Teacher shortages dominated education headlines during the summer. The billions of dollars of federal pandemic-relief money states and school districts are pouring into the teaching force—and the funding’s substantial consequences for longstanding policies and practices in the more-than-three-million-member profession—have received far less attention.
The new “In the States” feature by Kaitlyn Brennan is a weekly update to keep members informed on state-level activities impacting the education and educator preparation community.
Fairfax County Considering Recruiting Teachers From Barbados to Address Shortage
This week, leaders in Virginia’s largest school system, Fairfax County Public Schools, announced they are working with Barbados Ministry of Education to explore the possibility of recruiting teachers from Barbados to address its staffing shortage. Interested candidates would be required to have a Virginia Department of Education-approved degree and course transcripts. They will also have to qualify for one of the state’s alternative routes to getting a license, and would have to apply for an official statement of eligibility document from the state before applying for jobs in the county.
Saginaw Valley State University is seeing gains in the number of students pursuing teacher certification at the university for the fall 2022 semester. In addition, SVSU’s award-winning residence halls are completely filled, as student interest in living on campus has rebounded.
SVSU has 146 students pursuing teacher certification, up from 126 last year, including 23 new students who are employees of Saginaw Public Schools and enrolled through a new partnership between SVSU and the school district. All of these students have previously completed bachelor’s degrees and want to become certified teachers.
Greetings! As we are entering the final months of 2022 and AACTE is strategically planning for the year ahead, I wanted to share some prodigious achievements we have made over the year and updates from our recent Board of Directors’ meeting.
Given the scope and scale of the teacher shortage, at the Board of Directors’ meeting, we determined that we should evaluate all current and new opportunities based on whether they will contribute to increasing enrollment in educator preparation programs. We are calling this our “North Star.” The strategic priorities of the association won’t change. Still, we will emphasize the near term on addressing the teacher shortage, understanding that by doing so thoughtfully and carefully, we can advance our priorities in advocacy, DEI, and advancing educator prep policy, practice, and research. I am also pleased that our Strategic Priority, “Promoting Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion,” has been changed to “Prioritizing DEI” because it better reflects AACTE’s emphasis on racial and social justice and equity.
High Point University’s Stout School of Education is a recipient of a nearly $10 million grant from the U.S. Department of Education to fund two graduate programs for teachers and principals for the next five years. The school will receive $9,786,041, the second largest federal Teacher Quality Partnership grant awarded to 22 universities in the nation.
The Teacher Quality Partnership grant is the largest competitive grant ever awarded to High Point University, says Amy Holcombe, dean of the Stout School of Education. This is the second Teacher Quality Partnership Grant awarded to HPU’s Stout School of Education, which received a previous $4 million grant in October 2018.
Earlier this year, President Biden announced plans to cancel up to $20,000 in student debt for Pell Grant recipients and up to $10,000 for individual borrowers who make under $125,000 per year, an action that could benefit more than 40 million Americans. The application to receive debt forgiveness formally opened on October 17 and it is estimated to take about five minutes to complete.
This weekly Washington Update is intended to keep members informed on Capitol Hill activities impacting the educator preparation community. The views expressed in this post do not necessarily reflect the views of AACTE.
While Congress is on an extended recess leading into the mid-term elections, work behind the scenes continues. Washington Update typically breaks with Congress, but you can expect to see updates coming to your inbox leading up to the mid-terms.
Do you know a deserving individual who has contributed greatly to the profession of teacher preparation? Now is the perfect time to submit a nomination for a 2023 AACTE professional achievement award. Nominations are open through October 31. Award recipients will be honored during the AACTE 75th Annual Meeting, February 24 – 26.
The Council for the Accreditation of Educator Preparation (CAEP) announced today that 32 providers from 16 states, Puerto Rico and Jordan received recognition for their leadership and commitment to continuous improvement. The recipients of the 2022 Frank Murray Leadership Recognition for Continuous Improvement provided evidence and data trends to achieve accreditation with no stipulations or areas for improvement.
The Frank Murray Leadership Recognition for Continuous Improvement is named after the founding President of the Teacher Education Accreditation Council (TEAC). CAEP was created by the consolidation of the National Council for Accreditation of Teacher Education and TEAC. Murray was the founding President of TEAC, served as Chairman of the Board for TEAC and was also an initial member of the CAEP Board of Directors. He was a key advocate for a single set of educator preparation standards to unify the profession and was instrumental in the merger that created CAEP. He also served as the Dean of the College of Education at the University of Delaware from 1979 to 1995.
With fall now well underway, state associations are busy hosting conferences and gearing up for yet another active year of policymaking on issues impacting educator preparation. Because state policymaking is now a year-round activity, AACTE and ACSR decided that it would be important to create an opportunity for states to connect with each other and with AACTE and its partners at this time of year.
Register for the inaugural Fall Virtual State Leaders Institute on Tuesday, November 1 from 12 to 5 ET. With a low registration fee of $50 for AACTE members and non-members alike, this half-day workshop is a great opportunity for state association leadership teams to reap the benefits of learning from and collaborating with colleagues from other state associations.
The Teacher Educators’ Journal (TTEJ) is published by the Virginia Association of Colleges and Teacher Educators (VACTE), a state unit of the Association of Teacher Educators (ATE) and the American Association of Colleges for Teacher Education (AACTE). The journal aims to stimulate discussion and reflection about issues related to teacher education; authors need not be based in and research need not be conducted in Virginia for manuscripts to be considered for publication. Manuscripts submitted for consideration may be research/empirical reports and analyses, position papers, book reviews, or conceptual essays.
To facilitate collaboration amongst teacher education scholars and practitioners and improve teaching, research, and student learning, the Fall 2023 special issue of the journal will call on authors to address two related sub-themes in two distinct sections.
This story was produced by The 74, a non-profit, independent news organization focused on education in America.
A new report casts doubt on the narrative of a widespread “national teacher shortage,” finding instead that thousands of vacancies appear to be localized so far in nine states across the country.
Mapping the vacancies nationally, a recently published working paper and website crafted by three education researchers offers the latest, though incomplete, snapshot of reported teacher shortages.
This article originally appeared on Inside Higher Ed.
Savannah O’Connor, a junior in Rowan University’s College of Education, doesn’t have much free time. She balances her regular classwork with weekly classroom observations, all while studying for the challenging Praxis Subject Tests, which she must pass to become a certified teacher.
Historically, school and district information technology units have positions designed to enable and support devices and connectivity, but not cybersecurity. Cybersecurity represents a comprehensive challenge facing all staff in K-12 organizations and requires the creation of a culture of cybersecurity within each K-12 organization.
The Consortium for School Networking (CoSN) has released two new resources for K-12 schools and districts seeking to address the need for advanced cybersecurity skill sets within their technology teams.
In 2021, Indiana joined the Consortium for Research Based and Equitable Assessments (CREA), an initiative by the American Association of Colleges for Teacher Education to examine state-level certification assessment scores and their impact on promoting a diverse educator workforce. Our state team consisted of faculty from Indiana University’s School of Education, representatives from the Indiana Department of Education, and school district administrators from Indiana’s public schools. Together, we looked at our state-level data on entrance and content area licensure exams and reached the same conclusion many have reached for decades in Indiana and across the United States: significant pass rate gaps between white and Black teacher candidates.
