Scope
The Region 5 Comprehensive Center (R5CC) team and the West Virginia Department of Education (WVDE) will continue to collaborate to identify and design capacity-building resources and activities to assist county school systems as they strengthen the educator pipeline through teacher leadership programs, teacher residencies, grow-your-own initiatives, and other recruitment and recruitment strategies. Using evidence-based practices, R5CC will create and broadly disseminate implementation supports for 55 county school systems. Resources and activities are identified or designed based on ongoing scans of school-system capacity and will be differentiated based on school-system needs and interest.
High-Leverage Problem
West Virginia has experienced difficulty attracting and retaining educator talent across the state. At the beginning of school year 2022-23, there were approximately 1,200 emergency credentialed teachers teaching in West Virginia classrooms. In response to this, the WVDE is prioritizing the identification and implementation of innovative recruitment and certification pathways to increase the number of teacher candidates, strengthening existing strategies to fill shortage areas with certified educators, and supporting school systems to design and implement teacher leadership models to increase teacher retention. WVDE requested the R5CC team's support to help the state achieve this goal.
Approach to Capacity-Building Services
This initiative builds upon efforts underway in West Virginia to support three critical aspects of the educator talent management framework—recruitment, development, and retention—by focusing on the creation of implementation resources and activities aligned with WVDE's teacher leadership framework, teacher residency model, and grow-your-own program for 55 county school systems. Resources and activities are identified or designed based on ongoing scans of school-system capacity and will be differentiated based on school-system needs and interests. We will identify, when appropriate, federal funds that can be allocated to support the initiatives.
