D-TALE Professional Review Committee

The Distributed Teacher and Leader Education Program has instituted a Professional Review Committee with responsibility for resolving assessment issues brought by teacher candidates or faculty. The committee will be responsible for hearing complaints and facilitating resolution of issues involving grading or other assessments of candidate performance, including assessments related to coursework, clinical work, and professional dispositions. The committee will be composed of three D-TALE faculty members, who will be appointed as needed by the D-TALE Director. At the beginning of each academic year, the members of the committee will select one member as chair. The responsibilities of the chair include scheduling and moderating hearings and committee meetings, working with the other committee members to prepare written rulings, and communicating as necessary with the D-TALE Director.

Teacher candidates and faculty may bring assessment issues to the Professional Review Committee for resolution. However, it is strongly advised that candidates and faculty make every effort to resolve issues at the course and program level. If all such efforts fail to resolve an issue, it may then be brought to the Professional Review Committee.

D-TALE recognizes the difficulties and potential bias inherent in using observed human behavior as an indicator (or as evidence) of underlying dispositions. This is especially the case in situations where an unsatisfactory dispositional assessment may result in the dismissal of a candidate from a program. The D-TALE Professional Review Committee provides a structure and process that permits teacher candidates to appeal unsatisfactory dispositional assessments, to argue for remediation that might result in subsequent satisfactory dispositional assessments, or to argue for continuation or reinstatement in a program.

The D-TALE Professional Review Committee will receive reports of unsatisfactory dispositional assessments from faculty. Faculty are required to notify the Professional Review Committee of evidence of unsatisfactory candidate dispositions that they deem serious enough to warrant dismissal from a program. Faculty may also report to the committee less serious unsatisfactory dispositional assessments. The Professional Review Committee will notify the candidate of such reports, and will schedule a hearing with the candidate, the reporting faculty member and the program director.

Every effort will be made to seek an equitable resolution to unsatisfactory dispositional assessments. Candidates will have the opportunity to work with the reporting faculty member to develop a plan for candidate growth and remediation of unsatisfactory dispositions and may be re-assessed at an agreed-upon time. If the candidate does not agree to a remediation process, or if the Professional Review Committee rules that the unsatisfactory disposition is unlikely to be remediable, the candidate will be dismissed from the program.

Rulings by the Professional Review Committee may be appealed by the candidate to the D-TALE Director only in cases where the committee has ruled that the unsatisfactory disposition is not remediable and has recommended that the candidate be dismissed from a program.