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Essay on Effects of Teachers Education Programs at Community Colleges
The United States is in the midst of a teacher shortage. By 2010, the United States will need between 2 and 2.5 million more elementary and secondary school teachers to enter the classroom and assume the challenges in public schools (Townsend and Ignash, 2003). While 4-year colleges and universities continue to offer comprehensive teacher preparation programs, community colleges have expanded their programs in the field of teacher education in recent years to provide additional options for teacher training. In addition to offering the first two years of requirements for a baccalaureate degree, community colleges have added coordinated programs for transfer, added new certificate and associate degree programs, and augmented support services, all of which have increased student access to and completion of teacher preparation programs. (Durdella, 2003)
The nation's 1,100 community colleges, which now educate more than one of every five public school teachers, remain an untapped resource in addressing the nation's most severe teacher shortage in more than 40 years. With additional support and better links to four-year colleges and careers in the classroom, emerging programs to prepare teachers at these institutions can be the key to finding hundreds of thousands of new, highly qualified teachers in the next decade, according to a new report released today by the Belmont, Mass.-based nonprofit Recruiting New Teachers, Inc.
Today, 20 percent – or roughly 600,000 teachers – currently begin their careers in community college. If this trend continues, and additional resources are set aside to strengthen teacher preparation programs at the community college level, America could cut its shortage of 2.4 million teachers by one quarter or more.
Yet, while interest in teaching at the K-12 level is high among community college students, there is no infrastructure currently in place to advance more students to four-year education programs and the teaching profession.............
