Carol Dwyer, former director of test development for the Educational Testing Service, has a new job. She is spending all her time thinking about how to create a successor to the ets’s National Teacher Examinations by 1992.
Ms. Dwyer received her charge from Gregory Anrig, president of ets, and the board of trustees.
“The world of teaching and assessment is changing,” she said, “and there was a general sense that we ought to be doing something to ensure that we’re not left behind.”
The nte is the most widely used teacher-certification test in the nation--employed by roughly 20 states in 1986.
Ms. Dwyer will be spending the next six months studying existing information about teacher testing; she will then craft a broad blueprint that could guide development of a new generation of tests. The ets will continue to refine the existing tests over the next five years.
Responding to the national need for qualified mathematics and science teachers, the Polaroid Corporation has joined forces with two teacher-training programs to prepare industry professionals with backgrounds in technical fields and finance for second careers as teachers.
Under “Project Bridge,” company employees with a bachelor’s degree and a commitment to education can prepare for certification as math and science teachers through special teacher-training programs at Harvard University and Lesley College.
Polaroid will pay participants’ full salary and tuition for the one-year program.
It will also encourage practicing teachers on sabbatic leave to join the company’s paid workforce for one year to see how math and science concepts are put to use in industry.
A three-year effort to redesign the way colleges and universities prepare teachers has received a $248,000 start-up grant from the Carnegie Corporation of New York.
The project will involve faculty members from 30 colleges and universities representing the range of institutions that prepare teachers.
Five-member teams from each institution--drawn from both the education and arts and sciences faculties--will meet at two national conferences, in the fall of 1988 and 1989, to discuss and design curriculum changes.
Project directors are Frank B. Murray, dean of the college of education at the University of Delaware, and Daniel Fallon, dean of the college of liberal arts at Texas A&M University.
Cooperating on the project are the American Association of Colleges for Teacher Education, the American Conference of Academic Deans, and the Council of Colleges of Arts and Sciences.--lo & br