Recruitment & Retention

Colo.'s Bennet Proposes Presidential Teacher Corps

By Stephen Sawchuk — February 15, 2011 1 min read
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Last week Colorado Sen. Michael Bennet sent a letter to the Obama administration urging it to create a “presidential teacher corps” to help fulfill its goal of recruiting 100,000 new teachers in shortage fields over the next five years.

Quite a while back, we here at Education Week wondered what kind of teacher-quality proposal Bennet, a Democrat and supposedly one of the administration’s go-to senators on education, would put forth. At the time I suggested it might be similar to the “America’s Teacher Corps” proposal put out by bunch of teacher-quality scholars last year. They suggested giving teachers a portable license that would cross state boundaries if those teachers proved their success at raising student achievement based on several measures.

Well, my trusty crystal ball still works, because the Presidential Teacher Corps idea sounds very similar. Here’s a snippet from the letter:

Teachers who serve in high-need schools and demonstrate that they are highly effective based on multiple measures of student learning and instruction could get a new kind of portable license. This benefit would allow effective teachers to move between high-need schools in participating states without facing an unnecessarily arduous recertification process."

It’s unlikely that this idea would advance unless it were part of a bigger legislative package, like the reauthorization of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act, but it’s a marker to keep your eyes on.

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A version of this news article first appeared in the Teacher Beat blog.