Featured News
Colorado's Education Departments Propose Teacher Residencies
Establishing teacher residency programs was included as one recommendation for addressing teacher shortages in Colorado in
a recent strategic plan issued by the state’s Departments of Education and Higher Education (the Departments). The plan and
supplemental report, which analyzed Colorado’s teacher shortages, were assembled for the state’s legislature, and are the product of information gathered through 13 meetings held across the state. Researchers found that Colorado has about 5,000 vacant teaching posts each year and enrollment in teacher preparation programs has declined by 24 percent since 2010. Only 17 percent of those enrolled in preparation programs complete the program.
Chalkbeat Colorado also noted that enrollment in alternative programs, including teacher residencies, has increased by 40%, but that those programs produce a small percentage of the candidates needed statewide.
The Departments laid out recommendations for four strategic goals to address teacher shortages, including:
- Increasing teacher retention;
- Increasing teacher compensation and benefits;
- Developing targeted programs in areas of need, focused on content shortage areas, and;
- Creating programs to increase enrollment and completion of educator preparation programs.
The strategic plan’s recommendations also include “a marketing campaign and scholarship to attract teachers to rural areas where there are severe shortages of instructors in science and special education,”
according to The Denver Post. Read more about the plan and the findings of the report in the
Denver Business Journal.
Student Growth and Educational Opportunity
School districts can move the needle on students’ academic achievement when the right educational opportunities are in place, regardless of the district’s income status, concludes a
New York Times (NYT)
article on
new research from Stanford University’s Center for Education Policy Analysis.
In the study, “
Education Opportunity in Early and Middle Childhood: Variation by Place and Age”, researcher Sean Reardon reviewed standardized test scores from about 45 million students in 11,000 school districts across the country, studying 1) the average test scores of third graders, and 2) the growth in test scores from third through eighth grade. According to
NYT, the research shows “that it’s possible to separate some of the advantages of socioeconomics from what’s actually happening in schools.” The research also details that “children in prosperous districts tend to test well, while children in poorer districts on average score lower,” but the comparison signals that third grade test scores are independent from the growth possible between third and eighth
grade.
Chicago Public Schools (CPS) provided a standout example of this performance gap closing over time. “In Chicago, third graders collectively test below the second-grade level on reading and math. But this data shows that over the next five years, they receive the equivalent of six years of education. By the eighth grade, their scores have nearly caught up to the national average,” reports
NYT.
In the study, Reardon notes that educational opportunities “may need to target different age groups in different places,” to impact student achievement. The CPS spotlight suggests that the district has created opportunities for such improvement, after showing the highest growth rate with students .
Find tools for tracking students’ progress by district, city and growth rate on
NYT’s site.