As Kansas schools struggle to hire teachers from a much more limited pool of candidates, one Kansas Board of Regents task force is working on ways to get more Kansas high school students into the state’s teacher preparation programs. Earlier in the fall, the Kansas State Department of Education’s estimated more than 1,600 empty teaching positions around the state, a sharp uptick from the prior year. The state department has been working on several of its own initiatives to address teacher vacancies, particularly from a licensure standpoint. At the same time, the Kansas Board of Regents appointed an Educator Work Force Task Force, made up of deans and representatives from the state’s teacher preparation programs, that has worked in parallel to the state education department to determine how Kansas’ higher education system could help reduce vacancies and supply more teachers to K-12 schools.
Source: CJonline
