Collegian Student newspaper of the University of Tulsa
October 2, 2017 Issue 6 ~ Volume 103
The Certification Struggle Oklahoma recently revoked TU’s teacher education program’s accreditation due to two major issues: data collection and leadership. While students graduating before July 2018 will be certified teachers, other students have been negatively affected. School administration is working to regain accreditation, but their efforts may come too late for some students. Managing Editor Michaela Flonard reports.
“My biggest question was, well, if you have a higher standard than [the state standard], how can you have a higher standard if you have no accreditation at all? You have no standards if you have no accreditation,” asked Anita O’Daniel. O’Daniel wondered this during a faculty meeting to decide if she should be let into the College of Education for the 2017-2018 school year. While she met the state standards for such a request, she didn’t meet TU’s standards. A faculty member, during the meeting, said she couldn’t be let in because she did not meet TU standards. But the problem with TU’s education department is that it’s currently unaccredited by the state of Oklahoma. The Oklahoma Office of Educational Quality and Accountability (OEQA) revoked accreditation from TU in late June, after a site visit in Feb., 2017. The university had failed to meet standards in 2015, so a follow-up was set for 2017. When the OEQA found that the university still did not meet two out of the six state standards for evaluation, it decided to revoke accreditation. This action had not happened for 20 years in Oklahoma. Losing accreditation has had major consequences, for both the school and students. The university plans to reapply for accreditation in the fall of 2018. If the school is able to meet state requirements by that time, they will regain their accreditation. But in the meantime, TU students have been affected. Students’ Stories TU students who graduated from the teacher education program in the 2016-2017 school year were unaffected by the revocation, and the state is allowing students who are graduating before July 2018 to graduate and be a certified educator, given they take the certification related exams before that time. A music education major, with a minor in deaf education, Rachel Neely will graduate in Dec., 2017, meaning she will be “unaffected outside of the tarnished reputation the TU Education department now has.” As she is already in the student teaching process, Neely mainly needs to take the Oklahoma Professional Teaching Examination (OPTE) and
Oklahoma Subject Area Tests (OSAT) before June. While for her, the loss of accreditation was not a major hinderance, Neely has “several friends that had to transfer schools, or even drop out because their degree is now essentially worthless.” The Interim Chair of the Department of Education Robin Ploeger stated those who will not graduate by July 2018 have been made aware of alternative routes to certification. For those who are interested in remaining in Oklahoma, emergency certification remains an option. Oklahoma’s public schools are filled with teachers who have been emergency certified — in 2016, 1,160 certificates were issued — because colleges aren’t producing enough teachers and many certified teachers go out of state because of pay. By simply taking the required tests and taking 6-18 hours of college credit in education courses, graduates could also become certified teachers. Finally for those interested specifically in special education, students could obtain a Master’s degree or certificate in the field, complete a 150-hour program and any required tests. These outside accreditation routes, while possible, Neely said,
Emergency certifications cannot be transferred out of state, where Martin intended to teach postgraduation. Apart from delaying her graduation, Martin expects to “have to retake all of the accreditation courses I have already taken at TU” in her new school. Since TU hopes to get reaccredited in fall of 2018, Martin could’ve also remained at TU and taken extra classes. But, she pointed out, she didn’t “feel like it’s reasonable to risk your entire future in hopes that the university is successful in regaining accreditation, especially since that’s not a for sure thing.” Although O’Daniel is graduating this May, she will not graduate with a teacher education certification. She transferred from OSU to TU after a year, to study deaf education, but because transfer grades don’t count and she failed a class early on, she had to work to get her GPA up to TU standards to join the department. This summer, after passing the state standards for GPA, she attempted to apply for the program, only to be told they weren’t accepting applications until 2018, which led to the faculty meeting mentioned at the start of the article. Instead, O’Daniel will graduate
Some students have withdrawn from the university or transferred universities as a result of the issue.
take education courses required for their degree and then submit an application later. In the meantime, however, some underclassmen are deciding to prepare for the possibility the university will not regain their accreditation immediately. One student, who has asked to remain anonymous to preserve connections in the department in case they later rejoined, decided to change majors from education to sociology, with a minor in education. If the school regains its accreditation, the student plans to rejoin the teacher education program so they can go on to teach. The student made this decision after a professor accidentally informed the class of the
“I’m graduating with a piece of paper that means nothing to anyone, even though it says University of Tulsa on it.”
are “a lot of extra work that is put on the student’s shoulders.” Students hoping to go out of state will have to do their own research on how they may be certified. Casey Martin was one of those expected to graduate in December of 2018. Unable to reconfigure her schedule to graduate by the deadline, she withdrew from TU and currently works as a substitute teacher in Oklahoma, until she can transfer to a school in Colorado. Getting emergency certified wasn’t an option for her, for two main reasons. “I went to TU for the purpose of attaining a degree in elementary education and becoming a fully certified elementary teacher,” she said, “I didn’t go to TU to get a degree from an unaccredited school and get an emergency certification.”
with a self-designed deaf education studies major. Basically, she said, “I’m graduating with a piece of paper that means nothing to anyone, even though it says University of Tulsa on it.” O’Daniel planned to teach while she working towards a masters in occupational therapy. As she is married with two children, she said “making sure my family is taken care of is the number one priority, always,” and teaching during her graduate degree was a way to do that. “Now I have a piece of paper that says I have a bachelor’s degree, but the school systems won’t hire me,” she finished. Students who were underclassmen in 2017-2018, or new freshman as of this year, can still declare an education major; they just cannot be admitted to the teacher education program. Ploeger said these students may
graphics by Madeline Woods
President Clancy recently instated Elizabeth Smith as Dean of the Department of Education, after years of confusion surrounding leadership and authority.
department’s problems. They researched possible alternative majors to still be able to teach special education and talked with their advisor. The student summed up the advisor’s words as, “‘you’re a freshman. The university can’t do anything for you...underclassman need to leave the program.’ At that point, [the advisor] was just asking, what else are you interested in.” The student debated transferring colleges, but because they took so many education related classes their freshman year, they would’ve “lost all of them and would’ve had to start over as a freshman. Here, at least it still counts for something.” Natalie Meyer, meanwhile, has already transferred schools. Meyer is currently a sophomore at the University of Missouri, Columbia, but spent her freshman year at TU. Ultimately, she chose to leave because she “felt that staying wouldn’t fulfil my academic and future career needs, and that the University wasn’t making an active effort to help me to stay.” “The administration didn’t reach out with the steps they were taking to improve, or their apologies to students,” she said, and instead, “it appeared to me that I was being asked to blindly trust the school.” Rumors of the loss of accreditation had forced Meyers to consider switching schools during the spring semester. A professor had mentioned the possibility in March or April of 2017, but the decision happened suddenly and late in the summer. Because of this, Meyers didn’t look into “other ‘second-choice’ schools which [she’d] looked into in high school, but rather, was restricted to visiting two in-state colleges.” At UMC, she expects to have very “time heavy” semesters in order to graduate in four years. Though she hasn’t been at Mizzou long, she said “the
professors are knowledgeable, passionate and enthusiastic to craft future teachers, which is, sadly, a void I noticed at The University of Tulsa.” Throughout the process, students complained about the university’s handling of the subject and how they were not informed of the university’s problems prior to attending. “I really felt like the school cared more about covering themselves than about the students affected by the situation,” Martin said. “Personally, I felt like there were a lot of secrets being kept and people were trying really hard to keep students in the dark for as long as possible so we wouldn’t start withdrawing.”. Trying to get information out of the department was a difficult task. “Every piece of information I received I had to seek out myself and jump through many hoops to get. When I did get information, it was vague and consisted of things like ‘we’re handling it,’ which isn’t very comforting,” Martin continued. Jacqi Cole, a vocal education major, echoed Martin’s thoughts. Cole only heard about the accreditation through peers and her music advisor; the education department sent out an email much later, and had one meeting on the topic. “In that meeting,” she said, “it was expressed that no one needed to worry and that they would be okay, essentially.” The department waited to bring up the issue, Neely said, “until it became obvious that the department would actually be losing the accreditation and that the students would be facing real issues.” After the department lost its accreditation, O’Daniel heard through rumors that it had been an issue before. “I really don’t find this fair to people who came in or transferred in. You should’ve told me about this. We spend too much money as students to have to deal with this after we’ve been here so long,” she said. As Martin originally came to TU to study speech pathology, she said knowledge of the department’s issues may have affected her decision to remain once she changed her major to elementary education. While they had planned to come to college to study education, the anonymous student said TU’s reputation as a STEM-focused college had been a worry when they first joined. But the admissions advisor had assured them that “it’s a liberal arts college; it’s still well rounded. We’ll get you out with your degree.” But, “freshman year, that’s already gone,” they concluded.
Continued as Certification, pg 5