Project Lead: Lois Kimmel
Illinois continues to experience educator shortages and is working to ensure that the state has an effective, diverse teaching workforce for all students. Key challenges affecting the Illinois teacher development pipeline include a decrease in the number of teacher preparation program completers, lack of diversity in the teaching candidate pool, subject areas with growing demand, and recruitment of new teachers in Chicago and rural areas.
R9CC will collaborate with the Illinois State Board of Education (ISBE) to support alignment and continuous improvement of statewide efforts for recruitment, retention and recognition of effective and diverse teachers. In this fifth year of the project work with ISBE, R9CC will help finalize and disseminate geographic information system (GIS) maps to support education stakeholders to better understand factors that may be affecting educator shortage and educator diversity gaps with other Illinois stakeholders. In addition, R9CC will work with ISBE to use the maps to assess current initiatives to address shortages and determine which modifications are needed to identify targeted efforts in particular regions.