The EdQ Center congratulates CSU Long Beach and CSU Fullerton as the campuses awarded grants for Educator Candidate Data: Building a Better System. The selection process was extremely competitive and we thank all campuses that submitted a proposal. The EdQ Center would also like to thank the Advisory Group members who contributed time and expertise to help identify a candidate management system to pilot.
In November 2017, the EdQ Center issued an RFP for this pilot, titled Educator Candidate Data: Building a Better System. The intent is to enhance the effectiveness of California State University (CSU) educator preparation programs; funding is provided through the Preparing a New Generation of Educators for California initiative, with support from by the S. D. Bechtel, Jr. Foundation. Specifically, grants support CSU campuses in piloting implementation of a comprehensive candidate data management system, TK20 by Watermark, and in generating lessons that can help this system go to scale across all CSU campuses.
The ultimate goals are: 1) to advance opportunities for campuses to use candidate data to inform teaching and learning practices and program improvement; 2) to better understand the strengths of Tk20 as a candidate data management system as well as identify areas where further development of this system is needed—including bringing those needs to the attention of the Watermark product development team; 3) to document the challenges of, and strategies for, successfully implementing a candidate data management system, and to share this learning with all CSU campuses considering implementation of a new system; and 4) to foster productive collaborations between CSU programs to enhance their respective approaches and supports for candidates and program improvement. The EdQ Center will also conduct an evaluation to assess the feasibility of scaling the piloted system across all CSU campuses.
The team at EdQ Center is looking forward to supporting CSU Long Beach and CSU Fullerton during the course of the pilot. If your campus is interested in joining forces and collaborating throughout the process, please contact us. We will provide periodic updates as the pilot experience unfolds.