updated 4/30/03
updated for 6/26/03 meeting with
Plaintiffs – notes in italics

General Supervision, Appendix 9

Persons Responsible/Notes

1. Surveying teacher preparation institutions

• The SED will establish, on an annual basis, a survey of all graduate and undergraduate teacher preparation programs for the purposes of identifying the number of students currently enrolled in programs for those certificate and licensure areas identified in the PD-6 associated with the Jose P. case. For the purpose of this workplan such certificates/licenses include:

survey developed and disseminated, follow-up phone calls to IHEs, presentations at major meetings and conferences (NCATE/NYCATE; HESC, ITI BSE

• The Bilingual Special Education Higher Education Support Center located at SUC Buffalo will be charged with the responsibility of conducting this survey for those certificate/license areas identified above with a bilingual extension (special education, school psychologist, speech and hearing handicapped), and providing the data to SED for distribution to NYC Department of Education and the plaintiffs.

• The VESID-funded Higher Education Support Center at Syracuse University will be charged with the responsibility of conducting the survey for monolingual special education programs with emphasis on those registered IHEs serving the greater metropolitan NYC area.

• The Office of the Professions will conduct an annual survey of licensed OT and PT programs in NYS.

• the surveys will identify those students, by certificate/license area, that will be graduating in the spring semester of the year being surveyed;

• the surveys will also request additional information from colleges such as:

  Factors impeding student enrollment growth in these shortage areas such as;
  • Lack of faculty;
  • Lack of students; and/or
  • Lack of financial resources/inadequate infrastructure.

• The surveys will annually ask whether the institutions project a long- and/or short-term growth and/or contraction in each of the programs registered in the certificate/license areas.

• The surveys will ask the institutions what unused capacity they presently have in these certificate/license programs.

• If they do have unused capacity, to what do they attribute it?

• The first survey will be issued by February 1, 2003. The report of the survey will be developed by April 1, 2003 and every March 1 thereafter, and provided to all teacher preparation institutions and the NYCDOE.

• SED and NYCDOE will develop a joint action plan based upon the results of the survey and will amend such plan annually to reflect updated survey results.

• scheduled a meeting after March to develop report

• scheduled a meeting after April to analyze phone conference held in late April to discuss preliminary results. Additional meetings scheduled.
  Done – see survey results and strategies.

2. How many certificate/licenses in the need areas are issued annually?

• SED will develop a report on the number of certificate/licenses issued in the above certificate/license areas for 1991, 1996, 2001 and every year thereafter. This report will include:

• The regional distribution of certificate/licenses issued by zip code of certificate/license holders and the institution responsible for recommending the award of the certificate/license; and

• The number of teachers in each of the certificate/license areas in possession of a bilingual extension.

• This data will also be cross-matched with the BEDS data from the most recent previous year where data is available to determine the following:

• The number and names of newly certified teachers in those certificate/license areas that are not currently teaching in the public schools;

• The number of temporary licensed teachers receiving their provisional teaching certificate/licenses;

• The number of those that are teaching in New York City public schools; and

• The number of those teaching in public schools in other parts of the State.

• The first report will be issued on April 1, 2003 and every March 1st thereafter and provided to all teacher preparation institutions and the NYC Department of Education.

3. Projected teacher need in New York City

• The NYCDOE will produce, on an annual basis, the following information for each of the certificate/license areas identified on page 1:

• The number of temporary licensed and limited certification individuals (only for this year) for each of the certificate/license areas;

• The number of Transition B certificate/license holders for each certificate/license area;

• The projected retirement trends for each of the certificate/license areas; and

• The projected attrition of teachers for each certificate/license area, including new teacher (5 years and less experience) turnover rates.

• The first report will be issued on March1 and every March 1 thereafter.

• NYCDOE will initiate exit interviews and/or surveys, to determine the reasons why teachers in the certificate/license areas leave teaching. NYCDOE will share this information with the SED and institutions with teacher preparation programs.

• NYCDOE will utilize a long term projection model (e.g. PD-6 methodology) for the need of teachers which will use projected K-12 enrollment over time and the age of the teachers to help project the need for more or less teachers in the license areas.

• NYCDOE will issue this report to SED and institutions with teacher preparation programs in the certificate/license areas on April 1, 2003 and every March 1 thereafter.

4. Strategies to help meet the short-term and long-term staffing needs for New York City in the certificate/license areas.

1. Advocacy/bullypulpit

• SED and the NYCDOE have established and will continue leadership meetings, including the Commissioner of Education, the Chancellor of the New York City Department of Education, the Chancellor of CUNY, the Provost of SUNY, the President of the Commission on Independent Colleges and Universities, the Mayor’s Office and additional college presidents to discuss the teacher needs of the New York City public schools.

• We will provide this group with our data on assessing the problem relating to special education and bilingual special education teachers in New York City;

1. Meeting in late February with IHE Deans

• Action Plan (overview)
• What we want to accomplish
• conversion of existing teachers to limited certs for shortage areas
• creation of new programs

2. Meeting in March with Deans to work out details.

As was announced at the Call to Teaching Forum, hosted by Commissioner Mills and Chancellor Klein the New York City Department of Education (NYCDOE) has initiated two new targeted recruitment programs and the expansion of the NYC Teaching Fellows program. The first program, the Excelsior Teacher Initiative, targets the recruitment of certified teachers in critical shortage subject areas to work in high-need schools. Through innovative marketing techniques the New Teacher Project, which has been hired to run the program, is expected to recruit 500 new teachers for NYC. The second program, Call Back to Teaching, encourages experienced teachers who have left the profession to return to teaching. The program is expected to yield up to 300 returning teachers. In addition to the two new recruitment initiatives, the NYC Teaching Fellows program has been expanded from a cohort of 1,800 Fellows last fall to 2,500 new Fellows to start this September. These initiatives have been instituted as part of the NYCDOE’s effort to attract highly-qualified, certified teachers to meet the September 2003 mandate.

• We will continually discuss with this group the availability of State and federal funds to help support the recruitment, preparation and retention of these teachers; and to develop and support new undergraduate and graduate programs at institutions of higher education.

• We will discuss with this group strategies to address retention of key faculty personnel at both the IHE and LEA level.

• This group will regularly review strategies which have been implemented to initiate or expand programs in the critical shortage areas.

• SED and NYCDOE will maintain an internal staff workgroup that will periodically meet for the purpose of reviewing and evaluating progress on this workplan and for recommending modifications if needed.

• SED and the NYCDOE will periodically meet with deans of education of the New York City Metropolitan colleges. The purpose of these meetings will be to ensure that we have a coordinated approach in implementing the teacher certification programs (alternative and traditional) to meet the needs of New York City for teachers in the certificate/license areas.

• SED and the NYCDOE will work together to identify individuals licensed as physical therapists and occupational therapists whose home or business address is in the NYC metropolitan area. This list can be used as a potential pool of candidates for recruitment to meet existing needs in PT/OT services to children in need.

2. Maximize resources.

• SED has issued an RFP to expand undergraduate programs for bilingual special education ($80,000). This RFP was issued on November 1, 2002.

• SED will identify available State and federal funds under their jurisdiction to determine those dollars which can be utilized for the recruitment, preparation and retention of teachers in the certificate/license areas.

• SED will continue the Bilingual Special Education (BSE) Intensive Teacher Institute (ITI) to support existing teachers with temporary licenses or transitional B certificate/licenses to attain certification.

• SED will identify federal funds that are available through the competitive grant process which either the New York City Department of Education and/or colleges can apply for to help in the recruitment, preparation and retention of needed teachers in the certificate/license areas.

• SED and the NYCDOE will collectively advocate for 100 percent flexible use of the Teachers of Tomorrow funds so that New York City may employ these dollars to support the recruitment, preparation and retention of teachers in the certificate/license areas.

• SED/VESID will pursue a waiver to hire a 1.0 FTE Associate to coordinate all SED responsibilities associated with this workplan.

•  SED and the NYCDOE will collectively advocate with the Legislature and the Governor for:

• An increase of Teachers of Tomorrow money of $28 million to support more alternative teacher certification programs in hard-to-staff subject matter areas and hard-to-staff schools;

• An increase of $45 million in the Teachers of Tomorrow Program to be provided to districts to support mentoring of first-year teachers to reduce teacher attrition; and

• Passage of the legislative proposal to remove the pension penalty (cap) to allow retired public employees to enter teaching in hard-to-staff subject matter areas and hard-to-staff schools.

• SED, in conjunction with the NYCDOE will use the $2 million IDEA discretionary grant and the $3.4 million federal grants to help address the teacher shortage problem in the certificate/license areas.

• SED and the NYCDOE will collectively develop proactive strategies to establish paraprofessional career ladder opportunities. A separate workgroup will be established which will develop an action plan for paraprofessionals. The action plan for paraprofessionals will be issued by April 1, 2003.

• NYCDOE will actively recruit an adequate number of candidates for all programs and initiatives associated with this action plan, depending on the capacity of the programs available.

•  In December 2002 the Regents provided authority for a one-year limited certificate for those current uncertified teachers who have passed the LAST and ATS-W, (and ELPA and TLPA for bilingual teachers). SED and NYCBOE will review the status of existing uncertified teachers for the purpose of encouraging participation in certification initiatives.

• All uncertified NYCDOE staff were offered the opportunity to take a free test preparation course for the December 2002 tests administered by SED. These test preparation courses are given by four companies, Princeton Review, Kaplan, Cert-ED (On-line test preparation) and Cite Co. The courses (except for the on-line course) are 20-25 hours and conducted in a seminar fashion. The same test preparation is going to be offered free of charge to any uncertified teacher who has not enrolled in one of these test preparation courses previously, for the March and May 2003 test administrations.

• NYCDOE will actively recruit candidates for bilingual special education teacher positions from the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico due to recently modified SED policy. SED now allows teachers with a special education license from Puerto Rico to become certified conditional provisional bilingual special education teachers in New York with up to two years to pass required examinations.

• SED will seek technical assistance from the U.S. Department of Education to address teacher shortage, recruitment and retention through partnership with federally funded research to practice programs.

3. Monitoring the system.

• SED and the NYCDOE will regularly monitor the supply and demand of teachers in the certificate/license areas.

all ongoing

• SED and the NYCDOE will develop an annual report to show any change in the supply and demand for these areas, and provide the report to Institutions of Higher Education.

• The first annual report will be issued in June 2003 and every June thereafter.

• Based upon the data, we will seek regulatory adjustments, as warranted, to help relieve shortages. For example, SED recently made the following regulatory adjustments:
   
  • Renewed expired provisional certificate/licenses;
  • Provided an additional year for temporary licensed teachers who can pass appropriate examinations to complete certification requirements; and
  • Continued the transcript evaluation route to teacher certification.

• NYCDOE will adjust recruitment strategies and initiatives, as warranted, based on the findings in the annual report.

5. Bilingual Education

• NYCDOE will use the alternative teacher certification program to prepare individuals with bilingual extensions.

• SED in consultation with the NYCDOE, will re-examine the requirements for bilingual extension to determine if they can be streamlined to facilitate the preparation of more teachers with this extension while maintaining the quality of the certificate/license. SED will issue its report to the Regents at their April 2003 meeting. SED will share it’s Report and recommendations to the Regents with NYCDOE.
   

• SED will develop a system to effectively certify bilingual speech language pathologists and bilingual school psychologists with the same approach used to certify licensed speech language pathologists. SED will issue its report to the Regents at their April meeting.

• NYCDOE will work with the NYS Association for Bilingual Education and the NYS Teachers of English to Speakers of Other Languages, as well as the national organizations, to reach out to their membership to recruit teachers for the New York City public schools. In addition, the NYCDOE will continue to recruit teachers through the heritage language media.

• NYCDOE and SED will work with the United Federation of Teachers to encourage and develop incentives for certified teachers to pursue a transitional certificate/license for a bilingual extension.
  
   

6. Facility issues

• SED will examine with the Board of Regents the appropriateness of using the waiver provision with respect to full-time/part-time faculty (50% rule) for those shortage areas where colleges are facing a critical shortage of full-time faculty because of national shortages of available faculty in those certificate/license areas. Discussion will take place at the February meeting of the Regents.

• SED will investigate legislative proposals to allow retired NYCDOE teachers to work in CUNY (waivers to surpass the salary cap for retirees are not available).

7. Induction/Support/Retention

• SED and the NYCDOE will develop a strategy for a new teacher induction program that supports the new teachers prepared through the collective Jose P. initiatives.

• Pilot funds could possibly be made available to support this initiative through the State’s IDEA State Improvement Grant.

•  NYCDOE will establish programs to improve and promote the retention of teachers in all certificate areas.

8. Joint Marketing

• SED will work with NYCDOE to create marketing strategies to encourage more students in the New York City public schools to enter the teaching profession.

• SED and the NYCDOE will work collectively to reduce the bureaucracy between the two departments to ensure that prospective teachers can be effectively recruited, certified and licensed under both New York City and State regulations.

• SED will continue to provide a broad-based mechanism to allow teachers seeking employment to match their certificate/license areas with available vacancies across the State of New York.