The Board of Regents is directing EveryTeacher resources towards an alignment analysis of the current teacher education curricula. This investigation is being implemented with the STEP1 Alignment Tool, an electronic database to conduct an in-depth curricula analysis. Course objectives will be aligned to applicable local, state, and national standards and to the test specifications of various assessments. Specifically, the teacher education curricula will be the avenue to investigate the alignment of the NBPTS2 and the Praxis exams to what South Dakota's prospective teachers are currently expected to know and be able to do. Concurrent alignment investigations will occur for other professional standards (South Dakota's teacher preparation standards, INTASC3 standards, specialty subject standards such as NCTM4) and other assessments (CAAP5, MFAT6). The course objectives of the teacher preparation programs will also be examined against the South Dakota K-12 Content Standards to verify the degree of alignment between those two curricula. In addition, the Board of Regents system general education goals and required courses will be included in this comprehensive curricula analysis. The results of these investigations will reveal an enormous amount of programmatic data. This information can then become a very powerful knowledge base upon which teacher quality decisions in South Dakota can be made.

1 STEP - Standards for Teacher Education Programs
2 NBPTS - National Board for Professional Teaching Standards
3 INTASC - Interstate New Teachers Assessment and Support Consortium
4 NCTM - National Council of Teachers of Mathematics
5 CAAP - Collegiate Assessment of Academic Proficiency
6 MFAT - Major Field Assessment Tests

SD STEP Presentation

Alignment Documents