Today’s schools demand overhauls to how we recruit, prepare and staff classrooms and schools. Just as every student deserves an outstanding educator, every educator deserves robust support. Education First helps partners transform teaching roles and policies to provide that support. We partner with funders, chief talent officers, educator preparation programs, principals and teacher leaders to build diverse talent pipelines and solutions that reflect the communities served, help educators improve instruction and prioritize wellbeing. By aligning philanthropy, policy and practice, districts will produce better results for teachers and students.
High teacher turnover is not a new problem, but improving teacher wellbeing can improve retention for teachers of color by creating healthier work environments in schools. Education First identified seven factors district and school leaders can address to support wellbeing and retention of teachers of color. To read more, review this deck.
Only about half of teachers nationwide use high-quality instructional materials (HQIM) at least once a week. The Curriculum Literacy Guide provides guidance for teacher preparation programs to support teacher candidates to become critical consumers of curriculum who can recognize, select, revise and skillfully use HQIM.
With the Carnegie, Gates, Joyce, Overdeck and Schusterman Foundations, Education First conducted a nationwide landscape scan and developed a framework to understand and implement innovative staffing models. The scan includes recommendations for philanthropy to advance more strategic school staffing models across the country.
Since 2016, we have supported eight networks of teacher preparation programs and teacher educators in a community of practice to transform the way teachers are prepared for the classroom. We have also supported more than a dozen Chief Talent Officers from around the country in a community of practice where they share strategies to improve the recruitment and retention of their educators.
Education First facilitates the Great Lakes Educator Shortage Community of Practice to support five SEA teams– Illinois, Indiana, Michigan, Minnesota and Ohio—to increase the quantity, quality, diversity and retention of teachers in their state. The group convenes quarterly to learn from leading organizations and researchers on model policies and topics of joint interest, share and workshop problems of practice and learn about successful past and current efforts of other state teams. These five states have committed more than $1 billion to support these strategies to date.
Through our partnerships with talent leaders in Chicago, Indianapolis and Minneapolis, we helped launch a fellowship for high-potential student teachers; created a cooperating teacher selection and training process; designed and produced data reports for partner programs; developed surveys for recent graduates of teacher preparation programs; and supported the development of several innovative new educator pathways, including Teach Chicago Tomorrow, IndyTeach and registered teacher apprenticeships in each district. In recent years, we’ve helped each district develop new apprenticeship and/or Grow Your Own programs to help solve specific subject-area shortages.
We are former funders, state leaders and talent officers who partner with foundations, districts, states and educator preparation programs to redesign talent policies. We center and engage educators and students in all projects to produce vetted and durable solutions.
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