On Monday, September 23, 2024, I attended the Educator Ecosystem Summit, an event coordinated by the Missouri Association of Colleges for Teacher Education (MACTE) on the campus of Lincoln University. As you might expect, most of the participants were representing a Missouri teacher prep program, but I was one of the invited guests from other organizations and groups that influence the educator ecosystem along with representatives from the teacher and administrator associations, education-related service providers, LEAs, and the Missouri Department of Elementary and Secondary Education.

The day’s activities centered around the preliminary steps to guide the creation of a strategic plan for a more effective educator ecosystem across Missouri. “Ecosystem” means the environment to effectively recruit future educators as early as high school, prepare future educators to increase the likelihood they will actually enter the profession, and retain them long-term. Recruit, prepare, and retain are the three major processes that must function effectively for the entire ecosystem to prosper.

The interconnected ecosystem approach differs from a more traditional pipeline approach, which tends to segment the work of each part of the process. A common criticism of today’s pipeline is the lower number of education degree-seeking students in higher education. It is 25-30 percent lower than a decade ago. A look at the three-year average of annual statewide certificates issued is around 2,700 as compared to 3,300 educators exiting the profession each year. Based on that data, we should expect a gap of 600 educators, but the actual shortage is larger. Around 12 percent of certificate holders don’t enter the profession, so we are actually seeing a gap of around 1,000 educators per year in Missouri. The reasons for the teacher shortage are numerous and complex, but as a collective education ecosystem, we all play a role in reducing the impact of the various issues causing fewer people to enter the profession.

Here are just two of the issues discussed at the summit:

  1. Beginning Teacher Support. We can no longer run an assembly line in which thousands of high school students graduate, enter college, and many select an education degree path. Through the traditional prep program, we see students jump through a variety of mandated policy hurdles (including unpaid clinical experience), eventually earn their teaching certificate, and immediately enter the toughest period of their career: the first year of teaching. To improve retention of early-career teachers, Missouri recently updated its Beginning Teacher Assistance Program guidelines to more clearly define the support required for first-year and second-year teachers. Although support varies widely by district, the data is providing some good news: For beginning teachers who completed a traditional education degree program, including a clinical experience, the retention rate is improving.
  2. Alternative Education Certification. To fill the teacher shortage, the number of alternative educator certificates is expanding rapidly. Last year, the percentage of alternative educator certificates was 35 percent of the total number of beginning educator certificates issued. The data on the skills and abilities of this group is limited, but the few data streams available tell us alternative certificate teachers need more intensive support and resources during their first few years in the classroom. Many educators with alternative certification are in rural schools and urban schools, and the demands of these school settings are quite different. Sometimes, resources to provide specific supports are limited or not available. In these situations, the retention rates of alternative certified beginning teachers are far below that of traditionally prepared beginning teachers. More research is needed about alternatively certified teachers so the educator ecosystem can adapt and provide the targeted supports necessary to improve performance and retention. Research is one area that the Network for Educator Effectiveness could support the ecosystem considering NEE holds teacher performance data on hundreds of alternatively certified beginning teachers.

All educators and leaders of education-related organizations must be active members of this educator ecosystem. We cannot stand on the sidelines and simply complain that the system is broken. The responsibility to face these challenges is spread across educator prep programs, school districts, state education agencies, professional educator associations, education-related service providers, and foundations and other philanthropic organizations that claim education as a priority.

Once the ecosystem strategic plan is complete and released for external review, what’s next? As an example, next steps to mobilize the plan into action at the PK-12 school district level might include that every district places goals on their next CSIP directly tied to:

  • Goal 1. Educator Recruitment—Action A to start, improve, or access a high-quality “grow your own” or teacher cadet-type program with dual-credit opportunities, scholarship funds, and a plan to stay connected to high school graduates as they advance through their educator prep program, including inviting them back to complete their clinical experience.
  • Goal 1 Educator Recruitment – Action B to create internal processes to recruit and fund opportunities for paras or other classified staff to enroll in education degree programs offered within the district or online through a prep program.
  • Goal 2. Educator Retention to establish and maintain processes to assess and identify the causes of teacher retention issues at each school site, then take steps to deal with the negative internal actions or behaviors that cause retention issues.

Similar action steps should be embedded in every strategic plan across the ecosystem’s varied organizations to align with the specific aspects of recruitment, preparation, and retention their organization may impact. Collectively, all organization goals and action steps should be closely aligned with the ecosystem’s strategic plan.

In closing, the gathering of stakeholders for the Educator Ecosystem Summit cast a new light on the shared responsibility across many interrelated parties that impact the current teacher preparation and certification processes. If these interrelated parties are not satisfied with the current conditions, they must step up and take action to improve their own segment of the larger ecosystem.

Dr. Marc Doss is co-founder and Expansion Director for the Network for Educator Effectiveness. He has 30 years of experience in the classroom and education administration at the building and district levels.

The Network for Educator Effectiveness (NEE) is a simple yet powerful comprehensive system for educator evaluation that helps educators grow, students learn, and schools improve. Developed by preK-12 practitioners and experts at the University of Missouri, NEE brings together classroom observation, student feedback, teacher curriculum planning, and professional development as measures of effectiveness in a secure online portal designed to promote educator growth and development.