Scope
Our R5CC team and the West Virginia Department of Education (WVDE) will continue to collaborate to 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 and other teacher apprenticeship initiatives, and science-based early literacy and numeracy teaching strategies.
High-Leverage Problem
West Virginia has experienced difficulty attracting and retaining educator talent across the state. At the beginning of SY 2023–24, there were approximately 1,700 emergency credentialed teachers teaching in West Virginia classrooms. In addition to this challenge, the state faces low rates of early literacy and numeracy, has passed legislation requiring all students to achieve grade-level proficiency by the end of grade 3, and is shifting reading instruction to align with new research about how children learn to read and write. In response to this, the WVDE has prioritized 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 appropriately certified educators and supporting school systems to design and implement teacher leadership modes to increase teacher retention. WVDE requested our support to help the state achieve its teacher recruitment goals and to support the implementation of its Ready Read Write early literacy and numeracy initiative.
Approach to Capacity-Building Services
To help the WVDE continue to strengthen the educator workforce, we will support the development of a teacher-supply model aligned to the WVDE's new statewide job-search platform to allow schools, counties, and the WVDE better understand the supply-demand workforce challenges in real time. Related to this, we will develop a brief/infographic to inform the state's legislative body about living wages for teacher residents and trends in state teacher compensation. Our R5CC team will continue to promote the Teacher Leadership Framework and provide technical assistance to teams interested in designing and refining their teacher leadership programs as well as ongoing monitoring supports to the WVDE. We will also work with the WVDE to draft a field analysis of Grow Your Own implementation strategies throughout the state. Finally, we will assist the WVDE to identify tiered supports for students identified with dyslexia and dyscalculia as well as cost-effective professional learning strategies to support educators to understand dyslexia and dyscalculia.
Jackson Miller