Teacher pipeline needs reboot

In recent years, there has been a drumbeat across the country about the teacher shortages impacting public education. In too many classrooms and public school districts, students lack access to enough highly effective and diverse teachers. Last year, there were more than 1,300 teacher vacancies across Connecticut. Sixty percent of them were within the 36 Alliance Districts, which educate a majority of the state’s underserved students.

But this is about more than staffing our classrooms. It’s about making sure every teacher is ready and supported to do their best work as soon as they enter the classroom.

We can and must do better at preparing our teachers and expanding access points for strong educators into our public schools. A bill currently before the legislature,HB 5436, An Act Concerning Educator Certification, seeks to make some much-needed improvements.

Imagine being the principal of a school that has lost its Kindergarten teacher. You have a trusted, highperforming teacher on staff who is available to meet those students’ needs, but, alas, that teacher’s endorsement only covers Grades 1-6. What do you do? Do you let her go so that you can try to hire someone as capable who is credentialed specifically for Kindergarten? Do you fill the classroom with a long-term substitute?

The bill before the legislature addresses obstacles and red tape like this through solutions that are steeped in years of conversations with school and system leaders, educators, parents, and researchers, fostered by real partnership with the State Department of Education. In this particular case, the bill broadens grade bands within various certification endorsements so teachers can meet more students’ needs.

There’s a lot more to be hopeful about in the bill, too. For instance, it reduces some costs and administrative hurdles for new teachers by removing a tier of certification that prolongs their journey to professional status, without compromising on quality. It also embraces high quality pathways and alternate routes to certification, specifically entry points into the profession for the paraeducators who already have years of in-school experience. This is an immediate step in the right direction from our vantage point.

But there are a couple of areas where additional work is needed. First, if adopted as introduced, the bill could leave Connecticut stuck in the past by failing to sunset many regulations that are antiquated and obsolete. When our regulations — which are decades old — are still talking about CD-ROMS, they’re due for an overhaul.

Let’s get rid of regulations that we all agree are outdated, cumbersome, and fail to support the state’s goal of preparing and recruiting effective, diverse educators. At the same time, set a clear deadline for developing a new, more nimble set of rules and guidelines that respond to the needs of today and tomorrow.

Second, with an eye toward quality, we need a clear process for ensuring that newly credentialed teachers are classroom-ready for our students. The state has made impressive strides to shed light on this issue this year, offering data on qualifying exams before teachers start their careers as indicators of teacher readiness. But monitoring preparation programs will also require us to look at data on teacher performance after they get into the classroom and over the course of their careers.

With so many partners at the table, we know HB 5436 can help us to get back on track.

Dr. Christine Carver is the superintendent of Bethel Public Schools. Jan Perruccio is the superintendent of Old Saybrook Public Schools and the 2023 Connecticut Superintendent of the Year. Dr. Cynthia Ritchie is the superintendent of New London Public Schools.