Educator Preparation

Suspension of Intra-cycle/Informal Review Process – Effective April 1, 2007

To:	Sponsoring Organization Contacts
From:	Office of Educator Preparation and Quality – Educator Preparation Programs
Date:	March 12, 2007

As you know, our office at the Department is presently engaged in two critical initiatives that will impact state approval of educator preparation programs. The first and most significant involves changes that are being planned for the Regulations for Educator Licensure and Preparation Program Approval (603 CMR 7.00). A summary of changes will be presented to the Board in April, 2007. The second initiative, which will synchronize with changes that are planned for the regulations, is the implementation of recommendations from our Streamlining Program Approval activities, in which many of you have offered valuable input. Through the Streamlining process we have identified a number of areas in our state program approval process to be strengthened, and we have begun to develop state-level strategies that will support a stronger overall educator preparation system. One major area that has been slated for change is the intra-cycle/informal review process for programs of new sponsoring organizations and for new programs which current sponsors seek to add prior to the next formal review cycle. Currently, we are supporting a rolling informal review process, which accepts individual programs and sends them out to individual content area reviewers on an ongoing basis. Unfortunately, we have neither the reviewer base nor the staffing capacity to properly maintain the process as we have been implementing it. For that reason we will be moving to a new system that will periodically batch reviews involving groups of reviewers and programs to be reviewed. Therefore, effective April 1, 2007, we will no longer accept new programs for intra-cycle/informal review under the current system. We expect the hiatus to extend through October 1, 2007, until such time that we have a new process for intra-cycle and informal review articulated and ready for implementation. We will, however, still accept new programs during this period for the high need fields of mathematics, the sciences, ESL, and all special education licenses (refer to regulations). Thank you for understanding and supporting this difficult decision. Please know that we continue to value your input and guidance as we proceed with finalizing the Streamlining Program Approval process and we encourage you to be in touch with your Department liaison with questions or concerns. c: Robert Bickerton Carol Gilbert Elizabeth Losee

Last Updated: November 5, 2008