Teacher Examination Regional Network (TERN) 2005 - 2006

Related to the certfication of teachers under the highly qualified requirement of No Child Left Behind (NCLB).

The Teacher Examination Regional Network (TERN) merged the pre-intern test preparation and resource development efforts of Ventura County Superintendent of Schools Office (VCSSO). The goal of this activity is to develop and implement training resources for pre-intern test preparation programs throughout the state to ensure consistent, affordable, and high-quality preparation, with a special focus on special education pre-interns.

For the development of resources, VCSSO took instructor resource guides they had developed for each area of the CSET Multiple Subjects Examination and developed suggested agendas and learning plans. The resource guides and learning plans were packaged together for use by trainers at other sites with the goal of replicating VCSSO's success with pre-intern test preparation.

In 2005-2006, VCSSO contracted with five county pre-intern programs to become regional leads and begin the development of a regional network for test preparation throughout the state.

2006 Test Administration at the Five County Pre-Intern Programs
	Statewide	CSET Plus Participants	CSET Plus Ventura	CSET Plus Tulare	CSET Plus Orange	CSET Plus Imperial	CSET Plus Sacramento
Subtest I (Language Arts; Social Science)	71% n=14,639	91% n=46	94% n=31	80% n=10	100% n=5	no results	no results
Subtest II (Science; Mathematics)	63% n=16,908	84% n=56	89% n=35	67% n=12	89% n=9	no results	no results
Subtest III (P.E.; Human Dev.; Arts)	74% n=13,602	86% n=36	92% n=24	33% n=3	89% n=9	no results	no results

All sites reported participant pass-rates that were higher than the state average, with the exception of participants in Tulare's test preparation program taking Subtest III.
This is the first year of implementation and the participation numbers are too small to make generalizations on the effectiveness of the test preparation resources and their ability to improve pass-rates.

These pass-rates are based on responses from 73% of the participants (65 out of 89 participants).

TERN Participant and Event Evaluation Information

2006 Test Preparation Participants
	Ventura County	Tulare County	Orange County	Not Specified
Number of Participants	40	23	16	3

The majority of participants were White/Caucasian or Hispanic.

2006 CSET Plus Participants by Ethnicity
80 participants responded
Participant Ethnicity	Number of Participants	Percent
White/Caucasian	41	51%
Hispanic	31	39%
African American	4	5%
Asian	1	1%
Filipino	1	1%
Other/Multiple	2	2%

Event Evaluation

Participants rated the test preparation trainings highly, with 90% rating the training Above Average or High (37% and 53% respectively).
All respondents found the instructors to be knowledgeable and informed in their subject matter and nearly all respondents found the presentations by instructors to be at least Above Average.

Knowledge Increase

At the end of the test preparation training, participants were asked to rate their degree of knowledge on the subject matter before and after receiving content training.

In the content areas of Reading/Language Arts, Science, and Mathematics, participants indicated an increase in knowledge of over 1-point on a 5-point scale.