While there is much that the faculty and staff of the Teacher Education Program at Virginia Wesleyan College support in the proposed Regulations, there are notable revisions that give us cause for concern.

First, Regarding Standards for Biennial Approval of Education Endorsement Programs:

The revision to 8VAC20-542-40 indicated in #1 (also in 8VAC20-542-50, letter B) continues to penalize teacher education programs for counseling out admitted candidates who, as they progress, show poor potential or lack the dispositions to be good teachers, and especially those who decide for personal/career reasons to pursue other fields of study and have taken the Virginia Communication and Literacy Assessment early in the program.  This measure also continues to penalize smaller undergraduate institutions with teacher education endorsement programs with small numbers—it takes only 3 completers or non-completers to fail one of the licensure assessments (Virginia Communication and Literacy Assessment, Reading for Virginia Educators, or Praxis Subject Area Assessment, and most likely the Praxis Subject Area Assessment) when you reach the 10 required for reporting on the Biennial Report, to lose a program, which totally discounts the success of the rest, especially if those failing an assessment have already exited the program and are non-completers.