by James C. Sherlock
There is much discussion of Virginia’s teacher shortages.
They are traceable to lack of productivity in some combination of Virginia’s recruitment of its high school students to careers in teaching and its teacher preparation programs.
Teacher recruitment starts with recruiting high schoolers to go into teaching. Virginia’s program for that is Teachers for Tomorrow. I have asked the Virginia Department of Education (VDOE) how robust that program is in Virginia public schools and will report when I hear back.
As for teacher preparation, there are federal data that show the vast differences among the states in the mid-Atlantic in both the percentages of potential teachers enrolled in traditional and alternative programs and the productivity of those programs.
Let’s look at what we are doing in teacher preparation, which shows how the productivity of that system in Virginia lags that of nearby states, and then look at one program that Virginia is not meaningfully accessing. Continue reading
