Looking for more teachers, Pa. high schools to start offering K-12 education training

HARRISBURG, Pa. — Starting this fall, Pennsylvania schools will have a new career and technical education option to offer students: K-12 education.

The program is just one of many ways the state is responding to a teacher shortage that’s created cascading staffing challenges across the commonwealth, including in Allentown School District.

The district has worked for two years to create a pathway, called ASD PACT, for juniors and seniors to enter the education field through dual enrollment classes at Lehigh Carbon Community College.

• Pennsylvania will offer a new pathway to the education field this fall
• Allentown School District's option includes dual enrollment classes at Lehigh Carbon Community College
• ASD and the state hope to attract more people of color into the field

Brandy Sawyer, ASD executive director of curriculum and educator supports, said the district hopes to encourage students of color to become teachers and return to teach in the school district.

"Allentown students are already connected to the school, connected to our community and it is teachers from this area increasing the diversity of our workforce," Sawyer said.

"So students see themselves in the teachers we have teaching."

Exposure to careers

Tomás Hanna, the state Education Department's chief talent officer, said the program's goal is to expose young adults to careers in education and attract people from all backgrounds.

“We’re not saying that a senior in high school is going to come out teaching in our schools,” Hanna said at Wednesday’s state Board of Education meeting.

“What we’re saying is we have to get young people into the profession and aware of the profession earlier, particularly men, women, people of color.”

Teachers of color are rare in many Pennsylvania schools, and nonexistent in some districts.

Statewide, less than 7% of teachers are people of color, compared with 37% of students, according to the state Education Department.

In a 2018 curriculum audit, data showed that 93% of Allentown School District teachers and 83% of administrators were white, while just 11% of students were.

Hanna said that while teaching has historically been promoted to white women, many people of color don’t think about becoming teachers until later in life, when it’s harder to change paths.

Sawyer said the new option is trying to change that.

"Teaching is a very rewarding field of study," she said. "And it's about reimagining what teaching in the Allentown School District looks like."

Fewer entering the profession

Data show fewer people are entering the profession overall. Roughly 15,000 Pennsylvania college graduates received teaching certificates in 2010, compared with fewer than 5,500 in 2020.

Sawyer said she will start trying to recruit students for the pathway in March, when they select their classes for the new school year.

At LCCC, they can take enough classes to earn their high school degree and an associate's degree upon graduation. There's also the opportunity to do classroom observation and internships as part of earning their education degrees.

Students then can transfer to universities to complete their degree requirements.

Career and technical education programs exist at many Pennsylvania high schools, with subjects as diverse as carpentry, welding, child care and dentistry.

While CTE, once called vocational education, can provide an alternative path for students who don’t plan to go to college, program offerings increasingly have been geared to exposing students to fields, such as like education, that require a degree.

'A shot worth taking'

The creation of an education CTE program is among many potential remedies mandated by recent amendments to the state’s school code.

A state Education Department committee looked at standards from similar programs in Texas, Tennessee, Georgia, Florida and several other states to come up with standards for Pennsylvania, said Lee Burket, the state’s director of career and technical education.

Burket said the department will add the new standards to its website and share them with schools.

Schools can choose to offer the program informally or with department approval; the latter makes them eligible for state and federal funding, she said.

In addition to the new CTE program, Hanna said, the state is working on many other solutions to the teacher shortage, including creating a grant program that partners schools with teacher preparation programs in their communities and modernizing the state’s certification process.

Sawyer said Allentown is using a $200,000 grant secured last year by then-state Sen. Pat Browne to support career pathways for the district's high school students.

It often takes several months for the state to certify a new teacher. Hanna said officials want to get that down to 15 days.
“That is a moonshot, to be frank with you, but it’s a shot worth taking,” he said.

Growing your own

Pennsylvania also is working on its own Grow Your Own program, an apprenticeship that lets teacher candidates go to school for free and get paid to student teach.

The U.S. Labor Department added teaching to its list of registered apprenticeships a year ago. Since then, eight states have created programs.
Philadelphia launched its own version this spring using money from the American Rescue Plan Act. The program pays for district-employed paraprofessionals to get their teaching degrees.
The fact that Philadelphia could have upwards of 100 new homegrown teachers in the next few years, many of whom are people of color and bilingual, is impressive, Hanna said.

Long-term funding is a concern, he said, which is why the state Education Department is working with the state Department of Labor and Industry to make teaching a registered apprenticeship in Pennsylvania.

Once that happens, a move that requires legislative approval, schools will have access to federal dollars.

Hanna won’t bring the project to the finish line though, since he’s set to leave his position this week to become head of secondary schools for the School District of Philadelphia.
LehighValleyNews.com reporter Sarah Mueller contributed to this report.