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Educator Effectiveness

Building & Sustaining a Comprehensive Student Teaching Partnership

Effective student teaching partnerships between school districts and educator preparation providers can support the preparation, recruitment and development of Massachusetts teachers in a manner that strengthens student learning and the long-term sustainability of our teaching workforce.

Student Teaching Partnership Consortium

In the 2016-2017 school year, Massachusetts convened three partnerships between educator preparation providers and districts to build and strengthen systems for student teaching placement, support, and recruitment. These three partnerships comprised the Student Teaching Partnership Consortium:

  • Salem Public Schools and Salem State University

  • Boston Public Schools and Boston University

  • Brockton Public Schools and Bridgewater State University

The Partnership Toolkit

This Toolkit articulates the evidence-based model for partnership initiation, implementation, and continuous improvement utilized by Consortium members, and includes supportive tools and resources developed through their work. The purpose of this Toolkit is to help other educator preparation and district partnerships develop systems for placing and supporting student teachers with the goal of improving student outcomes and building a pipeline from student teaching to employment.

Building effective and sustainable student teaching partnerships involves three stages:

  • Initiation: Forming the partnership, identifying the pipeline needs, and initial visioning and goal setting

  • Implementation: Collaboratively selecting and supporting participants, ensuring alignment between partners, regularly meeting and spending time in partner schools.

  • Continuous Improvement: Ongoing program review and refinement.

The Partnership Toolkit is broken into the three stages of development. Partnerships may wish to download specific Tools or Resources depending on need or implementation phase. The entire Toolkit is also available for download.

StageKey ActivitiesTools & Resources
Initiation
  1. Form a partnership and define expectations.

  2. Analyze educator preparation pipeline data and district human capital needs.

  3. Set an initial vision and goals for the partnership.

  4. Develop a partnership implementation action plan.

Implementation
  1. Jointly select and train Supervising Practitioners and strategically place teacher candidates.

  2. Align coursework and field-based experiences with district language and priorities.

  3. Establish systems for ongoing communication and feedback.

Continuous Improvement
  1. Use evidence to assess progress and outcomes.

  2. Make adjustments to the partnership in order to improve teacher candidate readiness and PK-12 student outcomes.

  3. Secure sustainable funding.

Last Updated: August 29, 2017

 
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