Using Data for Continuous Improvement in Educator Preparation

Linda McKee serves as the Chief Operations Officer and is a founding team member for the Association for Advancing Quality in Educator Preparation (AAQEP). Linda's relevant work experience includes strategic planning and administration to promote continuous improvement and performance measures, documentation of the outcomes in a variety of contexts, and research into optimal use of evidence for program improvement. Prior to AAQEP, McKee was the senior director for the Quality Support Center at AACTE. She has served as director for member and state relations with a national accreditor for education programs and spent over 10 years as director of the Tulane University's Teacher Preparation and Certification Program. McKee has served education as a classroom teacher, district and state administrator, educator preparation administrator, leader for national organizations and a national consultant. Her teaching experience includes teacher preparation, leadership preparation for educators, continuous improvement for PK-16, secondary language arts, and gifted education.

Sylvia Read is associate dean for accreditation and undergraduate studies for the College of Education and Human Services and professor in the School of Teacher Education and Leadership at Utah State University. She has been on faculty at USU since 2003 after teaching for 13 years in public schools. As associate dean, she focuses on accreditation and program approval for all programs in the college, educator licensure, student success, and recruitment. She also directs the study abroad student teaching program, through which students can choose to complete part of their student teaching experience in Chiapas, Mexico. Finally, she is engaged at state and national levels in accreditation and assessment of educator preparation programs at other institutions of higher education, including service on AAQEP working groups and Quality Review Teams. Read led USU to become the very first educator preparation provider to receive AAQEP accreditation, in spring 2019.

Debbie Rickey is currently serving as a Quality Assurance consultant for AAQEP since fall 2020 and has been involved with AAQEP and accreditation in various ways. Prior to fall 2020, Dr. Rickey served as the associate dean in the College of Education at Grand Canyon University and led her college to be one of the first accredited by AAQEP in spring, 2019. She also served as Director of Graduate Programs in Education at Earlham College and prior to that, spent almost 18 years in K-12 education serving a number of roles from classroom teacher to high school principal. Her educational pursuits have included continuous improvement, action research, strategic planning, and leadership development and has co-authored a number of articles with Dr. Randall Wisehart and a book with Dr. Richard Sagor, The Relentless Pursuit of Excellence.