Dem Senator Questions Witness On Teacher Shortages In The US And How To Increase Staffing

last year

At a Senate Health Committee hearing last week, Sen. Tammy Baldwin (D-WI) spoke about issues facing public school teachers.

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Transcript

00:00Thank you. I want to thank you all for appearing here today and especially to

00:05our teachers on the panel. You do the essential work of educating our children,

00:11oftentimes doing whatever it takes to ensure that your students have access to

00:15the information and materials that they need to learn. But we know that comes at

00:21a cost and we need to make more investments in you, our nation's

00:26educators. Wisconsin is facing what our state superintendent of public

00:30instruction, Dr. Jill Underley, has referred to as an education workforce in

00:35crisis. The Wisconsin Department of Public Instruction recently released

00:40their annual report on educator preparation and workforce in our state.

00:44This year's report found that we have shortcomings, including with teacher

00:49retention. Four out of every ten teachers either leave the profession or leave the

00:54state in their first six years. This shortage of teachers is especially

01:01pronounced when it comes to special education teachers. Seventy-four percent

01:05of the schools in Wisconsin state that they have one or more vacancies for a

01:11special education educator and more than a third of those schools were not able

01:16to find a teacher to fill that vacancy. Dr. Curran, I want to thank you for your

01:23testimony. Educators are the key in-school factor for student success and

01:29I appreciate your testimony's focus on the need to support and pay them

01:33accordingly. I want to focus on the fourth pillar of Maryland's plan related to

01:40investments in students from low-income families and multilingual learners and

01:45students with disabilities. Last year, the House Education Appropriations Bill

01:52crafted by the House Republicans would have cut federal education investment by

01:5880% for Title 1A. That's a program that's intended to provide extra support to

02:06schools serving low-income students. It also proposed eliminating the 890

02:13million dollar Title 3 program that supports multilingual learners and it

02:19proposed cutting two billion dollars for the Supporting Effective

02:23Instruction State Grant Program. This year, their planned cuts to non-defense

02:29spending looks likely to produce a bill that does much of the same that I just

02:34described them drafting last year. So does this sound like the approach of the

02:39high-performing systems that the Commission reviewed and what would be

02:44the ramifications and can you say something about the government buy-in

02:48in those other countries, Finland, Singapore, and Canada for their

02:54high-performing systems? Yes, thank you Senator Baldwin for that question.

03:01As you noted, one of the principles that we discovered in these high-performing

03:08systems is the investment they make in students with the greatest need and

03:15including most especially students coming from low-income families and so

03:21that's why the blueprint has really focused on what we call community

03:28schools. A community school in Maryland is one that is serving 55% or

03:35more low-income students and these schools get significantly extra

03:43funding for tutors, for after-school academic programming, for summer

03:50academic program, they have extra health services in the school, they have a

03:55coordinator who can connect children in those schools with the social services

04:00in the region and so it's our recognition that we need to

04:07concentrate resources on these kids that are growing up in very difficult

04:14circumstances and so any kind of reduction in Title I funding would just

04:19in my mind exacerbate the problems we're facing. Thank you. Mr. Keyes, as

04:26communities grapple with the shortage of teachers, more schools are

04:30establishing so-called grow-your-own programs. These programs are often

04:36focused on either introducing and encouraging high school students to

04:40pursue the field of education or providing programs focused on helping

04:45individuals already in the profession such as para-educators and substitute

04:50teachers gaining teachers licenses. You have a remarkable story on how you came

04:56to the education profession starting as a school bus attendant. I understand you

05:01worked as a paid teacher resident while earning your teaching credential and

05:05master's degree in special education. Can you explain the paraprofessional to

05:10teacher program you participated in and the benefits of these grow-your-own

05:15programs and how the federal government can better support these programs? The

05:21paraprofessional to teacher program that I was a part of, it's called

05:26Parapathways, pretty much what it does is open up the pathway to teaching to the

05:34paraprofessional staff, many of whom, like myself, have been working in that

05:39paraprofessional position for years. I was a paraprofessional for 16 years and

05:44what it does is it looks at the paraprofessionals based on their level

05:52of schooling. If you got some credits, college credits, you start off on this

05:57one. If you got a bachelor's, you start here. If you got an associate's, you start

06:01here. I went through the residency program because I had my bachelor's and

06:05what that did was that put me in a position to work under a mentor teacher

06:10for a whole school year, meaning I didn't have to do any student teaching, I didn't

06:14have to have a period of time where I was without pay. To me, the benefit of

06:19that was I got to learn the ins and outs of the paperwork side of it because when

06:28you're working in education and when you work with children every day, regardless

06:31of if you're certified or not, you know how to teach. You know how to be there

06:36for your students on every level from bus attendant to paraprofessional. You

06:41work with these kids every day, you know what you're doing. What that Pathways

06:45program does is gives an insight on what it takes to deliver the

06:53curriculum, what it takes to be effective at the way that you deliver the

06:59curriculum, what it takes to understanding the, for me, the special

07:04education laws and the ins and outs of what it is to be a special educator. It

07:11also gives you a kind of inside look on some of the different challenges that

07:17you're going to face when going into the classroom. Now with that Parapathways

07:23program, some of the people who were in the residency portion didn't go through

07:27that Pathways program. There were people coming from corporate America, coming

07:30from the military, because this, that residency program is open to anyone

07:36that wants to be a teacher. And what I realized and what my school, Temple

07:41University, realized that a lot of the people coming from outside of education,

07:47they don't have a clue what it's like in the classroom. And some of them didn't

07:53even make it through the program and some of them made it through the program,

07:57but once they got in the classroom on their own, they didn't make it. We have

08:03some who quit less than a year in. So I think, for me, the grow your own type of

08:09program, you have people who have been doing the job. You have people who want

08:14to do the job. The only thing that's holding them back is the financial part.

08:19I know myself, what held me back years from going back to school was the

08:25financial aspect of it, was going into debt. Like I said, as a classroom

08:29assistant, $16,000 is what you start with, $30,000 is what you end with. Me looking at

08:34that and everything else that I have to do, rent, food, taking care of myself, paying

08:38for school, was like, I can't do that. But with this program, it makes it

08:45accessible. It makes it something that can happen. I mean, it's wonderful. It's

08:54wonderful. We got a hundred people who have gone through this program as of

08:58fall and more and more are interested every day because they see the

09:04need for high-quality teachers and they see that it's time for them to step up

09:08to the plate and be that high-quality teacher. And also, another aspect of the

09:15program that hopefully will start to come to fruition is to start recruiting

09:20in high school. Recruiting some of the people who are in high school that may

09:24be interested in education, having them start as paraprofessionals, just so that

09:29they know what it's like to be in the classroom environment. They know what it's

09:32like to teach. Mr. Keyes, if I could ask you to summarize, you're well over

09:36time. Oh, my bad. That's my thing. That's my thing and I love this program. I let you

09:41because I'm really interested in this. Thank you and thanks to all the

Dem Senator Questions Witness On Teacher Shortages In The US And How To Increase Staffing

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