Adult Education Panel Meeting Minutes
November 13-14, 2008
The Panel began the meeting with the review of the October meeting minutes. All members were in attendance over the two days with the exception of Cris Johnson from CTA. The panel thanked Susan Yamate and the San Diego County Office of Education for their hospitality in hosting the meeting. No webcast was conducted. The panel reviewed logistics for the next meeting in Sacramento on December 2-3, 2008. Mary Prather, ACSA representative, agreed to host the December meeting at Old Marshall School in Sacramento.
The panel discussed the previous meetings suggestion about collecting current data for what adult education teachers need in terms of preparation and decided that there was not enough time to collect data and analyze it. The panel members agreed that ProNet had covered much of that. Vicki Prater provided an overview of the CalPro research and agreed to send the link for their web site to Helen Hawley, who could forward it to panel members and post it on the CTC adult education web page. Helen Hawley checked the CCC for adult learning research data but found no data readily available on their web site. Helen Hawley also consulted with other CTC staff and certification staff visited the panel to discuss appropriate assignments with regard to English learner students.
The panel then returned to the “parking lot” issues to be sure that no important ones were ignored in the new standards. Many of the questions raised have yet to be resolved, such as whether the program should remain in its present two-level structure, and whether the present authorizations for non-academic subjects are the correct ones now. Most panel members thought that the categories such as adults with disabilities and older adults should not be credential authorizations but are populations that should be dealt with in the program standards. One panel member proposed a subsumption list of the current authorizations by skill area rather than population designations.
The panel also discussed the part-time/full-time credential structure. They noted advantages such as fewer requirements to complete the part-time credential and disadvantages such as lack of flexibility for the teachers and employers in assignments. This led to some discussion about requirements for clearing the credential and whether some other professional development could count for Level II preparation. Another question raised by the panel was whether, for the non-academic subjects, 5 years of experience was needed to obtain the credential. Conversely, would 3 years of experience, as for the new CTE credentials, be sufficient?
Another related issue from the “parking lot” was the question of using the 15 CTE sectors for the vocational subjects instead of the individual skills as credential authorizations. A few panel members were concerned that the suggested restructuring of the authorizations might result in too much local control and possible misassignments. Some panel members referenced CDE’s A22 program list as a possible option. The panel decided by majority vote that the 15 sectors should be used for the vocational subjects. These discussions of major issues led panel members to request another meeting on January 20-21 to ensure adequate time to develop appropriate recommendations to the Commission.
The panel then completed their first partial draft of the standards.
Finally, the panel considered the need for new standards. The earlier discussion about special populations of students in adult education led to some support for standards that would address these. The panel agreed to revisit that and other “parking lot” topics at the beginning of the next meeting.