Ahead of the Curve and Out of the Box
Presentation to Statewide Teacher Training Conference for Higher Education

Karen Hill-Scott, Ed.D.
March 3, 2006

It's not often that the leadership of any group of public institutions has the opportunity to comfortably think out loud about two of the greatest challenges educators face in this century. One is ensuring that an increasingly diverse population grows up to be literate and competent enough to participate meaningfully in the economy. Second is to ensure that high quality personnel are attracted and retained to classroom teaching. Throughout the United States, especially in the heavily populated states, a wave of teacher retirements is outpacing the pipeline for high quality teacher replacements. And even without that projected drain, states like California have current teacher shortages in math, science, special education and for placements in low achieving schools. Given that California has 50% more children than the nearest populous state (Texas), the crisis in education here really is a threat to the productivity of the country, and the competence of our society.

In addition, if a ballot proposal for Universal Preschool passes, there will be a new challenge placed at the door of higher education. That challenge is to train thousands of certified teachers and classroom aides who will develop careers in early education within an eight year time period (2008-2016). Fortunately, this challenge comes with funding--over $500 million will be appropriated to an array of institutions to create the child development degree programs, develop the faculty, and begin the training for these new teachers. As the infrastructure for the preschool system rolls out, the degree and credential programs will also unfold; two systems growing together on synchronous and parallel tracks.

Assuming the projections are correct, about 350,000 children will be in preschool programs within ten years from today. If you were starting from scratch, just doing the math, you'd have a completely infeasible task of developing over 35,000 new teachers and aides from thin air. That's over 6,000 students per year who are finishing B.A. or A.A. programs in proportion to the need in their geographic areas.

1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6

Click here for a full PDF version of these pages.

Back to Home