Research is clear: the top influences on students’ success in school are the quality of school leaders and classroom teachers. To ensure we can recruit the best educators and leaders, we need a certification system that allows Connecticut to compete for top talent.
Our current certification requirements have little connection to effectiveness in the classroom, hurt our ability to compete with our neighboring states for talented candidates and are overly prescriptive, tying the hands of leaders and stakeholders who want to pursue innovative and effective recruiting practices. As a result, we are experiencing teacher shortages, especially in chronically understaffed subjects like science and math, and in our highest-need communities.
This session, we will push to streamline certification rules and open up flexible pathways to give quality candidates the opportunity to teach or lead in our schools.
Connecticut also faces a representation crisis in classrooms across the state, where fewer than 10 percent of educators identify as people of color while 45 percent of their students are children of color. In 2018, ConnCAN is proud to support SB 455, a bill that would improve diverse teacher recruitment and retention. Click here to read our statement on the proposed legislation.