’s currently
23 serving as the interim dean at the College of
24 Education and Human Services at Clarion.
25 We ask that House Bill 1623 not be 14
1 approved. We’d also need to point that we are
2 unable to discuss individual student academic
3 records. This position is based upon the Family
4 Educational Rights and Privacy Act that all higher
5 education academic records are considered
6 confidential.
7 We would like to provide a context for the
8 Clarion teacher education programs with emphasis on
9 recent national and state changes in teacher
10 certification and accreditation standards.
11 These changes resulted in new teaching
12 certificates and new competency standards. All
13 Pennsylvania teacher education programs redesigned
14 their curricula to meet competency standards
15 developed for the graduate student for state
16 certification requirements.
17 The redesign of the Clarion University
18 teacher education programs achieved State System of
19 Higher Education approval in January of 2009, the
20 Pennsylvania Department of Education approval in
21 2010.
22 The programs also received reaccreditation
23 from the National Council -- excuse me -- the
24 accreditation of teacher education in 2012.
25 Clarion is one of 95 teacher education 15
1 programs in Pennsylvania and one of 20 with
2 national accreditation.
3 One component of the redesigned programs
4 approved by the college faculty was requiring the
5 Praxis II or Pearson exams to be passed prior to
6 graduation.
7 The requirement has evolved the past six
8 years from being an admissions standard for student
9 teaching to being an instructional objective in
10 student teaching to being a graduation
11 requirement.
12 The current practice requires all teacher
13 education graduates to demonstrate competence in
14 the state accreditation standards before
15 graduation. It is the faculty and administrative
16 position that teacher candidates and employers
17 should expect graduates to meet all state
18 certification standards when they are ready to
19 enter the profession.
20 This policy supports that expectation.
21 Further, it is evidence the university requires
22 before sponsoring a candidate to PDE as fully
23 qualified for certification.
24 The university accepts that passing Praxis
25 II and/or Pearson exams is evidence of a 16
1 candidate's competency and is therefore qualified
2
3 The Pennsylvania Department of Education
4 is noted for establishing a rigorous standard for
5 state certification. This requirement for
6 graduation does not preclude students from
7 graduating with an undergraduate degree.
8 Students unable to pass the Praxis II
9 and/or Pearson exams may earn a bachelor's degree
10 in liberal studies. Graduation with a bachelor’s
11 degree may qualify them for teaching positions in
12 private schools and in other states.
13 The Clarion University education -
14 teacher education program has a long history of
15 producing full -- fully qualified teachers. The
16 programs have been accredited by NCATE since 1954.
17 Our current graduates are offered
18 teachings in jobs in states throughout the
19 country. Pennsylvania graduates are preferred
20 because of the high standards PDE has set for
21
22 In northwestern Pennsylvania the standard
23 of practice has been to hire certified novice
24 teachers as substitutes before being considered for
25 a tenured position. Those seeking a teacher 17
1 position in urban areas are being hired.
2 In conclusion, it is emphasized that
3 Clarion's teacher education requirements satisfy
4 Pennsylvania and national standards for content
5 knowledge and skills for early childhood, mid
6 level, and secondary classroom levels.
7 In large part, this achievement is
8 accomplished by requiring that the candidates meet
9 all certification requirements at conclusion of the
10 programs as expected by those candidates and by
11 employers. That achievement is demonstrated
12 through successful classroom performance, competent
13 student teaching experiences, and by passing the
14 Praxis II or Pearson exams.
15 Consequently, the teacher education
16 faculty and administration backed by the university
17 do not support House Bill 1623. We believe the
18 legislation as proposed would establish a lower
19 teacher education programs standard than we
20 currently hold candidates accountable to achieve.
21 Thank you.
22 CHAIRMAN CLYMER: Mr. Puller, you may, if
23 you have comments as well or -
24 MR. PULLER: Not at the moment.
25 CHAIRMAN CLYMER: Okay. That's it? 18
1 MR. PULLER: Uh-huh.
2 CHAIRMAN CLYMER: All right. Are there
3 any questions from the members of the committee?
4 Representative O ’Neill.
5 REP. O ’NEILL: Thank you. Thank you.
6 Just real quick, are you here representing
7 just Clarion University or are you here
8 representing the PASSHE system?
9 DR. GROVES: We were asked -- excuse me -
10 it was initially asked to represent Clarion. I
11 understand now we are also representing PASSHE. So
12 I guess the answer is both.
13 REP. O ’NEILL: Okay. So -- all right. So
14 P A S S H E t h e n i s o p p o s e d t o t h i s . O k a y . G r e a t .
15 I’m a bit confused. Are we talking about
16 people taking the Praxis before they graduate and
17 it is a requirement for their graduation or taking
18 the Praxis after to get certified by the
19 Department?
20 DR. GROVES: Our policy or procedure is
21 that they take the Praxis II or Pearson, whichever
22 is appropriate, before they graduate. That’s -
23 REP. O ’NEILL: Is that a condition upon
24 graduation?
25 DR. GROVES: Yes, it is. 19
1 REP. O ’NEILL: Gotcha. All right. Can I
2 ask you this question?
3 DR. GROVES: Yes.
4 REP. O ’NEILL: It’s a personal question to
5 me. How many of your professors that are training
6 teachers actually have significant amount of
7 professional and practical time in public school
8 classrooms?
9 A n d I a s k y o u t h a t b e c a u s e , l i k e
10 Mr. Emrick, I spent 26 years in the classroom as a
11 special educator, and I was shocked that not one of
12 my professors in college ever spent a day in a
13 classroom.
14 In fact, I even had one professor who had
15 a bachelor degree in business, a master’s in
16 economics, and a doctorate in education and he was
17 teaching people to be teachers. And I just find it
18 so hypocritical that people who are teaching
19 teachers never spent a day in a classroom, just
20 because they did research.
21 So I -- that’s why -- so I’m asking, do
22 you know how many -- and I’ m not saying j ust in
23 Clarion but maybe in the PASSHE system, how many
24 actually have practical experience?
25 DR. GROVES: I don’t have a number to 20
1 respond to that or a percentage. I know that
2 they’re all -- have certifications. They are all
3 certified teachers. I could get that information.
4 REP. O ’NEILL: Yeah. I would -- I’d just
5 be interested, you know. And I know it’s not just
6 P A S S H E . I t ’ s a l l t h e - - i t ’ s a l l t h e s c h o o l
7 s y s t e ms .
8 Maybe it’s changed, you know, throughout
9 the country. Maybe it’s changed because, you know,
10 I graduated back in the ’ 70s, and over the years,
11 okay.
12 DR. GROVES: Then you -
13 REP. O ’NEILL: So --so what you guys are
14 supporting is continuing to use the Praxis as part
15 of a graduation requirement?
16 DR. GROVES: Yes. We believe that that is
17 the evidence that supports our contention that the
18 graduate is fully qualified for certification and
19 is prepared to walk into a classroom as a novice
20 teacher. Well, it’s one part of that, anyway.
21 REP. O ’NEILL: So I -- so you -- you put
22 more weight on a written test than what they
23 actually perform in the classroom as a student
24 teacher?
25 DR. GROVES: No, I don’t. I didn’t intend 21
1 to say that.
2 REP. O ’NEILL: Okay.
3 DR. GROVES: We have — we have the
4 classroom -- as students, they’re -- they’re
5 theoretical based. We have multiple field
6 experiences that they must go through and be
7 successful in and then passing the test is one
8 aspect -
9 REP. O ’NEILL: Aspect.
10 DR. GROVES: -- of the total graduation
11 experience.
12 REP. O ’NEILL: Okay. Great. Thank you.
13 Appreciate it. Thank you for coming today.
14 CHAIRMAN CLYMER: Mr. Burns, if you would
15 send that information to the chair that was asked
16 by Representative O ’ Neill, we would appreciate
17 that. Then we can dispense it to the other members
18 of the committee.
19 At this time the chair recognizes
20 Representative Emrick for questions.
21 REP. EMRICK: Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
22 I’ ll -- I’ ll take the first set of concerns that I
23 have .
24 I know Mr. Cavanaugh is no longer with
25 PASSHE. I wish Mr. Moran were here today. Because 22
1 based on the conversations we had previously — and
2 you’re representing PASSHE, as I understand it, as
3 well as Clarion, which I’m assuming means PASSHE is
4 fully in support of this policy.
5 Is that correct?
6 DR. GROVES: I don’t think that I can
7 speak that directly for Dr. Moran.
8 REP. EMRICK: Okay. Well, at some point
9 we’ll have to get in touch with him to see what
10 PASSHE’s policy is because it seems that there’s
11 some conflicting information going back and forth
12 here.
13 My first question, what does it cost to
14 attend Clarion University? If I — if I enrolled
15 this year at Clarion, what does it cost me to
16 attend?
17 DR. GROVES: I don’t get a chance to play
18 with the money, so I really can’t answer that
19 specifically. I could give you that information,
20 again, I’d be glad to send it down.
21 REP. EMRICK: Roughly? Do you have a ball
22 park idea, 15,000 a year? 17? 12?
23 CHAIRMAN CLYMER: I think we have someone
24 who’s going to answer the question or a
25 representative from PASSHE. 23
1 REP. EMRICK: I’m specifically talking
2 about Clarion.
3 UNIDENTIFIED WOMAN: Clarion’s tuition,
4 because the tuition is the same, is about 6200,
5 room and board. If you live on campus, the average
6 comes out to total costs of about 15,000.
7 REP. EMRICK: 15,000. Okay. Thank you
8 very much. And it doesn’t have to be exact.
9 But the second question I have is at the
10 end of your testimony you said that you can earn
11 a -- a bachelor of degree — a bachelor’s degree in
12 liberal studies. What is that?
13 MR. PULLER: That is a -- a bachelor’s
14 degree with a concentration in education. It is a
15 four-year degree. They have various skills, about,
16 I would say, 123 credits that a normal bachelor’s
17 of science degree would be, and it is -- I’ m not
18 for sure, when you say exactly what is that? I’ m
19 not for sure what you’re -
20 REP. EMRICK: What does it -- what does it
21 -- like what -- can I go teach with that degree?
22 You said it’s a concentration in education. Can I
23 go teach with a bachelor degree in -- bachelor
24 degree in liberal studies?
25 MR. PULLER: Not in Pennsylvania in a K-12 24
1 public system.
2 REP. EMRICK: Okay. All right. I’m going
3 to -- just so I understand your policy fully and
4 completely, and so the committee, I think, gets
5 a -- a good idea of your policy fully and
6 completely, and I’ ve gone through this process
7 personally as a student, I’ m going to enroll in
8 Clarion University for the start of this year. So
9 I pay my $15,000 for the year, and I decide that I
10 want to become a social studies teacher, which is
11 what I did at Lycoming.
12 So I go through the course work. I go
13 through -- I do my student teaching. Again, if I
14 just take my own experience, I get As and very,
15 very high qualifications and recommendations from
16 my student -- student teaching experience, and yet
17 I take the Praxis.
18 Now at Lycoming it was not a requirement
19 that I past the Praxis for graduation and to earn
20 my degree in education with certification.
21 A g a i n , g o i n g b a c k t o t h e i r l o o k i n g o u t f o r
22 the best interests of the student, they highly
23 recommended we take that exam before we graduate.
24 If you pass it, great. But to have that
25 experience, once you graduate and get into your 25
1 professional career. But it was not a
2 requirement. And we’ll get into some reasons why.
3 So let’s assume that I -- I — I can’t
4 pass the Praxis at Clarion. I go there for four
5 years. I pay an average of $15,000 a year. That’s
6 $60,000. I assume it would be more than that
7 because tuition just goes up.
8 So I invest $60, 000, four years of my
9 time, studies, and I’ m a good student, what happens
10 to me if I don’t pass my Praxis? Even though I
11 have excellent grades, did a great job in student
12 teaching, earned As in my student teaching
13 experience, have very, very good recommendations
14 from my student teacher monitor, what -- what
15 happens to me?
16 MR. PULLER: To partly answer that
17 question, sir, when you say you have excellent
18 grades and you do not pass the Praxis -
19 REP. EMRICK: Right.
20 MR. PULLER: -- there is a -- the
21 Pennsylvania Department of Education, they have
22 created a -- a sliding scale -
23 REP. EMRICK: Right.
24 MR. PULLER: — for -- given certain QPAs
25 and what the various cut scores are for the various 26
1 Praxis exams. So —
2 REP. EMRICK: If I have -
3 MR. PULLER: -- if by chance you are that
4 excellent student -
5 REP. EMRICK: I have a 3.0. Say that.
6 MR. PULLER: Okay.
7 REP. EMRICK: Or maybe better. I have a
8 3. 0.
9 MR. PULLER: Okay. Yes.
10 REP. EMRICK: And I take the Praxis and I
11 can’t pass it.
12 MR. PULLER: Uh-huh.
13 REP. EMRICK: Now, I graduate but I don’t
14 graduate really. What grade do I get? What grade
15 do I get for my student teaching experience?
16 DR. GROVES: Well, you would get a grade 0
17 to 4 depending upon what you learned.
18 REP. EMRICK: I had 4. I got As for my
19 student teaching experience.
20 DR. GROVES: A 4.0.
21 REP. EMRICK: So if I don’t pass the
22 Praxis, if I don’t pass the Praxis -
23 DR. GROVES: Uh-huh.
24 REP. EMRICK: -- and I have As, you’re
25 going to say my GPA and my grade for that student 27
1 teaching experience remains an A?
2 DR. GROVES: Uh-huh.
3 REP. EMRICK: That's not correct,
4 Mr. Groves, and you know it's not correct.
5 DR. GROVES: I'm sorry. I forgot to say
6 it, but it is correct.
7 MR. PULLER: If I could interject?
8 REP. EMRICK: I have -
9 MR. PULLER: If I could interject
10 something, sir? That is our current policy, that
11 if you get an A now in student teaching, you do
12 have the A on your transcript.
13 REP. EMRICK: Whether that policy -- if
14 that's accurate, when did that policy take effect?
15 DR. GROVES: A year ago?
16 MR. PULLER: A year ago or -
17 DR. GROVES: Approximately a year ago.
18 REP. EMRICK: That is incorrect.
19 DR. GROVES: What is incorrect?
20 REP. EMRICK: If you get an A in student
21 teaching and you don't pass the Praxis, your policy
22 states that the student will get some other grade.
23 An d f r o m t he e x p e r i e nc e s o f p e o p l e , t h a t g r a de wa s
24 converted to a D, Mr. Groves.
25 DR. GROVES: That was an old policy, 28
1 representative.
2 REP. EMRICK: That was an old policy?
3 DR. GROVES: Yes.
4 REP. EMRICK: So that policy changes -
5 DR. GROVES: Yes.
6 REP. EMRICK: And now it -
7 DR. GROVES: The policy of the Praxis
8 we’ve got -
9 REP. EMRICK: Do you have -- do you have
10 that in writing? Do you have that anywhere that
11 you could provide this committee?
12 DR. GROVES: Policy, yes.
13 REP. EMRICK: Okay. So — so under your
14 old policy and under your new policy — let’s say
15 that you’re -- let’s say that you have a new policy
16 that’s now changed. You can’t pass the Praxis,
17 okay, so now you don’t get a degree in education,
18 you get a degree in liberal studies. And as
19 M r . P u l l e r - -
20 MR. PULLER: Yes.
21 REP. EMRICK: -- just said that you are
22 not eligible to teach in Pennsylvania public
23 schools.
24 DR. GROVES: Well, there is an interim
25 step there that if you were a candidate, along with 29
1 your scenario has not passed the Praxis either when
2 they conclude student teaching, they have an
3 academic semester to complete the Praxis. As such,
4 if they do, then it’s taken care of. If they do
5 not -
6 REP. EMRICK: And if they’re -
7 DR. GROVES: -- they have an option to
8 go -
9 REP. EMRICK: They have -
10 DR. GROVES: -- for a liberal studies
11 degree.
12 REP. EMRICK: They get an academic
13 semester to basically enroll and re-student teach.
14 Is that correct?
15 DR. GROVES: No. They have an academic
16 semester to pass the -- whatever, Praxis II or
17 Pearson exam. They do not have to re-enroll.
18 REP. EMRICK: So that part of your policy
19 has changed as well. Because one of the options of
20 your former -- now former policy, as you’re telling
21 us, was that you could re-enroll for a semester,
22 redo your student teaching all over again, even if
23 you did it once and had a great experience and
24 excellent grades, that’s no longer an option?
25 That’s no longer a policy? 30
1 DR. GROVES: Go ahead.
2 MR. PULLER: When you were asking about
3 the new policy, I did bring that —
4 REP. EMRICK: Sure.
5 MR. PULLER: — if you’d like to have
6 that .
7 REP. EMRICK: Yes. That would be great.
8 So now part -- another major flaw with
9 your policy is that the state of Pennsylvania has
10 one of, if not the most rigorous standards to
11 certify teachers. Is that correct?
12 DR. GROVES: Well, the state. The state
13 standard is very high. Yes.
14 REP. EMRICK: Right.
15 DR. GROVES: Uh-huh.
16 REP. EMRICK: In fact, I think -- I don’t
17 know if maybe staff can tell me. Maybe one other
18 state, Massachusetts or someone, has a standard
19 that is equal to or -- or slightly higher than -
20 DR. GROVES: Yes.
21 REP. EMRICK: Than Pennsylvania’s.
22 MR. PULLER: I would be safe to say that
23 Pennsylvania is in the top five -
24 REP. EMRICK: Okay.
25 MR. PULLER: -- states in the -- of the 31
1 United States, yes.
2 REP. EMRICK: Okay. So part of the -
3 another major flaw of your policy, let's say
4 students are taking your exams, their Praxis
5 exams. They're not passing it by Pennsylvania
6 standards. However, they're just falling short.
7 When I took my Praxis exam, the very first
8 time I took it, I was fortunate. I passed it by
9 one question, literally.
10 There was just a benchmark level, which is
11 what it is today and either you achieve that
12 benchmark or you don't. I achieved it by one
13 question. So I didn't have to worry about it.
14 But what if I didn't achieve it by one
15 question, what if I missed it by one or two or
16 three questions and I don't pass the Pennsylvania
17 standards but I do pass based on standards
18 throughout the rest of the country, and so if I
19 want to go teach in New Jersey or New York or
20 Maryland or move down south or move out west and I
21 want to teach there, I can't.
22 Even though my qualifications, my -- my
23 scores, everything I' ve achieved is more than
24 sufficient to qualify me to be a certified teacher
25 in virtually every other state in the country, I 32
1 can’t because I don’t have a degree in education
2 from Clarion University, because I got a degree in
3 liberal studies, which simply is a generic degree
4 with a concentration in education. It means
5 virtually nothing.
6 So you’re basically prohibiting those
7 students who don’t pass the Praxis as a condition
8 of graduation from having the opportunity to move
9 or relocate or do -- or teach somewhere else if
10 they so choose.
11 Now, do you think that’s in the best
12 interests of the students that attend Clarion
13 University and want to become teachers and invest
14 $60, 000 over the course of four years?
15 DR. GROVES: I ’ m not willing to try to
16 speak for the other state systems, what they do and
17 how they do it. I don’t -- they may accept the
18 bachelor with a liberal studies. They may allow
19 for a score that someone does not qualify for PA
20 certification, may qualify for theirs.
21 So I don’t know what the other states do,
22 and I can’t speak to that.
23 REP. EMRICK: Well, what they do is less
24 stringent than what we do. That’s not the point.
25 The point is that -- regardless of what 33
1 they do, the kids who graduate from Clarion who
2 can’t past the Praxis by the time they graduate
3 can’t go to those other states and teach because
4 they haven’t been given the degree they’ve earned,
5 which is a degree in education, j ust like I earned
6 from Lycoming.
7 Whether or not I passed the Praxis was on
8 me. Once I graduate, that’s on me. That’s up to
9 me .
10 And the other question I have is what
11 happens if somebody decides, well, you know, I ’ m
12 going to hold off on my Praxis because I may want
13 to go to law school or I may want to take part in
14 my family’s business. They need help. Or I may
15 want to take over one day. Or I want to pursue a
16 different career path. I want to run for office.
17 So what happens then? What happens if —
18 if the student who has that degree, who has that
19 option, decides that they don’t want to participate
20 in that profession? Why -- and they don’t need to
21 make the financial investment to pay for the
22 Praxis, number one, and -- and decide that they
23 want to go that route.
24 So what happens in that case?
25 DR. GROVES: They’re fully qualified for 34
1 their bachelor’s in liberal studies.
2 REP. EMRICK: What happens if five years
3 later they want to go teach? They can’t.
4 DR. GROVES: They’s have to come back and
5 rework that.
6 REP. EMRICK: Then they’d have to come
7 back to Clarion and re-enroll and rework that.
8 Which means what?
9 DR. GROVES: Without their -
10 REP. EMRICK: Another 15, 17, $20,000 for
11 the year? For Clarion?
12 MR. PULLER: If I could also interject
13 something here, sir, when you were indicating about
14 going to other states to become a teacher, most of
15 the states through their process of reciprocity
16 really seek out Pennsylvania teachers because of
17 our very, very high standards.
18 REP. EMRICK: Assuming they pass the
19 Praxis before they graduate from Clarion.
20 Otherwise, those -- those other states can’t
21 recruit teachers from Clarion who have not passed
22 the Praxis because you haven’t given them the
23 degree they earned and the certification. Right?
24
25 teach is graduating with a degree, a four-year 35
1 degree, in education from an institution. That’s
2
3 have to pass the Praxis exam in order to step into
4 the classroom.
5 So if you don’t give the kid the degree
6 they’ve earned and they decide, I’m going to move
7 to Colorado and I want to move there and I want to
8 teach there, and then I ’ ll worry about certifying
9 myself in Colorado and taking their exams and going
10 through the process there. I don’t need to do it
11 in Pennsylvania. I want to do it in Colorado. Or
12 Montana or anywhere else.
13 Your kids can’t do that because you
14 haven’t given them the degree that they’ve earned.
15 Your kids cannot do that. Correct?
16 DR. GROVES: By our standards they have
17 now earned that degree.
18 REP. EMRICK: Thank you. You’re correct.
19 Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
20 CHAIRMAN CLYMER: The chair thanks the
21 gentleman and recognizes Representative English.
22 REP. ENGLISH: Thank you, Mr. Chair.
23 I ’ m new to this and trying to figure it
24 out, if you don’t mind. Can you give me some
25 statistics, let’s say, for the past four years and, 36
1 you know, how many students have completed -- how
2 many -- how many enrolled students that completed
3 everything passed the exam?
4 I mean what’s -- what’s — I’m looking for
5 a ratio so that we have an idea of -- be -- because
6 there’s going to be some percentage. What I
7 understand is, if they don’t pass that exam, then
8 they’re only getting a liberal arts degree.
9 MR. PULLER: Yes, sir. Going back to the
10 spring of 2011, we had 157 teacher candidates out
11 in the field and three of them did not pass the
12 Praxis II exam and/or have the 3.0 GPA to
13 graduate.
14 In the fall of ’11 we had a hundred — 100
15 student teacher candidates out into the field and
16 two of those did not meet all of our requirements.
17 In the spring of 2012, we had 161 students
18 out in the field and two did not meet all the
19 requirements.
20 In the fall of 2012, we had 97 teacher
21 candidates in the field and that is also when the
22 new Pearson exams came into play and we had four
23 who did not pass.
24 In the spring of 2013, we have 130 -- or
25 we had 130 teacher candidates and we are still 37
1 waiting. They have this current semester to finish
2 and there are five that are still waiting to
3 complete all of their requirements.
4 REP. ENGLISH: What does your school do
5 for students that are in the pipeline that will be
6 graduating in this year, ’ 14, ’ 15, ’ 16, ’ 17, what
7 do you all do to ensure to help them not be the two
8 or three or four that are unsuccessful? Like can
9 you describe practically how you help them? And -
10 MR. PULLER: Yes.
11 REP. ENGLISH: And make sure, because I’m
12 sure you want everyone -
13 MR. PULLER: Yes.
14 REP. ENGLISH: -- to complete it.
15 MR. PULLER: Once they do take the Praxis
16 II or Pearson exam before they do their student
17 teaching and if they’re not successful in
18 completing that, to pass -- to meet the current
19 pass rate, we do offer tutoring sessions and we do
20 offer individual tutoring.
21 Some students take that as an advantage
22 and some students try to do some tutoring or -- or
23 study skills or things on their own.
24 But we do offer. It’s not mandatory that
25 they take, but we do offer tutoring. 38
1 REP. ENGLISH: Do you have anything in
2 your curriculum before they take the exam and are
3 unsuccessful?
4 DR. GROVES: The -- PDE standards for the
5 teacher certificate, that dictates the -- the
6 standards throughout the teacher certification
7 programs for the early childhood, mid level, or
8 high s chool.
9 So we're addressing those standards all
10 the way through their classes and all the way
11 through their various field experiences.
12 So that -- that does -- I guess it aligns
13 all the way down through and all the way up,
14 whichever way you wanted to look at it.
15 REP. ENGLISH: In sitting on this
16 committee, we hear of students taking Keystone
17 exams or — or PSSAs in the past and they're —
18 they're nervous. They get worked up at it.
19 I would assume that's the same taking this
20 e x a m.
21 MR. PULLER: Yes.
22 REP. ENGLISH: As I was when I took the
23 bar exam. You know, it's a lot of anxiety and
24 it's — it's — it's that day, you know. So it's
25 all or nothing. 39
1 It just -- I’m just frankly shocked that
2 your degree is not in education after. Doing all
3 this work and investing this money to say, well,
4 sorry, you know, you -- you didn’t pass the flight
5 exam or, you know, you didn’t — you couldn’t do
6 enough physical activity. You know, you couldn’t
7 get over the wall. Think of it in some military
8 duties or something.
9 I ’ m j ust perplexed or shocked that Clarion
10 doesn’t award that degree. At least in education.
11 You still might not have the certification. I
12 could -- I could complete law school, but you’re
13 not bar certified.
14 I could complete -- I could be an
15 accounting graduate with an B.S. in accounting.
16 You’re just not a CPA for — it just seems -- I’m
17 j ust -- again, I’ m baffled why you would have this
18 hindrance on any successful college student, j ust
19 not successful on that exam, walk away and discard
20 t h e m.
21 DR. GROVES: Well, discard is a pretty
22 harsh word. But I think part of the difference
23 there is, if I graduated with my bachelor’s degree
24 in accounting and I eventually want to sit down for
25 t h e C P A , I c a n g o i n a n d g e t a j o b a n d p r a c t i c e 40
1 that until I take the exam and pass that.
2 What we are saying is that if you have an
3 education degree from Clarion, you are -- you meet
4 all the eligibility for certification. If you
5 can’t pass that test here, you have not met the —
6 that demand, that requirement yet.
7 REP. ENGLISH: To -
8 MR. PULLER: Going back on that, sir, with
9 the Praxis -- the Praxis II exam, specifically like
10 in social studies, that is all content oriented for
11 the -- for the Praxis II.
12 REP. ENGLISH: Do you estimate the 8, 900
13 students currently enrolled, do they know that
14 today you must pass that exam after you’ve
15 completed all of your studies and that’s the only
16 way you’re getting a degree from our university in
17 education?
18 Do they -- do they know that today?
19 DR. GROVES: Absolutely. That is in the
20 catalog. It’s in all the materials, in any of the
21 field experiences. It is in the — after being
22 admitted to the university, when they apply to the
23 teacher certification program, that standard is
24 there all the way through. They are very aware of
25 that. 41
1 MR. PULLER: And then when they do go out,
2 the blue paper that I had passed to Representative
3 Emrick, with our current policy, students do sign
4 off saying that, yes, they do understand and -- and
5 know and agree that they have to have the 3. 0 and
6 to complete the Pearson or Praxis II exams.
7 REP. ENGLISH: Thank you, gentlemen.
8 Thank you, Mr. Chair.
9 CHAIRMAN CLYMER: The chair thanks the
10 gentleman.
11 Recognizes Representative Truitt for
12 questions.
13 REP. TRUITT: Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
14 And some of my questions have already been
15 answered.
16 I just wanted to — I’m trying to draw
17 some analogies between the teaching profession and
18 my own, which is engineering, and understand this
19 testing thing. And I — I -- what I — in
20 engineering and I -- we -- we can graduate, we get
21 our degree, and then we only have to pass the test
22 if we want to call ourselves professional
23 engineers, for example.
24 It’s about 16 hours of testing. Some of
25 it’s multiple choice. Some of it is — it covers 42
1 everything from physics to statistics to calculus
2 to -- there’s actually some accounting on there.
3 Can you give me an idea what’s on these
4 Praxis exams? How long do they take? How many
5 hours of testing is involved and -- and what is -
6 what is the content of the test?
7 MR. PULLER: Each -- excuse me. Each -
8 just looking at the Praxis II, in specifically
9 social studies, social studies takes over a very
10 wide content area from geography to history to, I
11 believe, anthropology.
12 DR. GROVES: Political science.
13 MR. PULLER: Political science, yes. So
14 in the Praxis test, perhaps A, Praxis Test II for
15 social studies, Test A, they may stress history or
16 world history, U.S. history.
17 Praxis Test B for social studies might
18 have a stronger emphasis on economics. Praxis Test
19 C might have more of geography.
20 So each of the various tests you’re not
21 always guaranteed that, oh, okay, well, I was
22 short on — or fell short on Praxis II Test Form A
23 on -- on history and my strength is economics, that
24 I didn’t have a lot of economics on that test.
25 REP. TRUITT: So are you saying you — you 43
1 take a test that’s tailored to what you intend to
2 teach or are you saying -
3 MR. PULLER: No.
4 REP. TRUITT: Do you take one whichever -
5 MR. PULLER: With the Praxis, you -- you
6 -- it’s kind of potluck. You do not know.
7 For the given content area, such as social
8 studies, there’s various forms of the test and you
9 do not know or you cannot request that you want
10 Form A or Form B or whatever.
11 REP. TRUITT: So if you want to be a math
12 teacher, you might end up taking a social studies
13 exam?
14 MR. PULLER: No. No.
15 REP. TRUITT: Okay.
16 MR. PULLER: No.
17 REP. TRUITT: That’s what I’m trying to
18 figure out.
19 DR. GROVES: At the high school level a
20 Praxis II is required. They can take the specialty
21 exam. So in your analogy that person would take a
22 mathematics exam Praxis, or my case years ago an
23 English exam. That’s — that’s a Praxis II.
24 There are specific exams related to
25 44
1 REP. TRUITT: Okay.
2 DR. GROVES: And I think they average
3 about two to three hours -
4 MR. PULLER: Yes.
5 DR. GROVES: — per exam.
6 MR. PULLER: Yes.
7 REP. TRUITT: That makes more sense. And
8 you’re saying so -- that the questions are more —
9 more focused on whether you know the material that
10 you’re intending to teach as opposed to whether you
11 understand the techniques involved in teaching?
12 MR. PULLER: That is correct, yes.
13 REP. TRUITT: Okay. Very good.
14 Thanks, Mr. Chairman.
15 CHAIRMAN CLYMER: The chair thanks the
16 gentleman and recognizes Representative Longietti
17 for a question.
18 REP. LONGIETTI: Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
19 And thank you both for your testimony
20 today. And I certainly want to preface my comments
21 that I certainly support rigorous programs for
22 teacher preparation. I think that’s important.
23 Having said that, I just want to work
24 through this a little bit. Has Clarion done any
25 inquiry -- I guess it puzzles me. 45
1 So if the Praxis II exam is testing basic
2 skills, and we're saying that you ought to have —
3 you ought to be able to master that in order to get
4 the degree -
5 DR. GROVES: Can I interrupt for a
6 moment ?
7 REP. LONGIETTI: Sure.
8 DR. GROVES: Excuse me. But there are two
9 sets of Praxis exams. There's a Praxis for basic
10 skills. That happens to be -- at the undergraduate
11 level, that's a requirement for admission into the
12 program. And then there's Praxis II, and that is
13 related to your content area and your subject.
14 REP. LONGIETTI: Okay. All right. Thank
15 you for that.
16 In any event, so we're saying, well, we're
17 not going to award the education degree unless you
18 pass that exam. You -- you really just haven't
19 measured up.
20 Yet at the same time we have the course
21 work over here and the person has completed and
22 received satisfactory grades on the course work.
23 And I realize the percentages are
24 relatively low of the people that fail to pass the
25 test. But is there any -- any internal inquiry 46
1 going on saying, well, how in the world did they
2 pass the course work? If they really didn’t
3 measure up, then why are we granting them
4 satisfactory grades in the course work?
5 There’s something -- there’s a disconnect
6 here it seems like.
7 DR. GROVES: We have an — an assessment
8 cycle which is part of our accreditation for NCATE
9 that’s based on semester and academic year and when
10 we have anomalies, we do look at those.
11 A n d t h a t ’ s o n e o f t h e q u e s t i o n s a s t o - -
12 are we looking at one, two percent of our students
13 may do well in their academic grades but they’re
14 not passing one of two exams, the Praxis II or else
15 the Pearson, is there an alignment? Is there a
16 pattern maybe we can find?
17 We study the exams. We can see the
18 components of the exams. We try and make sure that
19 the teacher certification content and skill areas
20 are aligned with them.
21 We also work primarily with the College of
22 Arts and Sciences where the major courses are
23 taught to align that.
24 And it’s -- it is somewhat of a moving
25 target. Truthfully, what — we’ve done an awful 47
1 lot of -- of revision of the programs to meet PDE
2 standards and meet the NCATE standards.
3 I think that we can show AN increasing
4 pattern where the majority, vast majority of our
5 students are doing well, and there is alignment
6 between their university classroom experience and
7 their exams and also then their ability to work as
8 a teacher in a K-12 classroom.
9 REP. LONGIETTI: That just seems to me
10 pretty important. Because if we’re saying that if
11 you went through our course work, you really ought
12 to be able to pass the Praxis and even though it’s
13 not a high percentage of people that do that, if
14 that’s occurring, then it’s -- in a certain way,
15 it’s an indictment on what happened in the course
16 wo r k.
17 You know, in the -- in the law school,
18 maybe because I’ m a lawyer, the law school analogy
19 does appeal to me to a certain extent that the law
20 school says, well, you did -- you did complete the
21 course work satisfactorily. We do believe you
22 deserve the degree. We can’t — we think you ought
23 to be prepared for the bar exam; but, you know,
24 whether or not you pass it or you don’t, we still
25 think that you completed a law degree. 48
1 If you’re saying that the Praxis really
2 measures what should happen in the course work,
3 then — then there really needs to be a focus on
4 why in the world is -- are some of these people not
5 passing the Praxis.
6 Are we -- are we falling short somewhere
7 in some of our course work? Are grades being
8 handed out that shouldn’t be handed out? I don’t
9 - - I do n’ t kno w.
10 But there seems to be -- if there’s
11 supposed to be a line, there seems to be a little
12 bit of a disconnect there.
13 DR. GROVES: I think that statistically
14 with 97, 98 percent of the people passing the
15 Praxis II, or, the Pearson, in general the program
16 is ali gned.
17 We do on a continuous basis look at and
18 find the patterns where, if there’s a misalignment,
19 we change and revise the programs. It’s not a
20 static process. It is part of our -- our
21 accreditation standards for NCATE. It is something
22 the PDE expects, that if we see any kind of pattern
23 where we can’t understand it, that it runs counter,
24 we do something about that.
25 REP. LONGIETTI: Understood. And we’re 49
1 talking a small percent. But — but if the
2 programs are really, really aligned and, you know,
3 the person has made it through, then there must be
4 some other explanation as to why they’re not
5 passing the Praxis.
6 Because we’ve aligned it that they’ve
7 passed the course work. Is there
8 some other explanation as to why they’re having
9 trouble with the Praxis.
10 Thank you.
11 CHAIRMAN CLYMER: The chair thanks the
12 gentleman.
13 I believe that Representative Emrick has
14 one final question that he’d like to ask.
15 REP. EMRICK: Actually it’s not — it’s
16 not a question, Mr. Chairman, but thank you.
17 Two — two things. When Representative
18 Truitt -- I know he had to step out. Just to
19 clarify, his question about the Praxis, that
20 conversation was specific to the content area of
21 these -- the major or the section that the student
22 wants to teach in.
23 There are other components to the Praxis
24 in addition to the content area that students must
25 take that are separate and pass as a full component 50
1
2 So I just wanted to make that point for
3 t h e c o mmi t t e e .
4 And secondly, Mr. Chairman, I just want to
5 say to you and for the good of the committee, for
6 the information of the committee, that I would like
7 to work with you, Mr. Chairman, and staff, after
8 this hearing is over, over the next couple of
9 weeks to put an amendment together to consider
10 carving out the PASSHE system and their sovereign
11 immunity to allow students who’ve been victimized
12 by these polices to have a cause of action.
13 So that’s something I want to make -- make
14 known and want to discuss with you and staff after
15 this is over. So thank you.
16 CHAIRMAN CLYMER: The chair thanks the
17 gentleman and will recognize Representative O ’ Neill
18 for one comment.
19 REP. O ’NEILL: Great. And thank you,
20 Mr. Chairman. I’m sorry to mess up your schedule.
21 But real quick, these graduation
22 requirements that we’re discussing with Clarion, is
23 that the same requirement for all the other 13
24 P A S S H E s c h o o l s o r i s i t j u s t C l a r i o n ?
25 DR. GROVES: To the best information that 51
1 I have right now, I think it’s nine of the 14
2 PASSHE schools want the -- require passing the
3 Praxis II or Pearson.
4 It’s not -- all of them are not for
5 graduation. Some of them you have to pass it
6 before you can do your student teaching. Some of
7 them you have to pass during the student teaching.
8 Some of them waive that.
9 REP. O ’NEILL: And then they -- okay. Is
10 there any other Higher Ed schools in Pennsylvania
11 that have the same requirements that you do?
12 DR. GROVES: I don’t know that.
13 REP. O ’NEILL: Okay. Great. Thank you.
14 CHAIRMAN CLYMER: The chair thanks the
15 gentleman.
16 A n d t h e c h a i r t h a n k s D r . G r o v e s a n d
17 Mr. Puller for being here today, for answering
18 questions -
19 DR. GROVES: Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
20 MR. PULLER: Thank you.
21 CHAIRMAN CLYMER: -- of the committee.
22 Thank you for your attendance.
23 We’ll move on now and our next testifiers
24 represent the Association of Independent Colleges
25 and Universities of Pennsylvania. And our two 52
1 testifiers are -- with us this morning are
2 Dr. Constance N. Nichols, Chair of the Education
3 Department of Grove City College, and Dr. Divonna
4 M. Stebick, assistant professor, Education
5 Department of Gettysburg College. A Muhlenberg
6 rivalry, by the way.
7 DR. STEBICK: Yeah.
8 CHAIRMAN CLYMER: A Muhlenberg graduate.
9 DR. STEBICK: Can we put that aside?
10 DR. NICHOLS: Okay.
11 CHAIRMAN CLYMER: Okay.
12 DR. NICHOLS: I'll begin. Thank you,
13 members, for giving me the opportunity to testify
14 today and I applaud the efforts of Representative
15 Emrick in having this important clarifying language
16 to Chapter 49.2 through House Bill 1623.
17 It's important to note that my testimony
18 comes from my perspective of the Education
19 Department Chairmanship at Grove City College, and
20 while I represent an institution with the
21 As s oci ati o n of I nde pendent Col l ege s , my te s ti mony
22 is not meant to be inclusive of all of those
23 institutions.
24 However, it's important to state that we
25 network very actively. Myself, I am a member of 53
1 the Pennsylvania Association of Teacher Educators,
2 the American Association of Teacher Educators, the
3 Pennsylvania Education Deans Forum, and I work with
4 the American Association of Employment in
5 Education.
6 Also, my testimony regarding affordability
7 is framed from the notion of an institution that
8 prides itself on keeping college costs within
9 reasonable means for families, and I also served as
10 a member of the Governor’s Advisory Commission on
11 Higher Education which grappled with issues of
12 college access and affordability.
13 At Grove City College we’ve always
14 maintained that becoming a licensed educator is a
15 process with two distinct tracks, an education
16 track and a licensure track.
17 The education track falls squarely into
18 the responsibility of the institution, the
19 preparation of our pre-service teachers. And this
20 includes a strong curriculum, a program designed to
21 meet or exceed the state requirements that ensure
22 teacher candidates have classroom ability through
23 field work and student teaching and content
24 knowledge, through our GPA requirements and our
25 competencies. 54
1 This track is vetted through a process
2 informed by our alumni, our partners in preK
3 through 12 schools, and the approval process from
4 the Pennsylvania Department of Education.
5 The other track in this journey for
6 educators is licensing and that is laid out by the
7 Pennsylvania Department of Education to ensure that
8 candidates meet state requirements.
9 We believe understanding these processes
10 as two distinct tracks is important, and problems
11 arise when either the state or institutions try to
12 force these pathways onto one common rail.
13 However, ultimate direction is shared, ensuring
14 full quality teachers candidates are prepared.
15 The education track as laid out by higher
16 education institution has multiple missions. These
17 relate to institution issues such as admission,
18 institutional admission and identity, and
19 sensitivity to the diversity of the career
20 aspiration of our students.
21 Thus, to assume that both of these
22 pathways have the same destination is short
23 sighted, and policies at the institutional level
24 that bend state regulations to force teacher
25 candidates to pursue Pennsylvania certification or 55
1 to use regulations to deny students opportunities
2 to move forward in their educational endeavors we
3 believe is inappropriate.
4 Pennsylvania is a net exporter of teacher
5 candidates. Due to the combined high quality of
6 teacher preparation institutions and very strong
7 regulations as laid out by the state, such as
8 maintaining a 3. 0 grade point average, clearances,
9 and rigorous field work, student teaching,
10 Pennsylvania is a national leader in preparing
11 outstanding teachers.
12 This year at Grove City College our
13 education candidates include 355 students from
14 freshman to seniors drawn from 26 different states
15 and three foreign countries. These students come
16 to Pennsylvania to receive their education because
17 they want to attend a high quality institution that
18 will prepare them for wherever they feel called to
19 teach in the future.
20 While many of our candidates get certified
21 in Pennsylvania, that decision to pursue
22 certification is their choice. Due to our national
23 draw and the high demand from out-of-state
24 recruiters, large numbers of our graduates elect to
25 pursue opportunities outside of Pennsylvania for 56
1 their teaching careers.
2 We have never tied passage of the Praxis
3 or Pearson exams to program completion or used such
4 instruments in our assessment of our students. We
5 believe that doing so forces them all to pay for
6 exams that may not fit with their career
7 aspirations.
8 For example, a candidate seeking to work
9 in an international school, a district outside of
10 Pennsylvania, or in a private school or simply to
11 pursue fields in their content area of study, such
12 as English, math, or graduate level work in
13 specialized areas, may see little value in paying
14 for costly exams that will not fit with their
15 career pathway.
16 I mentioned at Grove City College that
17 affordability is key to our mission. Timing of
18 tests to a student’s graduation and progress adds
19 unnecessary financial burdens. The exams, prices
20 set by outside vendors adds an arbitrary cost to a
21 student that may not be necessary for their
22 intended career aspirations. So to pursue
23 certification in Pennsylvania, fees from the state,
24 as well as fees from these vendors, cost
25 anywhere -- for these tests, costs anywhere from a 57
1 low of $325 to a high of $674.
2 Furthermore, using these exams as a
3 gatekeeping mechanism to deny progress to
4 candidates for graduation is a far more costly
5 proposition. The idea of forcing a student to take
6 additional course work or semesters of study as
7 they wait to either take or pass such exams is not
8 in keeping with our values for maintaining an
9 affordable higher education degree.
10 We encourage students to move forward on
11 both their education and licensure tracks, but
12 respect that as graduation approaches their
13 pathways may veer in different directions. We use
14 other measures to ensure that students have the
15 requisite content and pedagogical skills to
16 progress into ever increasing field work and
17 student teaching by requirements laid out by grade
18 point averages.
19 This fulfills our responsibility to our
20 school partners to ensure that only capable
21 preservice teachers are provided the opportunity to
22 work with school children in these experiences.
23 Another important issue in this area
24 relates to institutional autonomy and expertise.
25 It is worth noting that teacher certification exams 58
1 are created, overseen, and evaluated by national
2 for-profit companies, not professors of education.
3 Using these assessment systems as a
4 mechanism tied to student progress or grades in our
5 program inappropriately yields our instructional
6 decision-making on a teacher candidate’s
7 capabilities to a for-profit company.
8 As an illustration, it’s worth noting that
9 Pennsylvania recently moved to a new assessment
10 system for some teaching certificates. A different
11 company replaced another credentialing exam in
12
13 This has not been a smooth transition.
14 Tests can have problems related to reliability and
15 vali — lidity. And as mentioned previously,
16 Pennsylvania is known nationally for high quality
17 teaching candidates. That is a reputation that has
18 been forged through the careful development of
19 education programs by education experts and
20 professors and universities and the program review
21 and monitoring process by the Pennsylvania
22 Department of Education.
23 I am not fond of ceding such incredibly
24 important instructional decisions away from
25 individual institutions and state control to 59
1 for-profit national testing firms.
2 Perhaps the hidden issue in this area
3 relates to federal reporting mandits — mandates
4 for higher education institutions that prepare
5 teachers.
6 Under federal Title II regulations,
7 institutions are required to share data about the
8 number of students who graduate from their programs
9 and pass teacher certification testing. The
10 federal reporting puts pressure on institutions to
11 show a high correlation between the number of
12 students that complete a program and the number of
13 students that pass exams.
14 Thus, there may be a temptation for
15 institutions to use existing ambiguities in the
16 state Chapter 49.2 regulations to justify delaying
17 progress for graduation until students show mastery
18 of these teacher exams.
19 The proposed language of House Bill 1623
20 clarifies that denying progress based on outside
21 testing data is not an appropriate mechanism to
22 manipulate pass rates on teachers' exams.
23 Indeed, if institutions find their
24 candidates are not passing exams, then it's up to
25 the institution to determine the cause. It is 60
1 an -- is it an individual student issue? Could it
2 be the testing instrument at fault? Those are
3 questions best left to the institution to answer,
4 not problems for the individual student to solve
5 for institutions through the denial of forward
6 motion in their preparation.
7 I will add one more statement to my
8 testimony that isn’t in these written comments.
9 There is some language in House Bill 1512 that
10 asserts that the basic skills test is required for
11 students to enter into a teacher preparation
12 program.
13 I believe that that language also denies
14 forward progress for students, causing them to have
15 to take extra courses until they pass that as they
16 enter into their sophomore year, and I recommend
17 that language be looked at.
18 In closing, I thank Representative Emrick
19 and his colleagues for this important clarification
20 that I believe affirms the diversity of career
21 pathways in education, protects students from
22 needless expenditures and hurdles in their academic
23 progress and degree attainment, and ultimately
24 wrests control of our state’s teaching quality into
25 an appropriate partnership between colleges and 61
1 universities and the Department of Education.
2 Thank you.
3 CHAIRMAN CLYMER: The chair thanks the
4 gentle lady and recognizes Dr. Stebick for her
5 testimony.
6 DR. STEBICK: Thank you, Representative
7 Joe Emrick, and the rest of the House Education
8 Committee for granting me permission to testify
9 today in regard to proposed House Bill 1623.
10 I, as Dr. Nichols, am not representing be
11 AICUP because we have great autonomy in our
12 independent institutions. I speak and I testify on
13 behalf of Gettysburg College.
14 Currently, my role in the field of
15 education lies most predominantly at Gettysburg
16 College in the Department of Education where I ’m a
17 assistant professor for students who wish to pursue
18 the Pennsylvania teaching certificate as well as
19 for students who wish to explore educational
20 studies through a minor.
21 However, my background in education
22 expands many years in public schools, serving as a
23 teacher, literacy coach, professional mentor, and
24 specialist in kindergarten through grade 12.
25 I also volunteer quite heavily in the 62
1 nonprofit sector as a tutor and education director
2 at Enlightened Learning Center.
3 My career in the profession of education
4 has evolved through choices that I made. I share
5 this brief biography to help contextualize the
6 following testimony.
7 At Gettysburg College, like Lycoming
8 College, teacher certification is a program. It is
9 not a major. Students major in their content
10 area.
11 We take great pride at Gettysburg College
12 in our teacher preparation program where students
13 have an opportunity to blend their content that
14 they are most passionate about with the pedagogy
15 required to meet success in basic education public
16 classrooms.
17 Our preservice teachers leave our program
18 prepared to teach and positively influence the
19 students of the 21st century. We accomplish this
20 goal through our highly intense and selective
21 teaching preparation program. Our programs include
22 mostly secondary certification candidates where
23 students have a choice to blend their deep
24 knowledge of content with the deep knowledge of
25 pedagogy. 63
1 In order to ensure that students have a
2 strong foundation in content, as well as pedagogy,
3 students are required to meet the 3.0 GPA that you,
4 our lawmakers, have effectively established.
5 This benchmark is a very strong statement
6 to incoming students. They know from the onset of
7 their enrollment in the program that Pennsylvania
8 has high standards, that Pennsylvania certified
9 teachers have deep knowledge, and as a result these
10 preservice teachers will be able to facilitate
11 great learning in today’s classrooms.
12 Many of my students choose teaching
13 because these opportunities provide real world
14 experiences before they actually get out into the
15 real world. These opportunities are fuel for
16 learning about how to work with different people of
17 different ages, abilities, and cultures. They
18 learn to be innovative, collaborative thinkers,
19 because my students choose to study education
20 within our teacher preparation program, alongside a
21 deep study of content.
22 Since our students have this choice to
23 enroll in our teacher certification program after
24 declaring a major in a content area, such as
25 physics, chemistry, math, et cetera, they choose to 64
1 journey through a process that provides various
2 experiences in a service-based profession,
3 education.
4 We are not a vocational education
5 program. Rather we are an educational studies
6 program providing choice for our students who
7 explore multiple ways of demonstrating their deep
8 understanding of their deeply investigative
9 content.
10 One way students can continue to
11 investigate their own understanding of content is
12 through teaching. However, in order to be an
13 effective teacher, the student chooses to learn
14 pedagogy as deeply as they learn content. And,
15 quite frankly, this can be most easily achieved
16 through our teacher certification program.
17 Students choose to obtain clearances and
18 adapt their campus schedule in order to have enough
19 time to visit the field, kindergarten through grade
20 12 settings, during each semester as they begin to
21 practice sharing their content in ways that are
22 most appropriate.
23 The Commonwealth of Pennsylvania has a
24 strong, distinct, historical reputation for
25 providing a solid teacher preparation background. 65
1 We draw students from multiple teacher preparation
2 programs from across the nation as well as from
3 around the globe.
4 Because these multiple experiences and
5 high standards, such as the competencies and the
6 GPA, provide various rigorous experiences. Some
7 may view this as a saturation of the field of
8 teacher preparation. In reality, it is just the
9 opposite.
10 This strong reputation brings new people
11 and new ideas to the Commonwealth where students
12 choose to study pedagogy and content. Our students
13 choose to transfer their knowledge content through
14 their learned pedagogical skills in places beyond
15 the Commonwealth’s borders.
16 The transfer of knowledge to tomorrow’s
17 future through my program completers is a direct
18 result of the choice that my undergraduates make
19 when they enter our rigorous teacher program.
20 This careful selection should not be
21 blocked by an arbitrary and misguiding teaching
22 requirement that not also causes a financial burden
23 but also time and unwarranted stress as mentioned
24 before.
25 After all, the Pennsylvania Department of 66
1 Education has ensured that testing is not a
2 requirement to complete an approved teacher
3 preparation program with their shift to an online
4 application system, TIMS.
5 TIMS allows the institution's
6 officer to simply approve that the
7 candidate has completed an approved temporary -
8 teacher preparation program. The Pennsylvania
9 Department of Education determines if the candidate
10 has passed the required testing.
11 That leaves me one question to ponder. If
12 PDE does not make testing a requirement to
13 recommend a candidate for certification, why should
14 an institution of higher education's teacher
15 preparation program mandate this requirement?
16 It shouldn't. In fact, to do so places a
17 strong vocational emphasis on the educational
18 pursuit of the individual preservice teacher. Just
19 as students elect to pursue the high calling of
20 teaching, they deserve to have the choice in
21 determining if they elect to pursue obtaining a
22 teaching certificate as part of their career path.
23 The new language in Chapter 49. 2, a
24 teacher preparation program approved by the
25 Department of Education shall not require a student 67
1 to obtain a passing score on an assessment
2 administered pursuant to PA Code 49.18 as a
3 condition of graduation or include the student’s
4 score on the assessment as a component of a
5 student’s grade in any course provided that the
6 assessment of professional knowledge and practice
7 may be included as a component of student’s student
8 teaching grade supports this process to give this
9 choice back to the individual preservice
10 candidate.
11 Again, I thank Representative Emrick and
12 the rest of the House of -- Education Committee for
13 allowing me to testify on behalf of Gettysburg
14 College and the many students who attend other
15 private institutions who want to explore teaching.
16 CHAIRMAN CLYMER: The chair thanks
17 Dr. Stebick for her testimony and Dr. Nichols.
18 An y q u e s t i o n s f r o m t h e c o mmi t t e e ?
19 The chair recognizes Representative
20 Emrick.
21 REP. EMRICK: Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
22 I’ll be brief.
23 Thank you both very, very much for coming
24 today and for your testimony. It’s -- it’s
25 excellent. And I think it really shines a lot on 68
1 what we’re trying to correct here. So thank you
2 very much.
3 Dr. Nichols, just a quick question. One
4 of the things you mentioned in your testimony was
5 that Pennsylvania is an exporter of teacher
6 candidates.
7 DR. NICHOLS: Uh-huh.
8 REP. EMRICK: And you’re -- you’re the
9 expert, so I know you’re right. Right?
10 And Pennsylvania does have a renowned
11 reputation for producing great teachers. With that
12 being said, when you gave the example of Grove
13 City, you have 355 students from 26 states -
14 DR. NICHOLS: Uh-huh.
15 REP. EMRICK: -- and three foreign
16 counties. That’s impressive, first of all.
17 But second of all, it goes back to the
18 point brought up earlier, for those kids who come
19 to Grove City for a reason, it’s got a great
20 reputation, it’s a great institution, but they want
21 to go back home and teach -
22 DR. NICHOLS: Right.
23 REP. EMRICK: -- do they have the
24 option -- do they have to take the Praxis exams in
25 Pennsylvania? 69
1 DR. NICHOLS: Absolutely not.
2 REP. EMRICK: Okay. So they could go back
3 to their home state, any one of the 26, and get
4 their certification there?
5 DR. NICHOLS: Yes.
6 REP. EMRICK: They could choose to get
7 Pennsylvania certification after they graduate,
8 which would basically, as we said, qualify them to
9 teach in j ust about any state in the country
10 because our standards are so high.
11 DR. NICHOLS: Right.
12 REP. EMRICK: But they do have that
13 option. So -
14 DR. NICHOLS: Yes, they do, you know. And
15 so we encourage them to, but there’s a difference
16 between encourage and require.
17 The reason we encourage them is because of
18 the great reciprocity that Pennsylvania has.
19 REP. EMRICK: Right.
20 DR. NICHOLS: But we have students who
21 decide to go into mission work and -- and work in
22 orphanages and, you know, they’re raising money to
23 do that and we don’t believe it’s appropriate to
24 add undue financial burdens to them to take tests
25 that they may not feel fit their needs. 70
1 REP. EMRICK: Okay. Thank you very much.
2 And the last question I have, on your last
3 page, you talked about the federal Title II
4 regulations. Can you explain that -- that little
5 part of your testimony? Like what impact does that
6 have? Why -- why is that relevant to -
7 DR. NICHOLS: You know, I don’t want to -
8 you know, Grove City is not an expert on federal
9 regulations.
10 REP. EMRICK: Neither is the federal
11 government.
12 DR. NICHOLS: Especially right now. No
13 one could -
14 REP. EMRICK: Right.
15 DR. NICHOLS: -- answer our calls. But
16 there is some -- Title II, like all federal
17 regulations, is a moving target. Just when you
18 think you understand it, it changes a little bit.
19 And a f e w ye a r s a g o t h e r e wa s s o me
20 language put into the Title II reporting where you
21 had to -- as an institution, you had to report
22 the -- the number of students that did not pass
23 these exams.
24 Now, I cannot speak for how that gets
25 interpreted at other institutions. I will just 71
1 tell you, that my team, when we met and looked at
2 that, I did have someone on my team who said, you
3 know, we really maybe should require these exams
4 for our students because it would help us with our
5 Title II reporting. And I’m proud to say the rest
6 of my team said absolutely not. We’re not going to
7 do that, you know.
8 And so I -
9 REP. EMRICK: Their purpose of not?
10 DR. NICHOLS: You know, the purpose of
11 trying to inflate our ability to -- our students
12 tend to not have trouble on the teachers exams. I
13 need to state that, you know, ahead of time.
14 But it j ust speaks to a philosophical
15 thing where trying to, you know, grow your ability
16 to look like you have higher pass rates, I think
17 those things can be manipulated. I can’t say that
18 for sure because -
19 REP. EMRICK: Right.
20 DR. NICHOLS: -- it’s just -- I just know
21 in looking at the regulations it may be a
22 temptation.
23 REP. EMRICK: Thanks.
24 DR. NICHOLS: Uh-huh.
25 REP. EMRICK: Thank you very much. 72
1 DR. NICHOLS: Yes.
2 REP. EMRICK: Thank you both for coming
3 today.
4 DR. NICHOLS: Thank you.
5 CHAIRMAN CLYMER: The chair thanks the
6 gentleman. Recognizes Representative Longietti.
7 REP. LONGIETTI: Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
8 A n d t h a n k y o u t o b o t h o f y o u . An d a
9 special thanks to Dr. Nichols for the dialogue that
10 we’ve had over the years.
11 DR. NICHOLS: Yes.
12 REP. LONGIETTI: Certainly appreciate
13 that .
14 DR. NICHOLS: Thank you.
15 REP. LONGIETTI: Appreciate your work.
16 Is there a concern that we may be moving
17 in a direction that the Department is going to
18 require passage of -- of this type of an exam
19 for -- for the degree?
20 DR. NICHOLS: I believe that later on your
21 agenda you will have representatives from the
22 Department of Education.
23 But I can tell you in my work with them,
24 particularly in the last several months, I am so
25 pleased with the philosophy that they state 73
1 regarding these affirmations of diversity of career
2 pathways, and I don't see that as -- as being
3 something they're moving towards.
4 REP. LONGIETTI: Okay. Just, you know, I
5 guess, curious. Maybe I should look at people more
6 altruistic than I do, but, what -- you know, what
7 -- what's the dog that -- that you all have in this
8 fight? If -- if Clarion decides -- if you think
9 Clarion is misguided in what they're doing and
10 other institutions but, you know, you're not
11 hamstrung on your end that the Department doesn't
12 require it and you don't think they're heading in
13 that direction, other than being concerned for
14 students, is there any dog that you have in the
15 fight or -
16 DR. NICHOLS: Well, that's it. We're
17 educators.
18 REP. LONGIETTI: Okay.
19 DR. NICHOLS: I can -- at my institution
20 100 percent of our faculty has experience in K
21 through 12 schools.
22 And I can tell you, while it may seem, you
23 know, to be just an ideal, this is part of our
24 professional responsibility to advocate for sound
25 educational policy. And whether it impacts a 74
1 student in my institution or a student at another
2 institution -- and I would also say collectively we
3 have a vested interest to making sure that
4 Pennsylvania’s reputation as an outstanding place
5 to be prepared, whether you go to Gettysburg or
6 Grove City, or wherever, we -- we all share in that
7 collective.
8 REP. LONGIETTI: Thank you.
9 Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
10 CHAIRMAN CLYMER: The chair -- the chair
11 thanks the gentleman and recognizes Representative
12 O ’Neill.
13 REP. O ’NEILL: Thank you. Now I know why
14 everyone in your -- your students pass the test.
15 So...just real quick are you -
16 DR. NICHOLS: They don’t all pass the
17 test, no.
18 REP. O ’NEILL: Are you aware of any other
19 private or state-related schools in Pennsylvania
20 that have the same requirements as some of the
21 PASSHE schools in making this a graduation
22 requirement and you get a lesser degree or whatever
23 it is?
24 DR. STEBICK: I was not aware. Actually I
25 turned and spoke with Terry Barnaby from PDE while 75
1 Clarion was testifying and I was shocked. I said,
2 is this a common practice in other PASSHE schools?
3 So, yeah, I don’t have a dog in the room
4 that I want to fight for. But I agree that I’m a
5 educator through and through, that’s my life, and I
6 promote great, fair education.
7 A n d s o , n o , I - - I ’ m d i s a p p o i n t e d t h a t
8 other teacher preparation programs who are in the
9 Commonwealth would use such language -
10 REP. O ’NEILL: So you’re not aware of any
11 other schools?
12 DR. STEBICK: I am not aware.
13 REP. O ’NEILL: Great. Thank you. And
14 just for Mr. Longietti, no, I’m against dog biting.
15 CHAIRMAN CLYMER: The chair thanks the
16 gentleman and recognizes Representative Carroll.
17 REP. CARROLL: Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
18 Ladies, thank you both.
19 You both -- one mentioned that some of
20 your students do, in fact, take the Praxis II exam,
21 and I’ m interested to know what percentage, if you
22 could just give me a general number. I know it
23 wouldn’t be precise and it probably changes year to
24 year.
25 But, generally speaking, what percentage 76
1 of your students do take the Praxis exam in order
2 to secure the Pennsylvania certification?
3 DR. STEBICK: Oh, the -- the percentage
4 that take it where -- whenever, either during
5 student teacher or after graduation?
6 REP. CARROLL: Right.
7 DR. STEBICK: Right. 90 percent, 90 to 95
8 percent of my students do take it. And, again, I ’m
9 similar to Dr. Nichols in that I encourage them to
10 take it, even if they want to go to law school or
11 they want to do something else, the pedagogy and
12 the content is fresh in your mind and so most often
13 they take it during student teaching or several
14 months after and then they have it, just in case.
15 REP. CARROLL: About the same percentage
16 for your school as well?
17 DR. NICHOLS: Higher. And in -- in terms
18 of -- so if we graduate a hundred, we will probably
19 have about 94 that will take the Praxis exams.
20 And in terms of ability to pass them -
21 REP. CARROLL: That’s my obvious follow-up
22 question.
23 DR. NICHOLS: Excellent.
24 REP. CARROLL: So thank you for
25 answering. 77
1 DR. NICHOLS: Yeah. In terms of ability
2 to pass, last year we had two students who did not
3 pass -- and I hesitate to say these things without
4 my certification staff person here, but my
5 recollection is we had two students who didn’t
6 pass, not the whole exam, but one subsection of the
7 e x a m.
8 See, different exams have different
9 subsections.
10 REP. CARROLL: Right.
11 DR. NICHOLS: So -- so our pass rate was
12 very high. Those students retook the exam and
13 passed it the second time they took it.
14 DR. STEBICK: And we have a much smaller
15 pool of students. We only have about -- and I ’m
16 going to call them program completers because we’re
17 not a major of a completed program.
18 We only have about 15 to 25 each year and
19 over the course of the last five years we’ve had
20 one student not pass the Praxis II.
21 REP. CARROLL: Okay. Thank you both.
22 DR. NICHOLS: Uh-huh.
23 CHAIRMAN CLYMER: The chair thanks the
24 gentleman. The chair thanks our presenters for
25 being with us today for your very important 78
1 testimony. Thank you for traveling to Harrisburg
2
3 DR. STEBICK: Thank you.
4 CHAIRMAN CLYMER: -- to be with us.
5 DR. NICHOLS: A pleasure.
6 CHAIRMAN CLYMER: Our next presenter is
7 Dr. Amy Rogers, Assistant Professor and Chair of
8 the Education Department, and she’s representing
9 the Pennsylvania Association of Colleges and
10 Teacher Educators.
11 So, Dr. Rogers, welcome and we have your
12 testimony so you may begin.
13 DR. ROGERS: Okay. Thank you,
14 Representative Emrick and members of the House
15 Education Committee, for seeking input from various
16 educational entities on this very important matter,
17 House Bill 1623.
18 My name is Dr. Rogers or Dr. Amy Rogers.
19 I’ m assistant professor of education at Lycoming
20 College and a member of the board of directors of
21 the Pennsylvania Association of Colleges and
22 Teacher Educators.
23 On a personal note, I did teach social
24 studies and was a literacy coach in public schools
25 for 13 years and I’ ve been at Lycoming for seven 79
1 years.
2 And on an even more personal note, I
3 shared a cooperating teacher with Representative
4 Emrick, and I called Mr. Wiser and I asked him who
5 was the better of the student teachers and he said,
6 you taught him everything he knew, which means I
7 was a year older than you.
8 So -- but I’ m not speaking in terms of
9 Lycoming. I’m representing PAC-TE today.
10 Our association, PAC-TE, is a nonprofit
11 professional association representing professional
12 educators in Pennsylvania’s 92 institutions of
13 higher education that prepare teachers.
14 We are dedicated to providing strong
15 advocacy for professional prep educator programs
16 within the Commonwealth and serve as the voice for
17 professional educator preparation in Pennsylvania
18 by promoting quality professional ed prep
19 programs.
20 For this reason, it is our consensus of
21 the leadership of PAC-TE that professional teacher
22 certification should not be tied to a college or
23 university’s program graduation requirements.
24 A s s t a t e d i n C h a p t e r 4 9 . 2 , a t e a c h e r
25 preparation program approved by the Department of 80
1 Education shall not require a student to obtain a
2 passing score on an assessment administered
3 pursuant to Pennsylvania Code 49.18 as a condition
4 of graduation or include the student's score on the
5 assessment as a component of a student's grade in
6 any course, provided that the assessment of
7 professional knowledge and practice may be included
8 as a component of a student's teaching grade.
9 Therefore, our association presents the
10 following four arguments in support of House Bill
11 1623.
12 First, as an association, PAC-TE
13 subscribes to the belief that professional teacher
14 licensure certification requirements and college
15 university graduation requirements are two distinct
16 entities.
17 In this distinction that provides a degree
18 of autonomy -- or it is this distinction that
19 provides a degree of autonomy to each of the 92
20 institutions of higher education within the
21 Commonwealth that prepare teachers and their
22 individual teacher certification programs.
23 The act of licensing professional
24 educators, teachers, is delegated to the
25 Pennsylvania Department of Education. In making 81
1 their decision to license a professional educator
2 -- educator, PDE relies on the recommendation of
3 the chief certification officer of the recommending
4 higher education institution.
5 It is this university person who, by his
6 or her signature on the candidate’s application for
7 professional certificate, certifies that the
8 applicant is of high moral character and that the
9 candidate has met all of the requirements
10 established by his or her institution in PDE to
11 become a certified teacher.
12 In essence, if graduation is linked to
13 certification, the autonomy of each of the 92
14 teacher prep programs in the state institutions to
15 determine its own unique graduation requirement is
16 removed. That PDE certification requirements
17 supersede the institutions graduation
18 requirements.
19 Such a move would be unprecedented in any
20 other higher education major or program in the
21 state.
22 Second, the teacher preparation programs
23 offered in our state’s colleges and universities
24 have earned us a strong reputation, not only in
25 Pennsylvania, but throughout the nation. This 82
1 reputation comes from the in-class assignments
2 linked to real life situations as the high quality
3 and extensive field experiences in which our
4 students participate.
5 These experiences involving quality hours
6 with professionals in the field and students in the
7 schools are cornerstones of our PA prepared
8 teachers.
9 It is because of this high level of
10 combining academics with field experiences that
11 many of our programs are populated with students
12 from outside of our state. Our programs are
13 actually net importers of students who, because of
14 the high quality of the programs offered in our
15 state, choose Pennsylvania programs in which to
16 receive their professional program preparation
17 or -- who then may want to return to their home
18 state to teach rather than remain and teach in
19 Pennsylvania schools.
20 In essence, those individuals who return
21 to their home state with the educational background
22 and skills received in any of our programs are
23 promoting Pennsylvania to the students they
24 instruct year in and out.
25 Regardless from where the student hails, 83
1 it’s only after successfully fulfilling all
2 academic requirements, extensive field experiences,
3 and a semester of student teaching that candidates
4 are eligible for graduation from their respective
5 college or university. Then, and only then, are
6 candidates able to make application for initial
7 certification and licensure in Pennsylvania.
8 Moreover, we owe it to our students to be
9 sensitive to the fact that not everyone feels -- or
10 feels the need to heed the call to teach in
11 Pennsylvania; but, nonetheless, they can benefit
12 from our programs. Therefore, the option to
13 license or gain certification is ultimately their
14 choice .
15 Third, additional evidence of the quality
16 of our teacher ed programs is seen in the line-up
17 of recruiters from across the country that attend
18 our college and universities’ job fairs seeking to
19 recruit Pennsylvania prepared educators in their
20 schools.
21 While some of these recruiters are
22 attempting to have students from their states
23 return home to teach, many of these individuals
24 also are looking to more Pennsylvania students to
25 take jobs outside of our state, another indicator 84
1 of the quality of our programs.
2 And, lastly, it’s the analogy involving
3 two individuals, one -- I think someone had my
4 writing before we came -- to become a teacher, the
5 other who wants to practice law.
6 If this analogy -- in this analogy both
7 candidates enroll in programs. Both candidates
8 take the prerequisite course work and both
9 candidates successfully complete their college
10 studies and they’re able to graduate.
11 However, it’s only after passing the
12 certification test that the individual becomes a
13 teacher and after passing the bar exam does the
14 person receive the right to practice law. In
15 either case, the individual is not denied
16 graduation from the preparation program, but it’s
17 only after passing the required exam that she or he
18 is permitted to practice their craft.
19 Therefore, in conclusion, the bill before
20 you today sponsored by Representative Emrick
21 complements our current law, maintains each
22 program’s autonomy, and provides opportunities for
23 residents and nonresidents alike to study in any of
24 our teacher preparation programs.
25 Then, after completing the college or 85
1 university course work and having completed the
2 graduation requirements for the respective teacher
3 prep program, these candidates can choose whether
4 or not they want to apply for certification to
5 teach in PA.
6 It is because of these issues and those
7 previously discussed that the leadership of PAC-TE
8 objects to linking professional certification, a
9 state requirement to practice the art and science
10 of teaching, to graduation, an autonomous college
11 or university requirement, we strongly encourage
12 this committee to lend its support to House Bill
13 1623.
14 On behalf of PAC-TE, thank you for the
15 opportunity to provide input into your
16 decision-making.
17 CHAIRMAN CLYMER: Thank you very much,
18 Dr. Rogers for your very important testimony. We
19 appreciate it.
20 Ar e t h e r e a n y q u e s t i o n s f r o m me mb e r s o f
21 t h e c o mmi t t e e ?
22 The chair recognizes Representative
23 Truitt.
24 REP. TRUITT: Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
25 Thank you for your testimony. I don’t 86
1 want you to take this as being in disagreement with
2 your position. What I want to -- I’m learning a
3 lot from this hearing today, and one of the things
4 I’ m wondering is you talk a lot about the autonomy
5 of the institution and I’m wondering, aren’t we
6 kind of taking away some of their autonomy by
7 saying that Clarion, for example, wouldn’t be
8 allowed to make this graduation requirement?
9 If they want to make it their graduation
10 requirement and students know that going in,
11 what’s -- you know, I — the part that I’m
12 struggling with or am going to struggle with here
13 is taking away some autonomy for those
14 universities.
15 If you can help me over that -- that
16 barrier, it would help.
17 DR. ROGERS: And I agree. I would go back
18 to, as stated in Chapter 49.2 about the teacher
19 prep program approved shall not require a student
20 to obtain a passing score administered pursuant to
21 PA Code 49 and it’s -- and I don’t profess to be a
22 professor of law on this at all, but in my
23 understanding, at my institution, that we cannot
24 connect student assessments -- we have our own
25 in-house assessments, but we cannot connect that to 87
1 a student passing the — passing the test from
2 their -- testing requirement, the Praxis II, to be
3 able to go through.
4 A n d - -
5 REP. EMRICK: If I may, Dr. Rogers?
6 DR. ROGERS: Yes.
7 REP. EMRICK: I think the goal is to
8 create a clear delineation between the academic
9 standards set by the institution that the student
10 attends and the professional requirements
11 established by the totally separate institution,
12 being PDE, the Department of Ed, and that
13 connecting the two is where things get dicey in
14 making that a requirement of the academic
15 institution.
16 So I think the -- the goal is to -- as the
17 previous testifiers, Dr. Nichols and Dr. Stebick,
18 testified, that they want the best interests of the
19 educational process and institutions to remain as
20 they are and then it's upon the student and PDE to
21 go through the certification by passing the
22 Praxis.
23 So I think there's a — the goal is to
24 simply create the two different levels at this
25 point. 88
1 REP. TRUITT: Okay. But I’m still
2 struggling a little bit because it -- again, the
3 assertion in your testimony was that the -- the -
4 the practice of requiring someone to pass the exam
5 to get their degree is taking autonomy away from
6 educational institutions, whereas what we’re
7 proposing to do is to make it so that we’re taking
8 away one of their options.
9 If they want to make that a graduation
10 requirement, we’re saying you can’t make it a
11 graduation requirement. Aren’t we, in effect,
12 taking the autonomy away from the institutions that
13 want to do that, the nine PASSHE schools that -
14 that-- that want to make that a graduation
15 requirement?
16 DR. ROGERS: I am saying that -- from -
17 from PAC-TE’s perspective, I mean I can offer what
18 I do as a chief -- as a chief certification officer
19 at my own institution, I can say that a student’s
20 test score as -- as -- me as the chief
21 officer, in no way do I even get a
22 copy of the student’s test score to see. It goes
23 right to the state.
24 They can choose to send it to my
25 institution, but I don’t have to see the score to 89
1 be able to approve them for certification. The
2 certification part of that is all done through the
3 state.
4 S o i n t e r ms o f l i k e C l a r i o n o r a n y o f t h e
5 P A S S H E s c h o o l s g o i n g a h e a d a n d s e t t i n g i t a s a
6 graduation requirement, I’m saying that, from
7 PAC-TE’s perspective, we are saying in Chapter 49.2
8 that the assessment related to these tests
9 shouldn’t be connected to graduation. That
10 graduation -- but I know what you’re saying.
11 You’re saying that’s part of their graduation
12 requirement, that they would offer that as their
13 graduation, and we’re saying that according to our
14 Code 49. 18 graduation should not be connected to an
15 assessment based on a student’s grade -- or that it
16 cannot be -- the assessment cannot be connected to
17 the student’s grade in the course or the student’s
18 grade with it.
19 REP. TRUITT: Yeah. And I don’t disagree
20 with that point. I’m just— again, what I’m going
21 to struggle with here is taking autonomy from -
22 DR. ROGERS: Yeah.
23 REP. TRUITT: I represent West Chester
24 University. I don’t know if they’re one of the
25 nine who has this requirement. I’m certainly going 90
1 to look into that after this hearing.
2 And, you know, it -- it would be a
3 challenge for me to ever agree to something that
4 takes away their autonomy to do what they think is
5 best.
6 But just -- I’m trying to understand your
7 autonomy argument here.
8 But thank you, Mr. Chairman.
9 CHAIRMAN CLYMER: The chair thanks the
10 gentleman, and the chair recognizes Representative
11 Emrick.
12 REP. EMRICK: Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
13 Yeah, I just want to go back for a second
14 to the point and -- and we’ll — we’re going to get
15 clarification on the 14 institutions. Because when
16 this first was brought to our attention, it was
17 explained to us that of the 14, nine of those
18 PASSHE universities did not require the passing of
19 a Praxis as part of graduation and grades. Three
20 di d.
21 So nine did not. Three did. And two
22 were -- there were two others that I believe were
23 even more stringent than -- than Clarion and
24 someone else, the other two were doing.
25 So -- but -- but we’ll get 91
1 on exactly who -- what institutions do what.
2 Because we looked in, if I remember correctly, to
3 East Stroudsburg University, which is right by my
4 house, where -- my district, and they did not have
5 this policy in place. They were one — one of the
6 schools that did not.
7 So we’ll get clarification on that. So
8 thank you very much for your -
9 DR. ROGERS: Right.
10 REP. EMRICK: -- testimony today.
11 DR. ROGERS: You’re welcome.
12 REP. EMRICK: I think you’ve reinforced
13 many of the things we’ve heard already in a very
14 articulate manner, and we appreciate the support of
15 - - o f P A C - T E a n d r e a l l y l o o k i n g o u t f o r p r o d u c i n g
16 the quality of educator and the integrity of the
17 institution and the investment of the students who
18 attend those universities.
19 Because there really should not -- and I
20 understand what Representative Truitt is saying,
21 that, you know, are -- are we taking away some of
22 their autonomy? Yeah, we probably are.
23 But for what reason? It’s for the overall
24 integrity of the process and the quality of
25 programs and the students’ best interests. Because 92
1 there are lots of CPAs -- or accountants who go to
2 school, get their accounting degree, and choose to
3 never become a CPA.
4 And I’ ve talked to many of them, and they
5 have no interest and they — they just do what they
6 -- whatever course of -- that life takes them, they
7 go do it.
8 So to make -- to make your grade and your
9 certification based on passing the Praxis before
10 you graduate is ridiculous in my opinion.
11 DR. ROGERS: Uh-huh.
12 REP. EMRICK: And so — so I think you’re
13 right on the money. And I have no idea who Coach
14 Wiser is.
15 DR. ROGERS: Yeah.
16 REP. EMRICK: I think I heard of him
17 once .
18 DR. ROGERS: Yeah. Twice.
19 REP. EMRICK: Yeah. Let me -
20 DR. ROGERS: He’s still there.
21 REP. EMRICK: But thank you. Thank you
22 very much for your testimony. Thank you very much
23 for really articulating in -- in a great manner.
24 So thank you much for coming.
25 DR. ROGERS: You’re welcome. 93
1 Representative Truitt, I’ m -- I’ m hoping
2 that PDE can speak more to that, to the law part of
3 it, and from Chapter 354 and 49.2 and from the
4 assessment part of it with a linking so that you
5 have a clear understanding of it.
6 And as we all know, a lot of things change
7 at PDE, so we’re always trying to keep up-to-date
8 on it as well as they are, too, with changes.
9 So if there’s something that I didn’t
10 speak right on, that’s what -- I’m sure I’ll be
11 looking it up and seeing from there as well.
12 CHAIRMAN CLYMER: We thank you for your
13 testimony, and we’re going to move right into our
14 next testifier, which is the PA Department of
15 Education. Thank you.
16 DR. ROGERS: Uh-huh.
17 CHAIRMAN CLYMER: And we have with us some
18 very familiar faces with PDE. Carolyn Dumaresq,
19 who is the Acting Secretary of Education; and with
20 her is Jill Hans, Deputy Secretary, Office of Post
21 Secondary and Higher Education, and Theresa Lynn
22 Barnaby, Director, Bureau of School Leadership and
23 Teacher Quality.
24 So you can begin, Secretary Dumaresq, with
25 your testimony. 94
1 SECRETARY DUMARESQ: Thank you so much.
2 And thank you, Chairman Clymer, and members of the
3 House Education Committee for the opportunity to
4 speak with you today.
5 Teachers are one of the most integral part
6 of the child's education and Governor Corbett is
7 committed to making sure that our schools have
8 highly qualified and effective teachers in every
9 classroom through a number of other efforts I' ve
10 spoken to you about in the past.
11 This very first test in ensuring that
12 these standards are met are teacher preparation
13 programs controlled by the colleges and the
14 certification process controlled by the Department
15 of Education.
16 Both of the bills that we're talking about
17 today have positive impacts on the teaching
18 profession in Pennsylvania and the students
19 enrolled in teacher preparation programs by not
20 subjecting students to unnecessary or confusing
21 proces ses.
22 I'm glad to see the willingness of this
23 committee to tackle these issues. There are over
24 90 institutions of higher education in Pennsylvania
25 offering programs to prepare students to become 95
1 certified in the Commonwealth and to teach in our
2 Pennsylvania schools.
3 I’ d like to first concentrate my testimony
4 on House Bill 1512. Representative Bloom’s
5 leadership should be noted on the matter as he saw
6 a problem for his constituent and allowed PDE to
7 help him craft legislation to alleviate his
8 concern.
9 House Bill 1512 streamlines the
10 certification practice process through a number of
11 changes. First, the bill would waive the basic
12 skills test for those students already holding a
13 bachelor’s, master’s, or doctorate degree.
14 It would also provide students to
15 obtain -- who attain a graduate degree without
16 first getting a bachelor’s, which is becoming a new
17 process that we’re seeing in -- in schools, to be
18 eligible to be certified.
19 The legislation clarifies reciprocity for
20 all post baccalaureate programs from applicants who
21 received certification from a state with similar
22 standards for alternate programs.
23 House Bill 1512 changes the timing of the
24 basic skills assessment from an exit exam to the
25 point of formal entry into the program, and this is 96
1 important because we don’t want students enrolling
2 in and spending their money on the teacher
3 preparation program when they intend to become
4 certified in Pennsylvania only to find out two
5 years later, after spending their money and the
6 time, that they are not able to pass that basic
7 skills test or to demonstrate basic skills
8 competency to achieve Pennsylvania certification.
9 I ’d like now to turn the testimony over to
10 Deputy -- Deputy Secretary Hans’ remarks on House
11 Bill 1623.
12 The Department would like to thank
13 Representative Emrick for his hard work on this
14 legislation and his willingness to allow PDE to
15 collaborate with him on this bill.
16 Jill?
17 DEPUTY SEC. HANS: Good morning.
18 Education preparation programs prepare
19 students to be candidates for certification by
20 delivering a theory-based pedagogical and
21 content-specific training, as well as opportunities
22 for clinical practice.
23 Article 12 of the Pennsylvania School Code
24 lays out the process for certification of
25 educators. The article does not tie successful 97
1 passing of assessments to the
2 students’ ability to progress through their
3 program.
4 House Bill 1623 clarifies that a
5 PDE-approved preparation program cannot require a
6 student to obtain a passing score on an assessment
7 as a condition of graduation or include the
8 student’s assessment score as a component of the
9 student’s grade in any course.
10 PDE has witnessed institutions
11 inappropriately using a failing score on a
12 certification assessment by applying that score to
13 the student teaching experience.
14 Some institutions prevent students from
15 progressing to student teaching if the student has
16 not taken and passed a state-mandated
17 assessment. Some institutions withhold the
18 necessary requirement of recommending a student for
19 based on not passing a
20 asse ssment.
21 The above practices could lead to a
22 student being counseled out of their program and
23 placed into a general studies degree. When this
24 course of action is taken, the preparation program
25 is able to exclude these students from their 98
1 accountability indicators rather than count them as
2 noncompleters.
3 There are certain consequences that we
4 believe you should be aware of that students face
5 because of the actions of institutions of higher
6 education laid out above.
7 Noncompleters of the educator preparation
8 program are not able to take advantage of
9 Commonwealth certification regulations that may
10 help these students become certified. One of these
11 regulations is commonly referred to as the sliding
12 scale policy, whereas under this policy students
13 may use a combination of their GPA and assessment
14 score to meet their certification requirements.
15 A d d i t i o n a l l y , i f s t u d e n t s a r e c o u n s e l e d
16 out of their programs and into a general studies
17 degree, their test scores may not show data on test
18 pass rates for the preparation program. This is -
19 this, in turn, does not allow us to capture an
20 accurate picture of the institution’s preparation
21 program alignment with the state’s preparation
22 program guidelines.
23 If a large group of students in one
24 institution is having difficulty passing the
25 content tests, there may be a problem with the 99
1 quality of the program. This type of information
2 would allow PDE to help the institution build a
3 better program.
4 Thank you for the opportunity to testify
5 on these bills. The Department would like to
6 express its support for both House Bill 1512 and
7 House Bill 1623 and would urge the passage of these
8 pieces of legislation for the benefit of the
9 students in the Commonwealth.
10 If you have any questions, we would be
11 glad to answer them at this time.
12 CHAIRMAN CLYMER: Thank you for your
13 testimony at this time. The chair recognizes
14 Representative -- Representative Emrick for
15 questions.
16 REP. EMRICK: Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
17 Just can I have one second here to -
18 because there’s a certain part of your testimony
19 that I want to -- I want to bring out.
20 And it was specifically Secretary Hans, it
21 was your -- your section where you talk about PDE
22 has witnessed institutions inappropriately using a
23 failed -- failing score on a certification
24 assessment by applying that score to the student
25 teaching experience. 100
1 Now, what exactly do you mean by that
2 sentence?
3 DEPUTY SEC. HANS: We were contacted by a
4 student who received a D in student teaching in the
5 student teaching course because he failed a
6 certification assessment.
7 We were told by that institution that the
8 student actually performed A quality work but he
9 was assigned a D because he failed the
10 certification assessment.
11 To make matters worse, he failed the
12 assessment by one point. So had he been given the
13 A that he earned, he would have qualified to use
14 the sliding scale policy that we have specifically
15 to benefit students in this situation.
16 REP. EMRICK: I’m not even sure how to
17 respond to that.
18 DEPUTY SEC. HANS: Neither were we.
19 REP. EMRICK: Wow. So the student
20 performed A quality work in student teaching and
21 was -- because he did not pass the Praxis, the post
22 certification exam, was given a D.
23 Was there any explanation of how the D was
24 determined? Like why not a B or a C or an F or —
25 DEPUTY SEC. HANS: We were told that was 101
1 their policy and that's how it was when they
2 arrived on the job.
3 REP. EMRICK: Okay.
4 DEPUTY SEC. HANS: That was the
5
6 REP. EMRICK: That was the explanation.
7 Okay. And so obviously that dramatically affects a
8 student's GPA and, as you said, the student,
9 because they failed Praxis by one
10 point -- is that -- is that what you had stated?
11 DEPUTY SEC. HANS: That's true.
12 REP. EMRICK: And if they had not been
13 given the D, they would have had a GPA where they
14 could have used the sliding scale and would have
15
16 DEPUTY SEC. HANS: They should have been
17 assigned an A. The institution told us the student
18 performed A quality work. Had they been assigned
19 the A, they would have been able to use the
20 combination of their GPA and the passing of the —
21 the less than passing rate by one point. In
22 combination with each other, they would have been
23 able to --
24 REP. EMRICK: Right.
25 DEPUTY SEC. HANS: be recommended 102
1 REP. EMRICK: Would have -
2 DEPUTY SEC. HANS: -- for certification.
3 REP. EMRICK: Volunteered, gotten
4 ., gotten their degree, and enjoyed,
5 hopefully, a long, healthy teaching career.
6 DEPUTY SEC. HANS: Yes.
7 REP. EMRICK: And now -- okay. So that
8 student j ust goes off with a D. So I already know
9 the answer to this question, but I’ll ask you.
10 Any student who gets a D for student
11 teaching, it’s a death knell for ever getting a
12 j ob. Correct ?
13 SECRETARY DUMARESQ: Speaking as a
14 superintendent, yes.
15 REP. EMRICK: Thank you. So the student
16 performed A work, was given a D, so if they pass
17 the Praxis at some point, whenever, their -- their
18 transcript says D? Would -- would it say D? And
19 that’s -- they’ll never get a job, period. There’s
20 just no -- okay. Okay. All right. Thank you very
21 much for that.
22 CHAIRMAN CLYMER: The chair thanks the
23 gentleman and recognizes Representative Carroll.
24 REP. CARROLL: Thank you, ladies.
25 Directly behind the chair. 103
1 I assume that you’re familiar with what
2 was testified by the Clarion folks and by the State
3 System School folks. Did the Department and State
4 System schools have any conversation relative to
5 this new policy with respect to the inclusion of
6 the Praxis with respect to graduation
7 requirements ?
8 DEPUTY SEC. HANS: We had several
9 conversations and requests and ongoing
10 conversations about students, specific students,
11 and policies, and we made our position known that
12 we don’t support using assessments as
13 gatekeepers to progression through the program or
14 as graduation requirements.
15 It really presents a problem for us. We
16 don’t have the data that we need to look at when -
17 as a program — a quality indicator, and it’s
18 really unfair to the students. It puts them at
19 such a disadvantage.
20 REP. CARROLL: All right. And then that
21 begs the question -- I heard the Clarion folks
22 testify that, you know, it was, generally speaking,
23 an effort to raise the bar.
24 Can you characterize what you think is
25 going on here? I mean why -- why would -- why 104
1 would these state system schools stake out a
2 position that seems very curious compared to the
3 landscape with respect to teacher education?
4 DEPUTY SEC HANS: I’ll give a brief
5 answer, but I think, then, Terry might be able to
6 elaborate.
7 I think that some of the institutions
8 actually believe that they’re creating a high bar
9 and I think that other institutions are really
10 trying to manipulate -- manipulate their
11 indicators.
12 Actually we’ve been told that by some of
13 the institutions, that that was one of the reasons
14 they were doing it.
15 DIRECTOR BARNABY: In reference to the
16 Title II question, which I would love to attempt to
17 tell you about, the Title II is the federal
18 reporting requirement for higher ed institutions
19 and they have to report -- as of a few years ago,
20 they have to report what percentage of their
21 completers pass the test.
22 So what happens is by taking the gentleman
23 that we’re talking about and putting him into
24 liberal studies or by having someone stalled out in
25 student teaching because they didn’t pass the test, 105
1 they never are a completer.
2 So when you go to report them to the
3 federal government, they don’t count as not having
4 passed the test because they’re not program
5 completers. A program completer is someone who’s
6 completed all of those requirements.
7 A n d t h e n , t h e r e f o r e , y o u r p e r c e n t a g e o f
8 completers goes up in terms of the federal
9 government.
10 One — one illustration of that is we
11 actually have a website that gives you the
12 statistics for all of the people that took, let’s
13 say, the preK to four test in a given year and how
14 -- how many -- because they put down the college
15 that they’re attending and then it tells you how
16 many people passed on their first attempt, and the
17 website also shows what the pass rate is after
18 three attempts.
19 We then -- you’ll -- if you were to look
20 at that and then look at the Title II data, you
21 would see that the numbers don’t match, and that’s
22 because we’re not looking at completers. We’re
23 looking at anyone who went to the institution,
24 whereas the federal government is looking at
25 completers. 106
1 That is -- certainly is one incentive.
2 The other thing that they’ve -- some of
3 them have talked to us about is that if they -- the
4 student passes uses using the GPA, and that’s
5 something that’s actually in regulation, that
6 because Pennsylvania does have a GPA requirement,
7 which the colleges control, and we have the test
8 requirement, which the state controls, we allow
9 them to balance those out if they have a very high
10 GPA or they have a very high test score, they can
11 -- they can use those.
12 If they use that sliding scale that -
13 that Jill referred to, then they still don’t show
14 up as passing the test on the federal level,
15 because the test companies report the score. So
16 they would want us to be able to get the federal
17 government to let us report the fact that they’re
18 using that GPA scale.
19 Therefore, if they -- if the student never
20 completes, they never have that problem of them
21 showing up as a failing person, because they passed
22 virtue -- here in Pennsylvania by virtue of their
23 GPA.
24 REP. CARROLL: Thank you. And I’m just
25 thinking out loud, and Representative Longietti and 107
1 I had a sidebar about this, I wonder -- we wonder
2 how much is this a function, the step taken by the
3 state system schools considering the landscape of
4 higher education and the student enrollment numbers
5 and -- and what finances are with respect to some
6 of our state system schools and -- and, you know,
7 maybe some of this is a result of the dynamics
8 represented to the big picture with respect to
9 higher education.
10 So I’ll stop there. Thank you all for
11 your testimony.
12 CHAIRMAN CLYMER: The chair thanks the
13 gentleman and recognizes Representative O ’Neill.
14 REP. O ’NEILL: Thank you, ladies, for
15 being with us and, Madam Secretary, how are you?
16 SECRETARY DUMARESQ: Thank you.
17 REP. O ’NEILL: We spent a long summer
18 together.
19 SECRETARY DUMARESQ: Yeah. Perhaps you
20 better clarify that though.
21 REP. O ’NEILL: Okay. I will clarify that
22 her and I both serve on the Commission for the
23 Special Education Funding Formula.
24 SECRETARY DUMARESQ: Thank you.
25 REP. O ’NEILL: You know, this is the Irish 108
1 in me. I mean I really don't care what the policy
2 is or whatever, but you were given concrete
3 information on how a student was wronged
4 apparently. And then the excuse you got was, well,
5 that's the way it was when we got here.
6 Did that institution do anything to
7 correct that student's situation or change the
8 policy? Since they -- it was there when they got
9 there.
10 DEPUTY SEC. HANS: We've tried very hard
11 to go to bat for this student. We pointedly asked
12 them to take certain actions that would remedy the
13 situation for this individual student, and they
14 declined to do that.
15 I believe the change in their policy that
16 was discussed earlier is probably a reflection of
17 this particular experience with this student. So
18 it's very -- it's pretty recent.
19 REP. O'NEILL: Oh.
20 DEPUTY SEC. HANS: But we -- we asked them
21 on more than one occasion to, please, reconsider
22 and how can we find some avenue to do right by this
23 student? And at one point I thought that there was
24 a breakthrough, but there wasn't. So...
25 REP. O'NEILL: So based on that, do you 109
1 have any control over the university’s
2 certification or higher ed programs for teacher
3 certification? Is it just the Department?
4 SECRETARY DUMARESQ: Yes .
5 The -- Terry, you want to?
6 DIRECTOR BARNABY: Well, we -- we
7 obviously review the programs, but we don’t have
8 control over those -- those policies or we would
9 have --
10 REP. O ’NEILL: That’s what I meant.
11 DIRECTOR BARNABY: Yeah.
12 REP. O ’NEILL: Okay.
13 DIRECTOR BARNABY: Or we would have told
14 them they had to give that student -
15 REP. O ’NEILL: And that’s totally within
16 the school’s --
17 DIRECTOR BARNABY: Correct.
18 REP. O ’NEILL: -- autonomy as their own -
19 DIRECTOR BARNABY: Right.
20 REP. O ’NEILL: Gotcha.
21 DIRECTOR BARNABY: Unless this passes.
22 REP. O ’NEILL: Gotcha.
23 Dr. Nichols had spoken earlier about her
24 concerns with the basic skills assessments in House
25 Bill 1512. What is your opinion about her 110
1 recommendation? I don’t know if you were here, if
2 you heard it not.
3 SECRETARY DUMARESQ: Yes. I did. I
4 think, Jill, you want to talk about the -- the -
5 the multiple ways we’re looking now at basic
6 skills?
7 DEPUTY SEC. HANS: I understand
8 Dr. Nichols’ perspective, especially in the
9 perspective of her testimony, because a lot of her
10 students may not be interested in becoming
11 certified so this just adds another expense.
12 But from what we’ve seen, there are
13 students who are admitted into a program only to
14 find that they’re really not suited for the rigor
15 of that program, and this would be one way that we
16 could ensure that they are suited or are not suited
17 early enough in the program so that they had other
18 choices to them.
19 Because what we’ve seen is that the
20 students get to be one semester away from the
21 student teaching and they have academic challenges
22 that are not able to be overcome. And there are
23 students that really don’t belong in the program,
24 so we want to identify them as early as possible.
25 SECRETARY DUMARESQ: Terry, further on 111
1 that question?
2 DIRECTOR BARNABY: Yeah. Well, it --and
3 actually it’s not for the degree. Because the
4 question I saw, was is it a requirement? It’s not
5 a degree requirement. It’s a certification
6 requirement.
7 So if someone declares up-front they’re
8 interested in certification, the basic skills test
9 doesn’t apply to them.
10 REP. O ’NEILL: Right.
11 DIRECTOR BARNABY: But we also now have
12 two options for meeting the basic skills
13 assessment, which is a requirement in Chapter
14 49.18. This basic skills assessment is in there.
15 And the two ways are to take the test,
16 which is now the PAPA test, in reading, writing,
17 and math. And -- but we now accept the student’s
18 SAT scores if they have reached 1550 and have a
19 minimum of 500 in each of those three areas, they
20 don’t have to take the PAPA, and that’s in the
21 light of what Dr. Nichols was saying, that why make
22 them pay for some fairly expensive tests if they’ve
23 demonstrated their competence through either the
24 AC T or S AT t es t s?
25 And we were able to get a correlation 112
1 between our test and those two tests. So that we
2 feel comfortable if they reach those scores that
3 we’re asking for that they would have passed the
4 PAPA test and we don’t have to make them take it.
5 That’s in addition to eliminating the
6 basic skills test for anyone who’s already gotten a
7 degree and enters education as a post baccalaureate
8 candidate.
9 REP. O ’NEILL: Gotcha. And one last
10 question. And I don’t mean to hog, but for my own
11 ignorance.
12 How does one get a graduate degree without
13 getting a bachelor’s degree? I’ve heard that
14 several times today, and I -- because if I could
15 have found that process, I would have done it.
16 DIRECTOR BARNABY: Well, it actually -- we
17 had -- the one really — the one example I remember
18 the details of, but we’ve had not hundreds but
19 several where this gentleman was a doctor of, I
20 think, podiatry and decided that as a retirement
21 thing he wanted to substitute teach in the city of
22 Philadelphia, which is laudable, and when he went
23 to the University of Pennsylvania, when he -- I
24 guess when he declared his pathway, he was like two
25 credits short or whatever of his bachelor degree 113
1 and they said, oh, just, you know, go on, and he
2 never got conferred a bachelor’s degree.
3 And we have found since then that people
4 who enter these programs that result in advanced
5 degrees occasionally never get the formal
6 conference of a bachelor’s degree. And the way our
7 law is written it says you have to have a
8 bachelor’s degree and it doesn’t say, well, if you
9 don’t have the bachelor’s, you can have a
10 master’s. You know, because who thought of that
11 back when they wrote that law, that you would skip
12 over a bachelor’s degree?
13 REP. O ’NEILL: Thank you very much for
14 that .
15 CHAIRMAN CLYMER: The chair thanks the
16 gentleman and recognizes Representative English.
17 REP. ENGLISH: Thank you, Mr. Chair.
18 What’s the Department doing to ensure that
19 students are ready to teach if they don’t take a
20 content based assessment prior to student
21 teaching?
22 DEPUTY SEC. HANS: The Department has
23 specific guidelines that should be in line with the
24 curriculum of the program, and then before the
25 student teaching placement is done with a mentor 114
1 teacher in the classroom that has three years of
2 experience and one year in that specific
3 classroom.
4 SECRETARY DUMARESQ: It’s not like we just
5 say go ahead and you’re in there alone. You’re
6 partnered up with your mentor teacher, and you -
7 that’s where you learn your pedagogy.
8 REP. ENGLISH: Is there also a bladder
9 test for teachers? Is that also a requirement?
10 SECRETARY DUMARESQ: Especially elementary
11 teachers.
12 CHAIRMAN CLYMER: The chair thanks the
13 gentleman and now recognizes Representative Truitt
14 for -- for a question.
15 REP. TRUITT: Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
16 And t hank you, Madam S ecretary, for your
17 testimony today. I just have two questions.
18 Hopefully they’re relatively quick.
19 First, in listening to your testimony and
20 the prior testimony, I almost sense that you
21 believe that the existing programs that require
22 these tests for graduation are in violation of
23 current state law or regulations.
24 Can you clarify that for me? Do we
25 think -- are they in violation of the current law? 115
1 DEPUTY SEC. HANS: I don't know if my
2 opinion is worthy on this. My feeling is that it
3 is. But we have no legal grounds to take action.
4 So I don't know that that would be upheld.
5 REP. TRUITT: Okay. All right. And this
6 question will be a little more pointed. Again,
7 don't take it as hostile. But I'm curious.
8 The Department seems to be taking a
9 position that it -- it's bad for somebody to have
10 to pass a test to graduate and -- getting a
11 teaching degree, but with the Keystone exams we're
12 now requiring kids to pass a test to graduate from
13 high school. Is there -
14 SECRETARY DUMARESQ: Yes, we do.
15 REP. TRUITT: Do you have some rationale
16 for reconciling that apparent inconsistency?
17 SECRETARY DUMARESQ: Yes. To me it's not
18 inconsistent at all. It's really looking at the
19 child for -- leaving high school graduation there's
20 multiple avenues to demonstrate proficiency, as
21 we've testified before. It's just not passing a
22 test. It's also a project-based assessment.
23 Or we gave the nod, if you remember, in
24 the last Chapter 4 to the institution, the school
25 superintendent to say, did they pass all of the 116
1 graduation requirements, and then we go back and
2 we -- we worry about that individual student or we
3 worry about the alignment of the program.
4 It’s the same philosophy, the ability to
5 graduate the child is the institution, the
6 program. Certify is the Department. So for me
7 it’s more about student autonomy. It’s how do we
8 protect the student who’s gone through all the
9 program and may choose not to become certified,
10 should be able to graduate and then make a
11 decision, do I take my degree and go to another
12 state? Do I take my degree and decide I want to be
13 a teacher aide or in some other educational support
14 services? Or do I want to become certified in
15 Pennsylvania and now I have these rules that the
16 Department has listed?
17 I don’t see a dichotomy at all. The
18 institution graduates finally, and we certify.
19 REP. TRUITT: Very good. Thank you.
20 Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
21 CHAIRMAN CLYMER: The chair thanks the
22 gentleman.
23 Representative Truitt, you really raised a
24 question that throughout this testimony I was just
25 biting my tongue to ask. And that is with -- with 117
1 all the professional people here from higher
2 universities, I wanted to talk about remedial
3 education and whether or not we’re -- we’re doing
4 what we should and that’s the reason we have the
5 Keystone exams. But our guests were here for other
6 reasons so I — I didn’t go down that trail. But
7 that would have been an interesting dialogue
8 between the -- the committee and the -- and the
9 presenters.
10 However, like I said, that’s not the
11 reason for your presence here today.
12 The chair on behalf of the committee
13 thanks all our testifiers for being with us today.
14 It was very informative, very helpful, and this
15 public hearing is now adjourned.
16 Thank you one and all.
17 (The hearing was concluded at 11:08 a.m.)
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2 I hereby certify that the proceedings and
3 evidence are contained fully and accurately in the
4 notes taken by me on the within proceedings and
5 that this is a correct transcript of the same.
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8 Brenda S. Hamilton, RPR 9 Reporter - Notary Public
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