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• Prohibits 21st Century from admitting new students as of the SBEC board’s May 18 meeting date. Students who have not yet completed all of their certification requirements have until Feb. 28, 2019, to apply for their standard certificate. The program can’t recommend candidates for certification to SBEC after March 31, 2019.

• Places a ban — which TEA staff verbally told the board is a lifetime ban — on the program’s executive officer and board members from operating an ed-prep program in Texas. The affected individuals can, however, be associated with university-based ed-prep programs, staff said.

• Freezes 21st Century’s accreditation rating at Accredited-Probation — the lowest rating at which an ed-prep program can still operate — with the proviso that the rating will drop to Revoked status if the program violates the agreement’s terms.

• Most (118) — 87 percent — of the programs were rated as Accredited.

• Eleven programs — in addition to 21st Century — were rated as less than Accredited, include programs rated Accredited-Probation that were all assigned monitors. See box below:

  Click here for more info (pdf) .

  

  TEA staff said that the assignment of so many monitors is in keeping with the concerns expressed by the board in March — in discussing the Century 21 situation — that the appointment of a monitor to that program in March 2017 was made too late to have a significant impact on improving the program and to stave off forced closure. From now on, monitors will be assigned sooner (rather than later) as needed, staff said.

• Ratings for two programs — TeacherBuilder.com and T.E.A.C.H.(Training via E-Learning: An Alternative Certification Hybrid) — were left pending and will be assigned a rating at the board’s Aug. 3 meeting.

• Three programs — Criswell College, Argosy University and Urban Teachers — received Accredited-Not Rated designations due to the newness of their programs and/or too few of their students taking certification tests.

• All of the programs rated less than Accredited, and many of the Accredited programs, will be required to submit “action plans” to SBEC to address problem areas that were identified.