Meeting the Challenge of the Teacher Shortage: Community Colleges Step Up to the Plate

Prince George's Community College Puts a Degree
Behind Its Excellence in the Art of Teaching

Community colleges are known for excellence in undergraduate teaching, but they have not traditionally played a large role in educating the next generation of K-12 teachers. That situation is changing. Departments of education are springing up at community colleges across the country. Prince George's Community College (PGCC), just outside of Washington D.C., is at the vanguard of this movement. With a new associate of arts (A.A.T.) degree established, PGCC students can now make an easier transition to the state's four-year colleges to pursue a bachelors degree in education. PGCC has aggressively embarked on what might be called its "no teacher left behind" campaign to combat the state's large teacher deficits in one of the most sprawling school districts in the country.

Community Colleges are Uniquely Suited to Train Teachers

In the past decade, America's shortage of teachers has reached dire proportions. Many teachers quickly abandon the profession due to lack of support, bad working conditions, or lack of certification. Other factors cited for teacher shortages include rising student enrollment and initiatives mandating smaller class sizes. The U.S. Department of Education predicts that nearly 40 percent of public school teachers will retire this decade. Urban school districts are hit especially hard as new teachers migrate to higher salaries and better working conditions in suburban school districts.

Many believe that the answer to the teaching shortages must come from community colleges. Vera Zdravkovich, vice president for instruction at PGCC, notes that two-year institutions have already shown an impact. "Close to fifty percent of all teachers begin at a community college," she says.

Community colleges are also often located in areas with larger numbers of minority students and regions in need of many more trained teachers. Minority children make up 30 percent of all public and secondary school students, but minority educators make up only 13 percent of the public school teacher workforce. More than half of all minorities enrolled in higher education populate community colleges, so community colleges may prove a good place to begin to close this gap. Structures for teacher preparation in community colleges are strong: their teacher preparation programs achieve a 50 percent transfer rate to four-year colleges, double that of the national average of 22 percent for other programs.

Despite this strength, one barrier that remains to successful teacher training and recruitment is a system requiring community college degree-holders to retake courses in order to transition to four-year institutions. This setback often discourages students from continuing or gives them a perfect excuse to switch majors.

PGCC Establishes an Associate Degree in Teaching

Many community colleges are starting departments of education from scratch, and PGCC was among the first. In 2001, PGCC established its new department of education and A.A.T. degree. An A.A.T. holder can transfer to any four-year institution in the state because courses align with the Maryland State Department of Education Teacher Certification requirements and the standards of the National Council of Accreditation of Teacher Education. Nearly 500 students are currently enrolled in the A.A.T. Degree program. PGCC also has 1,000 teachers taking classes toward Maryland certification, and more are enrolling for the summer semester.

The department fits in "wonderfully well" with the mission of PGCC, according to Patricia Basili, professor of chemistry and chair of the new education department. "Generally, community colleges are about teaching, so it makes sense to have a department that focuses on teaching," says Basili.

The new degree at PGCC contains an innovative component—students are required to complete forty-five hours of field experience in local schools during their first two years. This fieldwork is essential to ensure a good teacher education and to make sure that students stick with it: "Today's teachers need very early in their preparation actual experience in the classrooms so they know what they're getting into," says Basili. "This is key to a confident decision to pursue this vocation."

Articulating a Common Currency

Last year, Maryland alone had 10,000 openings for elementary and secondary school teachers. "The problem of transfer was huge in the face of our severe teacher shortage in the state" says Basili. The community colleges of Maryland were approached by the Maryland Higher Education Commission to "sit down and brainstorm about solutions to this problem." They met with other colleges and universities in Maryland to work out articulation agreements.

Some of the biggest challenges encountered while hammering out the agreements were funding and coordination. Basili serves as co-chair of the Teacher Education Articulation Committee (TEAC), a committee of twelve people appointed by the chief academic officers of all colleges and universities in Maryland charged with ensuring a smoother road for teacher candidates. The new degree has statewide currency to make students eligible for four-year degree programs-but does not guarantee admittance.

Over the course of the two years it took to put the articulation agreements together, the committee compiled a substantial list of things a student should know and be able to do at the end of the first two years, instead of a list of required courses. "We put together an outcomes-based degree," says Basili, "and then every community college went back and designed a set of courses designed to reach those outcomes and then we sought approval at individual colleges to get the degree."

The Future of the Department

Basili, Zdravkovich, and their colleagues are set to go through the entire process again. They are working to establish a secondary A.A.T. degree that may prove "a much harder nut to crack." The first A.A.T. degree had them working with faculty at all sorts of institutions in the field of education. Now they must do it for each discipline to ensure the seamless transfer for those aspiring to teach secondary education with a concentration in a discipline field, such as physics, history, social studies, or Spanish. Establishing this degree will necessitate working with a whole new set of people for each new discipline. Considering it took three grants for the first set of articulation agreements, they are prepared for another long process.

The payoff for the work, they hope, will be better-trained teachers who are confident in the classroom. What's missing in the current teacher corps, according to Basili, is strong competencies in general education—teachers should be able to focus on and teach students how to read and write masterfully; teachers also need strong pedagogical skills and knowledge in child development and learning theory. "They have to teach elementary students about the value of learning," she says. Zdravkovich adds that "strong content skills—especially in math and science" are essential. Maryland graduates nearly 2,700 teachers from state-approved education colleges. Half of these students never end up teaching or leave very early in their careers. "We need teachers who are really committed because they understand the problems and have the skills to deal with them," says Basili.

"Colleges these days," says Basili "have a push to be student centered—and our department has always focused on the student because that's what modern teaching is all about."

For more information on PGCC's Department of Education and its A.A.T. Degree, visit http://academic.pg.cc.md.us/%7Ehguy/sshpe/ted.htm.

PGCC is a member of AAC&U's Greater Expectations Consortium on Quality Education. For information about the GEX project, see www.aacu.edu/gex/consortium/index.cfm. For AAC&U's report on improving the effectiveness of higher education and increasing ties between K-12 and higher education, visit www.greaterexpectations.org to access Greater Expectations: A New Vision for Learning as a Nation Goes to College.

Sources

Association for Career and Technical Education. "Tapping Potential: Community College Students and America's Teacher Recruitment Challenge" 2002.www.recruitingteachers.org/news/2002TappingPotential.html
Press release: www.recruitingteachers.com/news/2002TPPressRelease.html

Allen, Robin. Teacher Education at the Community College: Partnership and Collaboration, May 2002. www.gseis.ucla.edu/ERIC/digests/dig0205.htm

Bartlett, James E. II. Office of Community College Research and Leadership Department of Human Resource Education: University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Research and Leadership Update Newsletter Spring 2002, Vol. 131 No. 2. http://occrl.ed.uiuc.edu/Update/sp02_3.asp

National Center for Education Statistics www.nces.ed.gov/