31 Jul2018
By Kristin McCabe
Four final videos are now available in the AACTE Research-to-Practice Spotlight Series focused on the district and community partnerships of the College of Education at California State University, Long Beach. (View these and others in the series on AACTE’s Video Wall.)
The videos capture interviews with faculty, administrators, teacher candidates, and other partners in the Long Beach College Promise and the UTEACH residency program.
29 May2018
By Kristin McCabe
Teachers of color continue to be in high demand and short supply, says a new report from the Learning Policy Institute, and policy makers should put more weight behind promising practices to improve both recruitment and retention of teachers of color.
The report, authored by Desiree Carver-Thomas, finds the overall population of teachers of color is growing–but not keeping up with changes in student demographics. Latino/a teachers in particular are underrepresented in schools compared to students, Carver-Thomas reports.
19 Mar2018
By Shardae Proctor
AACTE Media Relations Intern Shardae Proctor, a communications major at Maryland’s Towson University, attended the AACTE Annual Meeting earlier this month. Ed Prep Matters asked her to report on what she learned at one of the Deeper Dive sessions.
Participants discuss research and strategies to bolster and diversify the teacher pipeline at the March 1 Deeper Dive session organized by the editors of the Journal of Teacher Education.
Across the country, many schools continue to struggle to staff their classrooms with qualified teachers and to diversify their workforce to more closely match student demographics. To explore the contributing factors and potential solutions to this challenge, the editors of AACTE’s Journal of Teacher Education organized a “Deeper Dive” session at the AACTE Annual Meeting March 1 titled “Filling the High-Quality Teacher Pipeline: Promising Research and Strategies.”
13 Mar2018
By Jerrica Thurman
The March 1 Opening Keynote Session at the AACTE 70th Annual Meeting featured an interactive panel discussion on recruiting and retaining profession-ready candidates in teacher preparation programs as well as increasing the number of teacher candidates of color. AACTE President/CEO Lynn M. Gangone, who facilitated the discussion, was joined by special guests Marquita Grenot-Scheyer, assistant vice chancellor of Teacher Education and Public School Programs for the Chancellor’s Office of the California State University (CSU) System, and Kimberly Tobey, executive director of the National Association of Community College Teacher Education Programs (NACCTEP).
The conversation began with identifying ways for how teacher preparation programs are effectively implementing programs and practices that reaffirm strengthening and diversifying the teacher candidate pool. The panelists highlighted successful strategies such as developing community college partnerships, creating capacity for students to have ease of transfer, and providing support to assist first-generation college students and others to pass through required pathways to completion.
02 Mar2018
By Zachary VanHouten
To keep members informed, AACTE regularly monitors and reports on the activity of the National Council on Teacher Quality that could affect educator preparation programs. Visit our NCTQ resource page for additional information.
The National Council on Teacher Quality (NCTQ) has released an analysis and set of recommendations for states to track teacher shortages and surpluses.
06 Feb2018
By Kristin McCabe
As AACTE heads into the final weeks of planning for the 70th Annual Meeting, we can’t wait to welcome you to Baltimore! Be sure to visit the Online Event Planner to create a personal schedule that makes the most of your time. In addition to adding the opening and closing keynote sessions, you’ll want to select the Learning Labs and “Deeper Dive” sessions that are of greatest interest to you.
The Deeper Dives take the place of AACTE’s former “Major Forums,” providing a large-format, expert-facilitated exploration of a key topic during one dedicated time slot each day. Refreshed for 2018 with new expectations for audience interaction and other adult-learning principles, five such sessions will be offered this year:
19 Dec2017
By Jerrica Thurman
Join dynamic education leaders in an interactive discussion on ways to strengthen educator recruitment and retention during the Opening Keynote at the AACTE 70th Annual Meeting in Baltimore, Maryland. This general session, to be held March 1, 2018, at 12:15 p.m., will feature the following speakers:
08 Dec2017
By Denise Pearson and Amanda Lester
As the nation’s classrooms become more diverse, research has demonstrated that developing a more diverse teaching workforce is imperative to meeting the needs of all students. Efforts are under way across the nation to identify successful strategies for increasing the recruitment and retention of teachers of color, especially men of color, into the education workforce. Organizations including AACTE and the State Higher Education Executive Officers (SHEEO) are among those leading such efforts.
At AACTE, this work includes the Black, Hispanic, and Latino Male Teacher Initiative Networked Improvement Community (NIC), the AACTE Holmes Program, and the Diversified Teaching Workforce: Recruitment and Retention Topical Action Group. Each of these initiatives is focused on increasing educator diversity by identifying and implementing practice that supports degree attainment and teacher certification. The NIC is currently developing a conceptual framework paper to highlight some of these strategies and plans to release the paper at the 2018 AACTE Annual Meeting.
10 Nov2017
By Jerrica Thurman
Today, AACTE released the second video segment of the AACTE InTouch mini-documentary series, “How Community Partnerships Can Combat Teacher Shortage." Teacher shortages are a growing concern and while there are many causes, one emerging solution is to create a supportive and collaborative environment through sustainable partnerships.
The new video educates viewers on how university, school, and community partnerships aid in creating a robust pipeline and conditions critical to recruiting and retaining teachers. It addresses three important topics: why partnerships are important to preparing good teachers; what types of partnerships can support teaching; and examples of successful partnerships.
02 Nov2017
By John F. Snyder
AACTE is partnering with the American Association for Employment in Education (AAEE) to increase input from educator preparation providers in the organization’s annual teacher supply and demand survey. The views expressed in this article do not necessarily reflect the views of AACTE.
The current shortage of educators is no longer a myth. Data from several reports, including the American Association for Employment in Education (AAEE) Educator Supply and Demand Report 2016-17, show that in numerous certification areas in most areas of the country, there are not enough well-qualified candidates to fill educator vacancies. And even in states where the demand for full-time teachers is not as severe as in other states, there is a critical shortage of substitute teachers.
16 Oct2017
By Zachary VanHouten
A new study from the Institute of Education Sciences (IES) Regional Educational Laboratory Southwest has reaffirmed many of the challenges related to recruiting and retaining educators in rural areas. The report, Indicators of Successful Teacher Recruitment and Retention in Oklahoma Rural School Districts (download PDF here), examines data spanning a decade in Oklahoma districts, more than 70% of which are rural.
The analysis finds that two key influences on teacher retention are compensation and teachers’ level of responsibility at their school. Numerous other factors affecting retention are catalogued in the appendices of the report, organized into categories of teacher, district, and community-based variables. Educator preparation programs that collaborate with rural districts may want to review the study’s findings for insights that might be applied to their own local challenges.
05 Oct2017
By Jane E. West
The Learning Policy Institute (LPI) is out with a new analysis of teacher turnover and its impact on teacher shortages, showing that the nationwide shortfall of 100,000 teachers predicted in last year’s study A Coming Crisis in Teaching? has largely been realized and issuing recommendations to stem the problem before it grows worse.
In the updated report – Teacher Turnover: Why It Matters and What We Can Do About It – Desiree Carver-Thomas and Linda Darling-Hammond share recent data revealing that in just 31 states, 82,000 positions are filled by underqualified teachers and at least 5,000 are unfilled altogether; extrapolated to all states, the total number is likely around 110,000. If current trends persist, they say, we could face an even higher shortfall next year. The shortages are most acute in the fields of special education and science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) and are disproportionately present in high-poverty and high-minority schools.
24 Jul2017
By Renée A. Middleton
The views expressed in this post do not necessarily reflect the views of AACTE.
As educators, we are responsible for preparing students for life after graduation. Thus, many of our debates focus on optimizing the student experience: things we should do – or not do – to create a well-rounded individual who is ready to take on his or her next challenge, whether it’s a job, college, or the sixth grade. Far too often, however, we focus entirely on the people who sit in classrooms and neglect the people who stand in front of them. Educational policies must make sense for students, yes, but they must make sense for teachers, too.
06 Jun2017
By Shawn Karim
In the latest monthly episode of Education Talk Radio spotlighting AACTE member institutions’ work, the online radio show featured the work of three educator preparation programs to combat teacher shortages. Host Larry Jacobs was joined for the May 17 show by AACTE member deans Kim Metcalf from the University of Nevada-Las Vegas (UNLV), Patricia McHatton from the University of Texas-Rio Grande Valley (UTRGV), and Marcia Burrell from the State University of New York-Oswego (SUNY-Oswego) as well as Rod Lucero from AACTE.
Teacher shortages are plaguing many states and districts around the country, particularly in high-need fields and low-income schools. In addition to school-centered problems such as high teacher turnover and persistent gaps in the diversity of students and their teachers, preparation programs have experienced enrollment drops that further heighten the productivity challenge. “It has to do with, quite frankly, money,” Lucero said, noting that college students are leery of investing in an expensive degree for a career that lacks sufficient salary to repay their student loans, and some teachers start out earning below the poverty line.
05 Jun2017
By Aaron Goldstein
Ed Prep Matters is pleased to bring you this special feature on state policy and AACTE state chapter activity. For the recap from April 2017, see this blog.
As the calendar shifts to summer, many states have ended their legislative sessions, while about a dozen legislatures remained active in May.
