People who don’t understand our program cannot understand how our program can create improved teacher quality.  Because we are not a teaching college, how can our teachers be good?

But they are and there is a lot of data that now proves our teachers are exactly what school districts need now.

But how do you determine teacher quality from an educator preparation program?

  1. Every child has a great teacher – you cannot have vacant teaching positions – if you are using a long term substitute or have a vacant position increasing class sizes, you cannot have teacher quality.
  2. Teacher retention – teachers must stay in the classroom or you are constantly spending valuable resources recruiting new teachers and our most vulnerable students end up with the most junior teachers.
  3. Student Achievement – obviously students must learn in order to succeed.
  4. Diversity – our teachers should more closely match the diversity of our student population.

So – does Teachers of Tomorrow meet these standards for teacher quality?

  1. Teacher of Tomorrow has recruited, trained, placed and supported over 45,000 teachers so far. We have over 1,000 teachers ready in our new states for this school year.  We are the largest educator preparation program in the country.
  2. Teachers of Tomorrow (in Texas as A+ Texas Teachers) has a 72% fiver year retention rate. 72% of our teachers are still teaching after 5 years – far better than the 50% 5 year retention rate average in the country.
  3. An independent study by the University of Texas and others of 300,000 student reading scores and 200,000 math scores showed no difference between our program and college of education programs.  Further study showed no student of student achievement by educator preparation program.
  4. Teachers of Tomorrow is number two in the nation in recruiting diverse teachers.

It is difficult to battle those who can only see one route to the classroom who choose to ignore data that shows that programs like ours are a solution to critical teacher shortages.

We know that ultimately school districts continue to hire more and more of our Teachers of Tomorrow teachers and that will not end.  We will continue to deliver teacher quality so that every child has a quality teacher.

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