Teacher Education

National Landscape of New Teacher Supply

See how strategies that colleges of education and their K-12 partners are implementing can help increase the number and diversity of teacher candidates

View the presentation slides

About the Session

The American Association of Colleges for Teacher Education (AACTE) keeps careful track of the number, specialties, and diversity of new teachers prepared by colleges, universities, and alternative providers. In this session, Drs. Jacqueline Rodriguez and Jacqueline King from AACTE will provide a brief overview of highlights from recent reports on trends in educator preparation program completion, degree production in high-need specialties, and candidate diversity. They also will discuss strategies that colleges of education and their K-12 partners are implementing to increase the number and diversity of teacher candidates.

About the Presenters

Dr. Jacqueline King

Jacqueline King is an independent consultant who works with K-12 and higher education leaders to improve student outcomes. Recent clients include the American Association of Colleges for Teacher Education, Harvard University Center for Education Policy Research, Association of Community College Trustees, Smarter Balanced Assessment Consortium, Jobs for the Future, and the National Center for Education Statistics. She is a collaborator with Education First consulting group. Dr. King has had a long career in education, including 15 years at the American Council on Education (ACE). In 2000, she established the ACE Center for Policy Analysis which conducts research and convenes analysts and policy makers to study issues of interest to ACE members and the higher education community. She ran this unit and built its national reputation over the course of 10 years.

From 2011 to 2016, she served as director of higher education for the Smarter Balanced Assessment Consortium. In that role, she had responsibility for ensuring that higher education institutions were involved in designing a new assessment system to measure students’ college and career readiness and began to use the assessments as part of their course placement policies. Dr. King is the author or co-author of numerous reports, articles, and book chapters on college readiness, student financing of higher education, access and persistence in postsecondary education, student demographic trends, and trends in the leadership of higher education. She holds a Ph.D. in higher education from the University of Maryland, College Park.

Dr. Jacqueline Rodriguez

Dr. Jacqueline Rodriguez is the Vice President for Research, Policy, & Advocacy at the American Association of Colleges for Teacher Education (AACTE) where she leads the strategy and content development for the association’s research, programs and professional learning, state and federal policy and advocacy initiatives. Jackie is an experienced teacher, teacher leader, and professor. Prior to her appointment with AACTE, Jackie served William & Mary as a special education faculty member in the School of Education. Jackie’s research focuses on providing all students equity and access to high-quality education and educators. Her book, Special Education Law and Policy: From Foundation to Application, focuses on ensuring educators and advocates are prepared to support students with disabilities in our nation’s schools. She’s written and presented on topics including culturally responsive education practices, the use of simulation to support educator preparation, inclusive education for displaced and refugee exceptional learners, and bridging education policy to practice.

SEE FULL TRANSCRIPT

Hello. And thank you for joining us for ReAction today. I’m Matthew Short, client success manager with GoReact. I’m looking forward to today’s presentation. This session will be led by Dr. Jacqueline King, a consultant, and Dr. Jacqueline Rodriguez, who is joining us from the American Association of Colleges for Teacher Education, AACTE, and will be both presenting on the national landscape of new teacher supply.

As we’re getting started, feel free to introduce yourself to your fellow participants within the chat window. Share your thoughts. Share resources as the presentation is going along. Make sure you change your message settings to “everyone” to share with the group.

If you have questions for our presenters, please use the question and answer tool within Zoom to post those questions. If you see a question within there that you’d like answered, please click the thumbs up button to upvote it. We will answer as many questions as we can during the roundtable session or potentially as part of the presentation here today.

Now, at this time, I’d like to turn the floor over to my co-presenters, Dr. King and Dr. Rodriguez.

Thank you, Matthew. We’re thrilled to be with you today and thrilled to be with everyone that’s part of this session.

So welcome, everyone. And we hope that you find this informative.

So what I’m going to be sharing with you first–

and then my colleague Jacqui Rodriguez will join me–

are–

and I’m trying to see if I can advance slides, which it’s not letting me do.

That’s a bit of a problem. OK. Here we go. Here we are.

I’m going to be sharing with you some high-level from a number of different AACTE research reports that I have authored or co-authored for AACTE. And then Jacqui Rodriguez will be sharing with you a number of programs and strategies and national models that have been successful in addressing the teacher shortage and really boosting the supply side of that shortage by recruiting more students and more diverse students into educator preparation programs.

So with that, I will get started. And I should say all of these reports–

if you are an AACTE member, all of these reports are available to you on AACTE’s website. And you see that link on the screen.

GoReact will be sharing these slides with you. So as I go through, if you want to go back and reference something or I move too quickly, know that you will have access to these slides. And of course, we’ll be available for questions.

So I want to start by walking you through the long term trends in the production of New teachers. And this is the number of students earning bachelor’s degrees in education going all the way back from 1970 through 2020.

And we divide it into three eras. And the first one you see is this steep decline in the production of teachers in the 1970s.

And what was going on there were a few things. One was just demographic changes. The baby boom generation was moving through and out of higher education. And so all of higher education saw a decline in enrollment as that big demographic group sort of aged out of higher ed.

But of course, the other thing that was happening was the women’s movement and dramatically changing opportunities for women. And you see there that blue line is women earning bachelor’s degrees in education. And you see the pretty steep decline there.

And then the last thing happening was the end of the Vietnam War. And so you had a decline in the number of men going to college because they were no longer worried about a draft deferment. So lots of changes there that really reshaped the world of education as women started to have other career opportunities.

But then, after the mid-80s, You see actually production of teachers started to rebound.

And part of that was demographics. But part of it also was that was when, in higher education, we had adult students, women who maybe hadn’t gone to college and now were wanting to re-enter the workforce coming back into higher education. We used to talk back then–

I’m old enough that I worked in higher ed back then–

about the “reentry woman” was the term we used.

And so you see that rebound and then a long period of stability that really lasted until after the Great Recession of 2008. So if you look at that decline starting at about 2012, well, those are students who were in high school during the Great Recession. And maybe they saw their college savings accounts take a big hit, their parents 401(k)s take a big hit. Maybe mom and/or dad experienced a layoff as a result of the Great Recession. And so entering a field that isn’t as highly compensated became less attractive. And so you really see that drop off after the Great Recession.

Of course, the other thing that happened at that time was cuts to school budgets. And so you saw teachers being more stressed and having greater workloads. And so all of that contributed to making the teaching profession not as attractive.

So we did see a little uptick at the very end of these data. You see that in 2020. But of course, that was right before the pandemic. And we don’t have data yet on what happened to enrollment during the pandemic or to degrees during the pandemic. But we certainly, based on everything we’ve collected and heard from our members, expect that that little blip upward will be very short-lived.

So that was folks getting bachelor’s degrees in education. And those were going to be primarily teacher candidates. But they could also be folks in other fields as well. That doesn’t include people who maybe majored in a different subject but also are in a teacher preparation program.

So these are a different data set. This is from the Title II data set. This allows us to look at teacher preparation programs and to include not only the programs that are based in institutions of higher education but also the programs that are operated by other entities outside of higher ed.

So what you see here is that there was decline for all those types of programs–

so the traditional or what we often call comprehensive programs as well as the alternative programs. And you see there that both the alternative programs based in higher ed institutions and those that weren’t based in higher ed institutions saw a decline between 2009 and 2019.

I would note that enrollment in the non-higher-ed-based alternative programs has increased pretty dramatically, largely because of the expansion of some for-profit providers of alternative certification. But the number of completers has not grown. So despite enrollment increases in that sector, it’s not resulting in additional teachers coming into the workforce.

So as a result of these changes and of the declining enrollment, we are seeing that education programs are shrinking. So this is the number of colleges and universities that awarded 30 or fewer degrees and certificates in education. And you see that by 2019, that had risen to 532, which is a third of all education programs in the country.

So we haven’t seen, as of yet, a large-scale wave of program closures around the country. But it is a considerable worry.

If we continue to see the number of small programs grow, it is virtually inevitable that some programs are going to discontinue. And that will result in, then, a permanent loss of that capacity to provide teachers for whatever locality that program is in, which is a real concern.

Turning to some of the high-need specialties, you can see here that the only one of–

these are four areas that are pretty consistently reported by districts as shortage areas, where they’ve needed teachers even before the pandemic.

And the only one that has seen some growth is English as a second language, and that was on a relatively small base.

Special education has stayed about constant.

And then you see significant declines for math and science and for foreign language. So those are areas of significant concern.

Turning now–

so we’ve talked about some of the big trends in just the production of the number of teachers. Now I’d like to look at some of the characteristics of teacher candidates.

And here, what you see is that, unfortunately, the students who are interested in going into education are nowhere near as diverse as the students that they will serve. We know now that our public schools are majority non-white. But what you see there in terms of the bachelor’s degree recipients if you look at the orange highlighted row, 75% of those graduates are white.

And that actually makes one makes education one of the least diverse large fields for bachelor’s degrees.

The only field that is less diverse is agriculture.

And it’s interesting if you look at some of the most diverse fields, they’re helping professions, they’re law enforcement, they are public administration and social work, psychology. So it’s not that students of color are disinterested in working in helping professions. But they aren’t picking education as their primary field. So that’s a significant concern.

This is looking at that same data that I showed you before about teacher candidates and looking at the enrollment there by race and ethnicity. And what you see for teacher candidates is, again, in the traditional or comprehensive programs 71% white.

The alternative programs do have a higher proportion of candidates of color, which is great.

But as I noted before, those programs also have seen a decline. So the percentages are higher, but of course those are smaller programs. It doesn’t necessarily mean a lot more numbers of people. But it is encouraging that the alternative programs are more diverse.

So why is this? And I mentioned before the Great Recession and some of the financial concerns. We think that’s a big part of the picture.

This is data from a survey that ACT did in 2018 of students taking the ACT exam. So these were high school juniors and seniors.

And they were asked if they were interested in teaching. And if they weren’t, they were asked, you know, what was the reason for their disinterest?

And you can see there that 63%, far more than any other reason, cited that it doesn’t pay very well. And the next most chosen reason was lack of opportunity for career development, which of course is also linked to compensation. So we think that is a big piece of the picture for why interest in education has been on the decline.

And part of that has to do with students understanding that they are likely going to have to borrow to go to college.

So these are data on the percentage of students who borrowed who majored in education.

So these are seniors, graduating seniors, the percentage who had borrowed student loans, and the average cumulative amount that they had borrowed. And you can see there that across all students, it’s just shy of $28,000.

Well, I compared that to the average starting salaries for teachers at that same time period. And that was about $39,000.

That works out to a debt-to-income ratio that ranges from 9% for white students and for Latinx students 7%, up to 10% for African-American students.

And what economists say is that an affordable debt-to-income ratio at that income level would be about 7%.

So the amount that students were borrowing–

and this is borrowing prior to the pandemic as well.

We know it’s gone up in recent years. It’s at an unaffordable range for a lot of graduates.

Now, of course, these are averages. It’s average starting salary. It’s average debt. There’s a lot of variation around those averages. And each student’s personal circumstances are going to vary. But it’s still a significant concern.

I should note that the amount education students borrow is actually a little bit less than undergraduates as a whole. So they’re not borrowing more than their peers. But their income level as new teachers is lower than what bachelor’s degree recipients as a whole expect. And so that debt-to-income ratio is higher as a result. And so we think that also goes a long way to explaining why we’ve had a hard time attracting students into the teaching profession.

These next few slides–

these are for your reading later. They just are giving you a quick overview of the key points that I’ve raised.

So what I’d like to do now is turn things over to my colleague and friend Dr. Jacqueline Rodriguez, who–

it’s sort of the tale of two Jacquis here. I’m kind of the Debbie Downer Jacqui, the Jacqui Downer. Jacqui Rodriguez will have a much more positive part of the presentation, telling you about some promising solutions.

Thanks, Jacqui. So contrary to what you’ve already heard, I do think that having data available is the best mechanism to advocate successfully to those who are in positions of power and have the will to make change. So I am indebted–

and AACTE is always indebted–

to Jacqui King for not only the data collection but her ability to synthesize what’s happening at a national level and to provide landscape overviews of what we need to be doing to change the field of practice as well as our recruitment, retention, and supports for educators across all disciplines.

I want to say that, in addition, because Jackie has just produced for AACTE a very, very beautiful and comprehensive second edition to the national portrait, which she alluded to earlier–

and I encourage everybody on the call to take a look at that executive summary. It’s on AACTE’s website. And within the executive summary outlines the data points that not only she shared this morning but also additional data points on what it means to think about becoming an educator in today’s environment.

So without further ado, as we mentioned earlier, we want to give you not only the data to advocate but also promising opportunities and potential strategies to address three things. AACTE is deeply, deeply invested and involved in addressing the educator shortages across the country, addressing educator diversity across our nation’s school systems, ensuring that every educator has access to high-quality preparation that is affordable, which you heard just a few slides ago can be very difficult for many students in our country, and, finally, thinking about ways in which we can elevate the profession to demonstrate not only how incredible our educators are but how difficult it actually is to be a successful teacher and the competencies required to do that in classrooms right now as we enter an endemic.

So AACTE right now is invested in multiple projects and programs to support all four of those areas. One of those areas in particular I want to highlight is around the shortages and the areas of diversity. We have a [? Gates ?]

funded project on looking at assessments to enter ed prep programs in particular and also thinking about entering the field and what it means to address cut scores for those assessments.

So what you’re seeing on this slide is the Consortium for Research-Based and Equitable Assessments, where 14 states in the country have collaborated. And the real power here in this process has been to get all the right people to the table and to ask who isn’t there and why. And so we really took a particular note–

Dr. Wead�� James who is a part of the AACTE staff, a senior director, of who actually helps create cut scores for independent states. And how do those cut scores actually reflect on the entrance into the profession by a variety of students, in particular students of color?

So on the next slide, what you’ll notice is a couple of the outcomes of this work. And one of them, obviously, is to better understand the process. Another is to think about what recommendations we might want to provide to state agencies, local education agencies–

so we’re talking superintendents, state superintendents, and chiefs–

as well as ed prep faculty and then their colleagues.

And in addition to those guidelines and recommendations, let’s go a step further and talk about what we think model state policies might look like. As you all can imagine, in many states during the pandemic, there was an uncovering of lots and lots of very old guidance around what we should be doing in the field. And that provided an opportunity for our consortium members to get together with our colleagues across different levels and power hierarchies to discuss whether those guidelines were actually truly meaningful and what might need to be adjusted to address the current environment.

So on the next slide, what we’ve outlined essentially is what the historical premise of cut scores are.

And in this report by Dr. Leslie Fenwick, who is the dean in residence at AACTE, a dear colleague and friend, and is Dean Emeritus at Howard University, a Historically Black College and University in Washington, DC, has decades and decades of research looking at what it means to be a student of color entering the profession of education. And through her research and her recent book, we highlight in this report the position of cut scores in keeping students of color out of the profession and what that has done not just to the pipeline but the actual legacy of that work on current interest from students of color who would go into the field.

So I encourage you, again, to download that report. I think that’s a really helpful tool.

So on the next slide, what we’re thinking about in particular is, how are we seeing these strategies implemented in real time for practical purposes across the country? And what we’ve done is highlight just a few, because we know that they’re happening everywhere, of the ed prep programs that are members of ours who we’ve heard wonderful things about but also have had success stories. So I’ll start first with University of Northern Colorado and Poudre School District.

And you may have heard about this collaboration over the last several weeks. Corey Pierce and Nancy Sileo at University of Northern Colorado have been talking about the tremendous relationship they’ve built with Poudre School District in several other webinars to include a Department of Education roundtable webinar, which I participated in, where they described how they had to fail first in order to succeed. And we like to normalize that, in education as well as other disciplines, to include aerospace engineering, right–

we always look at how we can learn from what didn’t happen and didn’t take place and how we can shift that.

And Northern Colorado first worked with some districts that were going to use ESSER funding to support the pipeline. And it just didn’t come to fruition. But what that meant was they understood who needed to be at the table to make these actions take hold. And Poudre School District came to them with a deep interest in two things.

First, they had high school students who did want to become teachers. And they needed an EPP, and Ed Prep Program, to place those high school students to encourage them through a dual enrollment, or concurrent enrollment, in these terms, to think about becoming a teacher by way of giving them access to online classes or classes in person and doing that work while their juniors and seniors. This is not a new concept. But the nuance here is that the University of Northern Colorado also saw the value of encouraging these juniors and seniors because of the deep teacher shortages that they were watching happen across the state.

And so in an effort to deeply collaborate, they said, don’t just send your students to our university. We’ll reduce the tuition for your students so they can’t just take classes but, rather, when they graduate, they do have that AA, they’ve been introduced to the field, they’ve had experiences with this institution, they see themselves as theirs, and they want to come here as their first choice. Now, that collaboration is what led to what we’re now seeing as the first fall enrollment this August of paraprofessionals, or otherwise termed classified staff, at the school district who want to also become teachers.

So this is an example of an incredible grow-your-own initiative, where the school district and the university each came to the table with some suggestions as well as an intention to reduce barriers. Part of that barrier was with the tuition. Another was allowing paraprofessionals to keep their positions in the district and use the time as paras as part of their long-term residency with regard to how ed prep helps to license and credential future educators.

And so that pipeline has been established. And the question we always get is, how do we keep it? How is it made sustainable? Well, initially, this was seeded with ESSER funding.

So those of you who have federal, state, or local school funding from any of the Care Act work–

some of you have GEER funding you want to work or HEERF funding you want to look at, or in this particular case, ESSER funding–

you can use that to actually address the pipeline. You can provide that money to the paras and even students who are concurrently enrolled to take care of their tuition, books, and fees. And then they become teachers and come back to your community and serve in that community as teachers for several years, three or four years, perhaps.

Now, the sustainable approach, then, isn’t just looking at ESSER or federal dollars but within budgets. School districts actually do have the capacity to reallocate some of that money. And AACTE is working with the National Center on Grow Your Own to support those sustainable efforts.

On the next slide, we’ll talk about a different institution.

Several universities in Tennessee alongside the Tennessee Department of Education worked collaboratively to not only create grow-your-own programs across 65 districts and I think between 12 and 14 EPPs, Ed Prep Programs. But what they said was this model is so useful and the profound impact it’s having on the state is necessary to proliferate across other states. And we really feel like this would be greatly elevated if we were able to not only access additional dollars but to think about the competencies necessary to be in the field.

So the state of Tennessee within the State Department drafted an application to the Department of Labor, and that Department of Labor application was vetted by many organizations, including AACTE. We had lots of questions about ensuring rigor, quality, and ensuring also that students were always prepared professionally through an ed prep program to ensure that they had not only the type of coursework but the experiences in schools necessary to be ready on day one.

That application was approved. Many of you on the call probably heard that now teaching at the federal level is an apprenticeable occupation. And the beauty of that is all states and all districts can now be partnering with ed prep programs to apply to the Department of Labor to become federally recognized apprenticeship sites. And in that case, you also now have access to DOL dollars, which is a really tremendous support system.

Secretary Cardona just recently also did a call to action so that states are looking at apprenticeable work. And that would mean state DOL dollars are also accessible. AACTE is working to help standardize some of that process.

On the next slide, I’ll talk just briefly about a few more programs so that you can identify what’s happening across the country. And these are all different types of initiatives. So University of Wisconsin at Madison–

their institution as a college campus, not simply the School of Education, recognize the deep, deep shortages that they were seeing in Wisconsin. And their development office went out to the field and have a donor base that really wants to be thinking about how we can address the teacher shortage. They raised $20 million to support what they’re calling the teacher pledge, which, in essence, is, the University of Wisconsin will pledge to support your tuition and books and fees to become a teacher if you pledge to teach in the state of Wisconsin for three to four years afterward.

And what’s beautiful about this pledge–

and I really applaud the University of Wisconsin School of Education–

they identified that, in some cases, students of color in particular were already receiving some scholarship money to address tuition. So what they actually needed to be able to come to Madison was cost of living. So now the teacher pledge can also address that support system, which you heard from Jacqui King’s earlier slides is an inevitable as we think about not just tuition but also books, fees, housing, and cost of food.

The next slide identifies another program that we think is really important for you to consider. The University of Central Florida, among other institutions, of course, has been thinking about how to leverage substitute teaching dollars to support candidates and also support districts to address shortages and diversity. So in particular, they’re doing two things.

One, they’re thinking about candidates–

so teacher interns, in some cases, right? How can we get them into schools in different circumstances, in different classrooms, over the course of their early, early stages in the program to help them better understand what it means to not only be a classroom teacher, but in this case, if I want to be a special education teacher, how would I know if I prefer or feel skilled at working with students in a self-contained classroom or working with students in an inclusive co-teaching environment? Or perhaps, if I’m thinking about a discipline, would I prefer to look at secondary as opposed to elementary?

And so they’re giving their candidates opportunity during their practicum experience to substitute teach for a period of days in different classrooms. And the school districts they serve have actually said, if you want them to be in the same school so they have a better understanding of the environment and the staffing and the school norms, they can substitute teach in that school for the same amount of days over the course of their practicum so they’re more deeply embedded in the work.

The other opportunity UCF has offered is looking at districts’ substitute teacher lines and noting that, in many cases, districts may not need substitutes but, rather, they do need paraprofessionals. So they’re hiring teacher candidates currently and placing them in schools as paraprofessionals and paying them through the substitute teacher line so that candidates are now making a livelihood while they’re actually providing that labor to the school district. But they’re never the teacher of record, which is an important qualification. We need to make sure that these students are still being mentored by a master teacher before they take on their own classroom.

And then the next slide and I think our final debut of strategies is with an institution that we’ve been working with at AACTE for several years to support a different kind of classroom environment. And that’s Arizona State University, who is addressing what they’re seeing as the need for distributed expertise across teachers in order to have students find an expert in many different people in the classroom and not simply have to go to a particular teacher at the helm of a particular class. So what they’re looking at is team teaching models.

And the beauty of this concept, again, is not only that you have distributed expertise, but also, when you think about how mentor teachers are working with new teachers or candidates, this team teaching model allows for several mentor teachers with a variety of candidates to be working collaboratively with a larger group of students. And those groups of students have opportunities to watch, observe, co-teach, co-plan, co-assess with master teachers. And they’re also working individually, in some cases, with these particular students in the classroom. And they’re addressing the shortage at the same time.

And so what we’re hearing from Arizona is that large school districts like Mesa are working on team teaching models. And candidates are actually looking at future teaching opportunities and saying, we want to be employed by a school that does team teaching. And that’s where we’re going to put our eggs because we feel that model is so not only viable but helpful for their own professional pathway and professional learning.

So with that in mind, I think I’m going to close, as I imagine there are several questions about the work that we’re seeing. And I’m looking forward to working with Jacqui to address them.

Excellent. Thank you so much, Dr. King and Dr. Rodriguez, for kind of kicking things off with your initial presentation, your research, your findings, and the programs that you’re intimately working with.

And I also wanted to take a moment for the audience’s sake to also introduce another one of our panelists, Dr. Tom Fisher with University of North Carolina at Charlotte, a member of their teacher preparation program that–

Tom, I wanted to give you an opportunity to add any additional thoughts or commentary based on what Dr. King or Dr. Rodriguez has shared here as part of our initial presentation.

Well, I definitely am excited to be here. And I appreciate the presentation. I have to say I got to give a shout out to UNC Charlotte for–

we want to really jump into the fray. And hopefully, we’ll be part of another presentation like this.

Because our new dean, Dr. Malcolm Butler, as you ladies probably know, is from UCF. So we sort of stole him from UCF. So we’ll be looking to apply some of his great ideas and innovation into our own work at UNC Charlotte.

I think one of the biggest questions I would have, that I think I want to broach, and I think maybe people out there would want to hear it, is when looking at that data, and talking about like, definitely, the discrepancy in diversity. But one thing that wasn’t necessarily mentioned was like the gender identity.

And so I did my own little recruitment. I did a little grant. And it was called “What’s your impact?”. And I worked with four of my former candidates, all African-American males. And we did sort of a Ted Talk. And we sent out a video. And then we did we did go to schools, and talk to only African-American males at high schools, to talk to them about going into education.

And one of the things that came out was not just the discrepancy in the idea of what they would make, but also that they had this gender identity role that this was a job for females. And of course, I deal with candidates right now. And of course, the average teacher is a 43-year-old white female is what the average teacher is, right, when we look at the data.

So what are those grow your own model? What are they hearing from those students, those sort of teachers cadet type of programs? What are they hearing in terms of the beliefs?

I want to know how they’re surveying those candidates in high school. Because I think that’s really important, because we have to go to that level.

So I hope Jackie doesn’t mind. I’ll jump in briefly to give some narrative, I think. And also, I think there’s a center that we could be working very collaboratively with to introduce teaching as a profession for people who believe in social justice, and believe that that sis the greatest social justice endeavor a person can actually undertake.

So first and foremost, a few years ago, I was hearing from Gloria Ladson Billings at a different webinar where she introduced this concept of coming to educators in elementary school as opposed to in high school. We’ve been talking a lot about coming earlier to students and introducing them to the field. Because in high school, many students have already decided what they want to go.

But the piece I felt like was invaluable to hear from her was that–

and others, in this case, we had a Black educators conversation recently where this was also lifted up–

when teachers and elementary school see students in their classroom, they see themselves in some of those students. And you just–

I mean, Tom you said it perfectly, the 43-year-old white female.

And that teacher may indeed look at a student in that classroom who’s sharing, and say, wow, you’re an incredible share. We would love for you to be a teacher. Have you thought about that?

But in truth, that student she’s talking to is 80% to 90% of the time, another white female. We see ourselves in the classroom, and then we do things in order to elevate that.

And it’s inadvertent and what she lacks in buildings was lifting up and others have said is, every time we see a Black male in a classroom in the third and fourth grade, and that student is leading a group of kids in a rally or doing something on a soccer field or answering a question for a math test, do we go to that student, and say, you know what?

You did that so well. Could you explain it to someone else? You would be a great teacher.

That’s not happening. And I tell you it’s not happening, because I’ve asked dozens and dozens of Black males, that has never happened for them.

So part of the response is seeking out educators and reminding them that every student in that classroom could be an excellent teacher. But specifically, we need to be thinking about the fact that our field is 80% white female. And even though we’re working to create diversity and create representation in classrooms, that shouldn’t be incumbent on teachers of color only. It has to be incumbent also on white teachers as we present the majority of the teachers out in classrooms.

And so our white teachers need to also be harnessing the power of elevating diversity in that classroom and reminding people of the field.

So all the stuff there. And perhaps, Dr. King wants to chime in.

The only thing else I would add–

it’s fascinating to me.

I showed those data on the bachelor’s degree recipients. And the high proportion for law enforcement and public safety, right? That attracts a lot of men of color. Even though everything we know about policing and all the issues and problems that there have been around the country.

So one of the things that I always encourage folks to do is look at your own institution, look at the majors that have high proportions of students of color, and particularly, men of color.

And so if you’ve got a criminal justice program on your campus, what are they doing?

What if social work doing? That education doesn’t seem to be doing as well.

What is it about those fields that’s attracting folks? Because I think Jack is absolutely right. If you have an interest in social justice, there’s no better profession to be in than education. But I think convincing students fantastic to do it when they’re little ones, but I don’t think high school is too late.

Plenty of kids may have an idea in high school. But we all know they’re going to change their major at least once or twice.

So I think we should be a little humble in education and go to school on what some of our colleagues are doing in other helping professions that seems to be having more success.

Look at the number of men now going into nursing. Everybody’s not nursing with a female profession. And now, we’re seeing a lot of men go into nursing.

One other thing I’d love to get your thought on is this idea. So I thought I had all the answers when we did this, when we went out to talk to these groups of young Black males. And some of the questions that came up, and what was interesting–

and I never even thought of it from my perspective when I was a high school teacher.

Like I definitely had a side hustle, right? And it wasn’t necessarily associated with education. But when they took this question of whether or not–

and we’re never going to get to the point where teachers are paid what teachers are worth, right? We know that that’s just never going to happen.

But when these young men that I was working with started talking about like coaching and tutoring, and the different variety of things where there was additional funds that they could earn through education, I don’t know that we’re necessarily doing enough with that, right?

Like I even do it now with work that I do outside the University, right? Like that I didn’t even think about when I came to the University. And I don’t think enough of that is being promoted and some of those other avenues. And all four of the guys that I worked with, they were either tutoring or coaching. And they were talking about how rewarding those things were as well.

So it’s still work in education, it’s money on top of what they would be making. And I think that programs should think about promoting things like that as well, other avenues to try and enlist a greater diversity.

Right. I saw there was a question. Matthew, maybe you can paraphrase it for folks from Laurie, Hansen?

Absolutely. Absolutely. Thank you so much for the segue way. So it seems like Laurie’s question, and it might be relate more directed towards at Dr. Rodriguez as far as, are you seeing support from different states or institutions or organizations in relation to kind of potentially using substitute teaching days, or funding typically appropriated for substitute teachers in the vein of preparing teacher candidates?

Is it kind of varying statewide? Or are you seeing any kind of trends that are worth kind of noting or discussing for the group here?

So to be frank, I’m not seeing a ton of trends, but we are seeing that happen. I don’t know that that’s happening in a universal way, or perhaps even in a streamlined way. But we are seeing in states the intention to think about substitute teaching costs and applying that to teacher candidates to support them to come into the field to support classrooms.

I think the distinction we discussed earlier is that, what we’re worried about, is the need for substitute teachers. Because we know there is a dearth of those as well, those educators. And looking at teacher candidates as assets, and then placing teacher candidates in these teacher’s roles for more than the appropriate amount of time.

And so I think as educators, we’re all concerned with diluting standards, removing standards for anyone to enter the field. Because it disqualifies it as a profession, right? But also, in thinking about these solutions, we want to be sure that they’re band-aids, and they’re not castes.

And so when you think about how substitute teaching costs can actually defray some of the work that we’re doing with candidates, we need to be very clear that candidates are not teachers os record. They should not be teachers of record. And if they’re in rules for months at a time, that’s what they’re being used as. And it’s unfair to the candidate, but it’s especially unfair to the students.

So when we’re hearing from states about the use of the dollars, we’re applauding that. And we’re applauding that in very appropriate dosages, and not in a vein of creating candidates as teachers before they’re ready.

I see Tom shaking has hand. So I’m thinking maybe he has some thoughts.

I don’t want to say anything about what I’ve seen with teacher candidates in that vein. So obviously, we stay on top of it. And sometimes, we have to hear from the candidates themselves about that.

One thing I would definitely love to talk about is, we’re talking about the partnerships. But now, there’s also this with the teacher shortage, there’s also, what are you seeing as far as the National landscape with the competitiveness with alternate licensing routes with NEPPS.

Like of course, one of our growing programs right now is our grad cert program. And of course, those are folks that are coming to us with other degrees. And then we’re helping them get licensed. And we’ve actually expanded. We never used to be in career technology education.

Now, CTE is one of our areas that we actually license in. So we’re competitive with alternate licensing routes. And what are you seeing as far as that goes?

Because I think that is also a challenge that’s happening right now. It’s not just our grads coming through with bachelor’s degrees, but also this these alternate groups.

So I didn’t pay Tom to ask that question.

Definitely did not.

So actually, AECTE will be releasing a report in June, in early June, around non higher ed-based alternative certification. This is actually a project we’ve done in collaboration with the Center for American Progress.

They had done a report a few years ago, categorizing these non higher ed-based alternative certification programs based on the type of organization that sponsor them. And we’ve now updated that. And we’ve also taken a look back and sort of map the trends there.

And what we’re seeing is there are about 220 of these programs around the country. And where the growth is–

a lot of them are very small. Many of them are run by school districts or regional education service agencies–

but where the growth is, and its astronomical growth in terms of enrollment, is in for profit program.

Primarily, one organization with teachers of tomorrow, which started in Texas has an enrollment there of about 58,000 students, making it, by far, not only the largest teacher preparation program in Texas but the largest in the country.

And they have now gained access to operate in six or seven additional states. And they’ve been very forthright that they intend to expand around the country, so coming to a state near you. And they have received accreditation from APE, which, in some states, will now facilitate their ability to operate, because the state requires that.

And that’s a completely online self-paced program with no direct instruction.

There’s no faculty.

There’s some mentoring, but there’s no actual instruction. It is PowerPoint slides and videos. And these students are the teacher of record while they’re going through that program.

But what we’re seeing interestingly there is while they have grown enormously in terms of enrollment, their number of computers has risen only modestly. And in Texas, what we have seen is because of their growth, other school district-based programs or programs based in small nonprofit organizations that actually were producing more completers, those programs have been driven out of business.

And so the number of people in Texas actually completing alternative certification programs has declined even though this one operator has grown astronomically. So I think the question for state policymakers is, first of all, are you going to let these folks operate? And second of all, will it actually, at the end of the day, help alleviate your teacher shortage? And there’s not a very strong evidence, at this point, that it will.

Yeah. I would agree.

I think that we’ve seen that. I think that we–

I would say that I was happy that we were concerned about it, because that made us update some of our programs to make sure that we were competitive in that nature in terms of offering online. But still, offering online real actual instructors.

Like I’ve been part of that redesign.

I’m part of that instruction. So I know that it’s real. And it’s coming from people from the field. And so we have seen them not really draw from our group.

The [? EPS, ?]

I think, are stronger for making some of those changes. The school districts, I think, that we still have a really good partnership with them. Because while they’re still offering alternative licensure, I will still go and speak to their candidates about at ATPS, right, because they don’t necessarily–

they’re not up to speed on those things just yet. And we still need them because we need to make our placements with our school partners for our undergrad candidates.

So it’s definitely a work in progress to try and have that balance. So I definitely wanted to see what you thought the National landscape look like that. But I think North Carolina, I think, we’re in good shape. I don’t think we’re worried that group is going to come in and take away from too many of the EPP.

All right. So at this particular point, just for the attendees in the room, we still have about eight more minutes for questions. If anybody in the audience has anything that they’d like to direct towards our group of panelists, and if anybody’s feeling particularly brave, we can promote you to a panelist to ask your questions aloud if you’d like to.

So at this particular point, please use the question and answer tool within Zoom. I’ve also got the chat pulled up just in case anybody posted any questions there as well at this particular point.

And while we’re waiting for anybody that may be typing here, Tom, as you were mentioning there with kind of the graduate services programs as well, maybe it’s just happenstance that I’m also the CSM for East Carolina University.

But they were also mentioning in some conversations with us that while kind of high school candidates, to their teacher education programs, have seen some declines that–

and maybe it’s also helpful that the East part of Carolina have a lot of military employees or families that settle in the area or early retirements from Armed Services that they are seeing–

kind of enrollment gains from those individuals that are kind of seeing or looking for that kind of second leg of their professional career, kind of offsetting some of the drop that they’ve seen from undergrad programs.

And I don’t know. Dr. King or Dr. Rodriguez, if you are seeing similar kind of trends in other areas, or if that’s kind of a data point that’s being kind of tracked for, kind of those professionals that are going back for maybe a second career or a second phase of their professional career.

We definitely see that, for sure.

Masters degrees actually did tail off a little bit to the movie.

Master’s degrees in education has been a success story. It has just been on a wonderful run of increases. But we did see that start to decline after the Great Recession, similar to what we saw with bachelor’s degrees.

Hopefully, that’ll turn itself around. But over the long term, absolutely, we are seeing more graduate degrees, more graduate certificates, especially in special education that’s been a growth area as well.

AECT has endeavored. I think it might be interesting for the audience to hear about a networked improvement community. So for those of you interested or already involved in improvement science work, we are also keen to learn how improvement science can be supportive beyond the fields of health care, for example, but in the field of education.

And many of the institutions that we’re working with, we have 12 EPPs who are working with us in the network improvement community, are looking at improvement science to help unlayer the onion with regard to infrastructure for recruitment.

And I say that because when we think about shortages, there are always particular areas that shortages have prevailed. And it is only new and recent that we’re seeing shortages across all disciplines. But some areas, for example, special ed, in particular, as Jackie noted earlier, ESL, and math, and science, we see shortages in these areas perennially and for decades.

And so the [? nick ?]

is actually looking at how do we recruit, to your point earlier, Tom, students of color and students with disabilities into the field at greater rates. And it’s not simply about conveying an interest or an earnest need. But rather, how do we help people who are interested and have that need walk through the pipeline? How do they communicate with people?

Who are they talking to? What’s the response rate?

And so it isn’t as sexy for example as making sure that you’re doing like a public poster or a PSA announcement. But when you talk about, how do you respond to somebody who’s gotten online and gotten interested in the program? Where do their applications go? Who’s reviewing them? What are the components of that?

Those pieces to the puzzle or are actually really valuable to figuring out who you’re keeping in and who you’re keeping out of the process. And so in particular, one thing about career changers, there is an institution that was looking at student veterans. Because we know they have all of the qualities that we think of when we think about dispositional characteristics of being a good teacher.

They are already working in teams. They deeply understand hierarchy, and how to communicate up, and how to communicate down. They believe in a sense of civil service. They understand also what it means to sit-in crisis management, work with conflict.

And so that was one of the areas that this team in Texas was actually looking to help prop up was a deep and intentional pipeline of veterans coming into the field. So more on that to come. I think that’s been slightly disrupted due to COVID.

But I do think that that is an area. We’ve known this for years. That would be amazing educators, and we simply need to give them more opportunities to become a licensed educator in a classroom.

So at this point, I’m still not seeing–

oh, oh, just got in. Perfect. So question from Cassandra. What do you all foresee as areas of ongoing support that districts based teacher development programs/coaches need to be prepared to provide novice educators to increase recruitment and retention?

I mean, of course, [INAUDIBLE]

has an idea. But Tom, you’re–

not to put you on the spot–

but you’re so deeply embedded in the field.

What are you hearing from your district partners, or I mean, perennial needs? But also, based on the pandemic, what are new teachers needing now more than ever when they had fewer opportunities to even be in classrooms in their teaching experience?

Yeah. So I’m glad you brought that up. Because I actually mentioned this. A little bit yesterday when we were doing, when we were talking about digital competency.

So a lot of the opportunities for our candidates to really shine and take some leadership is this idea of what happened during the pandemic where people that have been 1 to 1 for a long time were sort of forced into using technology that they weren’t necessarily really good at, right?

And our candidates, both are clinical students and the pre-service student teachers, and then the student teachers themselves were integral in helping the teachers in the classroom use the new technology, and sort of latch on to that leadership.

And we just had a panel about two weeks ago when we had like a we had parents on campus. And that’s one of our recruitment tools that they do a great job in our office recruiting, as making sure that they know when there’s like a parents weekend.

And so now, we’re recruiting like incoming students and current students. We got the parents there. And we got them in the auditorium. And we’re talking.

And one of the things I said to them was, hey, here’s an opportunity to be part of after what the pandemic has done with the regression that we have to look at that’s happened throughout. Now, we look at, hey, this is not going to be your parents and your grandparents classroom anymore, right?

The future of education, you could be part of that. How do you envision that? Come to the Cato College of Education, and be part of that, right? So trying to push that.

So we’re trying to make sure that when we send our candidates into those schools that they want to be hands on immediately, right? That’s part of what we give them to do as their checklist of things that they’re doing in the classroom. So we want them to take sort of those leadership roles.

And one of my former student teachers is being awarded the New Teacher of the Year Award next week at the college. And I’m lucky enough to be the person that gets to give that award to my former student teacher. And one of the letters that was written by the principal was how that candidate stepped into the breach to help all these veteran teachers with like Zoom, something sort of simple like that.

So I think that’s what our school partners need is the veterans need help with like the new methods and the new technologies that are there at their disposal.