Tag Archives: teaching

News & Photo Features

FACT SHEET: Biden-Harris Administration Announces New Actions to Support, Strengthen Teaching Profession; White House Hosts First-Ever State Dinner Honoring Teachers

Ahead of Teacher Appreciation Week, the Biden-Harris Administration announced new efforts to strengthen the teaching profession and support schools across the country, including actions to increase teacher recruitment and retention, new data on how fixes to Public Service Loan Forgiveness (PSLF) are benefitting teachers in every state and Congressional district, and new funding to increase pipelines for special education teachers. This fact sheet is provided by the White House:
 

The Biden-Harris Administration announced new efforts to strengthen the teaching profession and support schools across the country, including actions to increase teacher recruitment and retention (c) Karen Rubin/news-photos-features.com

Our nation’s teachers prepare and inspire the next generation of leaders who are critical to our future. President Biden has been clear since day one that to address these long-standing staffing challenges facing our schools, exacerbated by the pandemic, teachers, paraprofessionals, and other school staff need to be paid competitively and treated with the respect and dignity that they deserve, including through improved working conditions for staff and learning conditions for students.
 
First Lady Jill Biden, a life-long educator, is hosting the first-ever Teachers of the Year State Dinner at the White House to honor the 2024 National Teacher of the Year, Missy Testerman, and state teachers of the year from across the United States for their excellence in education.  
 
The Biden-Harris Administration has strengthened the teaching profession by:

  • Encouraging states to increase teacher pay, with 30 states and the District of Columbia taking action to raise teacher pay. To support COVID-19 recovery, the Administration secured $130 billion for the largest-ever investment in public education in history through the American Rescue Plan provided to more than 15,000 school districts and secured nearly $2 billion in additional Title I funding to date; both funding streams can be used to support teacher salaries in our most underserved schools. These funds can also be used to support high-quality teacher pipeline programs and hire more professionals across the education workforce.
     
  • Fixing the Public Service Loan Forgiveness program, which has helped nearly 876,000 borrowers engaged in public service – such as teachers – have their federal student loans forgiven. Prior to the Biden-Harris Administration, only 7,000 borrowers had received relief under this program.
     
  • Returning schools to pre-pandemic staffing levels. While teacher shortages remain, staffing at schools has recovered above pre-pandemic levels, including 40 percent more social workers and 25 percent more nurses, providing critical supports to students that also helps support teaching and learning.
     
  • Expanding Registered Teacher Apprenticeship programs to 34 states, the District of Columbia, and Puerto Rico, providing an affordable and high-quality path to become a teacher in communities across the country. 

  • Securing a total of nearly $2.7 billion of investment in teachers in the Fiscal Year (FY) 2024 budget to help states and communities address teacher shortages, including in areas such as special education, Career and Technical Education, and bilingual education, and in underserved communities, through increased teacher recruitment, support, and retention.

 Additional details on these actions are described further below.
 
Today, the Biden-Harris Administration is announcing new actions to support teachers:

  • Establishing a new technical assistance center to help states and communities increase teacher recruitment and retention. This week, the Department of Education will release a Notice of Final Priorities and a Notice Inviting Applications and for the Comprehensive Centers grant program, which will support a Center on Strengthening and Supporting the Educator Workforce. This new Center will provide universal and targeted intensive capacity-building services designed to support States as they in turn support their districts, schools and partners in designing and scaling practices that establish and enhance high-quality, comprehensive, evidence-based, and affordable educator pathways (including educator residency and Grow Your Own programs, and emerging pathways into the profession such as registered apprenticeship programs for teachers), and in improving educator diversity, recruitment, and retention. 
     
  • Providing data from each Congressional district showing the effects of the Biden-Harris Administration’s work to fix the PSLF program. The data released today shows the distribution across the country of $62.8 billion in approved debt relief across 876,000 borrowers in every state and Congressional district. These are individuals who worked for at least 10 years in public service while repaying their loans.
     
  • Increasing funding to support a strong pipeline of special education teachers. To date, the Administration has secured a $25 million increase in funding for the Personnel Preparation grant program under Part D of the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act compared to the beginning of the Administration, a 28 percent increase dedicated to growing our nation’s supply of special educators – a persistent shortage area. Funding under this grant can be used to support the preparation and development of special educators, including increasing the supply of special education faculty available to establish or scale up preparation programs for special educators at institutions of higher education. In the coming week, the Department will make about $10 million in new awards to grantees implementing programs under Part D of IDEA to help shore up the supply of special educators nationwide.

These announcements build on actions the Biden-Harris Administration have taken since day one to support our nation’s teachers. To date, the Administration has:

  • Supported a strong educator workforce jobs recovery and helped rehire through the American Rescue Plan. As a result of the President’s decisive action to provide our schools with historic funds through the American Rescue Plan, we now have more people working in public schools than before the pandemic. Our schools lost hundreds of thousands of local public education jobs in just three months during the pandemic. Since President Biden took office, schools have added 638,000 education jobs. As of March 2024, there were 23,000 more employees in local public education than in February 2020. But there is still work to do. Teacher shortages remain and vary significantly across communities, disproportionately impacting students of color, students with disabilities, English learners, and students from low-income backgrounds.
  • Increased investments by $112 million in preparing, recruiting, developing, and retaining teachers since the beginning of this Administration. As a result of the additional funds the Administration has secured in these programs since the beginning of the Administration and through FY23, an additional $112 million has been invested in supporting educators through Department of Education’s competitive grant programs, in addition to the tens of billions invested in staffing through the American Rescue Plan. For example, the Administration has increased annual funding for the Teacher Quality Partnership Grant program by 34 percent, which supports year-long teacher residency programs that have been shown to increase teacher effectiveness, retention, and diversity.
     
  • Funded educator diversity efforts nationwide. The Administration has prioritized efforts to increase educator diversity across 15 competitive grant programs that support teacher preparation, development, recruitment, and retention. These programs awarded nearly $450 million to 263 grantees, 92 percent of which were to grantees that addressed specific priorities related to educator diversity. For example, this year the Department plans to award $15 million to fund up to 27 new awards to Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs), Tribally Controlled Colleges and Universities (TCCUs), and Minority Serving Institutions (MSIs) through the Augustus F. Hawkins program, which works to increase the numbers of diverse personnel in early intervention, special education, and related services.
     
  • Expanded high-quality teacher preparation programs through Registered Teacher Apprenticeships. At the beginning of this Administration, there were no Registered Apprenticeship Programs for teachers. Today, there are registered programs in 34 states, the District of Columbia and Puerto Rico. These programs can serve to provide affordable and high-quality pathways into the profession, allowing apprentices to earn a salary and benefits while they prepare to become a teacher, including by scaling up evidence-based Grow Your Own and Teacher Residency programs, which help to increase teacher retention, effectiveness, and diversity.
     
  • Relieved teacher student loan debt through forgiveness, repayment, and grant programs. The Administration has approved almost $160 billion in student debt forgiveness for nearly 4.6 million borrowers through various actions, including $62.8 billion in forgiveness for almost 876,000 borrowers through fixes to PSLF. The Administration has also secured the largest increase to Pell Grants in a decade and launched the new SAVE plan – the most affordable student loan repayment plan ever. The Administration estimates that a first-year teacher with a bachelor’s degree would save $17,000 in payments on the SAVE plan while seeking PSLF. This Administration also implemented changes to the TEACH Grant program to support teacher recruitment and retention in our most underserved communities. The TEACH Grant provides up to $16,000 to undergraduate and graduate students who commit to teaching in a high-need field and school serving students from low-income backgrounds for four years.
     
  • Secured first-ever funding for the Augustus F. Hawkins Centers of Excellence Grants. The Department held the first-ever competition for the Augustus F. Hawkins Grant program, awarding $23 million to date to teacher preparation programs at HBCUs, TCCUs, and MSIs to increase the number of well-prepared teacher candidates, including teacher candidates of color and bilingual and multilingual educators, in the field. The Department is currently administering an additional competition for the Hawkins grant program with $15 million in funding available, with applications due in June 2024.
     
  • Launched a campaign to elevate the teaching profession and call for increasing teacher pay. The Department launched “Teachers: Leaders Shaping Lives” – a campaign to elevate the teaching profession and promote educator diversity. The new Public Service Announcement was developed in partnership with TEACH.org and the One Million Teachers of Color Campaign at the Hunt Institute. This Administration believes that educators should be treated with dignity and respect and receive the pay they deserve – and has encouraged all states to increase compensation so that teachers are paid a livable and competitive wage. Since the 2021-22 school year, 30 states and the District of Columbia have taken action at the state level to increase teacher pay.
     
  • Provided extensive Technical Assistance and Guidance on how to use federal and other resources to implement evidence-based strategies to support teacher preparation, recruitment, retention, development, and advancement. This includes; (1) establishing the Strengthening and Diversifying the Educator Workforce Workgroup which brings together States from across the country to share resources and discuss lessons learned and best practices for supporting teacher development, recruitment, retention and diversity; (2) updating guidance on the use of Perkins V funds to improve the recruitment, preparation, retention, and growth of future educators, including Career and Technical Education teachers; (3) issuing a collection of seven briefs outlining the most common challenges related to recruiting and retaining teachers from underrepresented backgrounds or with certain certifications; (4) sharing best practices, key resources, and making data on job recovery, educator preparation, educator diversity, and compensation, and other related issues easier to access and use through the Department’s Raise the Bar: Eliminating Educator Shortages website; and (5) issuing guidance on how American Rescue Plan funds can be used to stabilize the teacher workforce and support teacher well-being.

 First Lady Jill Biden Hosts First-Ever “Teachers of the Year” State Dinner

To further demonstrate their appreciation for teachers, First Lady Jill Biden hosted the first-ever “Teachers of the Year” State Dinner at the White House. The event honored the 2024 National Teacher of the Year, Missy Testerman from Tennessee, and the State Teachers of the Year from across the country for their excellence in teaching and commitment to students’ learning. 

“Tonight, we celebrate you, because teaching isn’t just a job, it’s a calling, and all of you were called to this profession for a reason,” Dr. Biden said in her welcoming remarks. “You believe that a better world is possible – and you make that world real, one student at a time. To answer the call of teaching, is in itself, an act of hope. You look at your students and don’t just see who they are today – you see all the possibility of tomorrow. You help them find the light within themselves, and that light lives on in all of you.”
 
As a classroom teacher for over 30 years, Dr. Biden continues to teach English and writing at Northern Virginia Community College, where she has been a professor since 2009. From championing teacher recruitment and retention, opportunities for career-connected learning, and more affordable options for education after high school, including free community college, Dr. Biden continues to shine a spotlight on educators and the teaching profession. This is the fourth year Dr. Biden has welcomed the National and State Teachers of the Year for a celebration at the White House.

The Council of Chief State School Officers (CCSSO), the U.S. Department of Education, American Federation of Teachers, and the National Education Association are supporting this event. CCSSO oversees the National Teacher of the Year Program, which identifies exceptional teachers across the country, recognizes their effective work in the classroom, engages them in a year of professional learning, and amplifies their voices. 
 
More information about the program and a list of the 2024 State Teachers of the Year can be found HERE.
 
First Lady Jill Biden and Social Secretary Carlos Elizondo worked with White House Chief Floral Designer Hedieh Ghaffarian to create a guest experience that honors the 2024 Teachers of the Year and celebrates our nation’s educators.

Each of the 2024 State Teachers of the Year received a commemorative brass bell from the First Lady, continuing a tradition she started in 2021 in honor of her grandmother, a fellow educator and the person who inspired her to become a teacher.  Irises, the official state flower of Tennessee, Mrs. Testerman’s home state, were incorporated in the floral arrangements. A personalized gold painted apple served as the place card holder at the place settings for the 2024 Teachers of the Year.

The décor was inspired by classrooms across the country, and the official flags of the states and territories of the 2024 State Teachers of the Year lined the East Portico entrance, greeting honorees and guests upon arrival to the White House. 

Organized by each teacher’s school principal, when the 2024 Teachers of the Year arrived to their seats, they were surprised with a handmade, personalized thank you note from their students, fellow teachers, and school leadership. 

Education, President Obama

Obama Celebrates Great Teachers, Cites Nation’s Progress in Public Education

President Obama promotes education reform during visit to PTech, an innovative high school program, in Brooklyn, NY © 2016 Karen Rubin/news-photos-features.com
President Obama promotes education reform during visit to PTech, an innovative high school program, in Brooklyn, NY © 2016 Karen Rubin/news-photos-features.com

On National Teacher Appreciation Day, May 3, President Obama stood with hundreds of educators from across the country to recognize their contributions and celebrate the progress this country has made toward increasing educational opportunity and outcomes for all students since he took office.  The President not only honored the National Teacher of the Year, Jahana Hayes, a veteran history teacher at John F. Kennedy High School in Waterbury, Connecticut, but also celebrated remarkable educators across the country who have helped achieve extraordinary progress over the past seven and a half years.

“President Obama recognizes that America’s future is written in our classrooms, and that our teachers and educators deserve our support,” the White House stated. “That is why, throughout his Administration, the President has not only supported our educators, but also promoted a bold vision for improving our education system to give all students the fair chance they deserve. Today, the White House will underscore the change underway in America’s schools, and announce progress toward reaching the President’s goal of preparing an additional 100,000 science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) teachers for America’s classrooms by 2021.”

The White House is also highlighting new efforts to support great educators.TEACH – a public-private collaboration led by the U.S. Department of Education and Microsoft, with support from organizations including Facebook, College Football Playoff Foundation and MyCollege Options – will launch new commitments to attract a strong teacher workforce.  The Department of Education will collaborate with the ASCD, the National Board for Professional Teaching Standards, The Leona M. and Harry B. Helmsley Foundation Charitable Trust, and Carnegie Corporation of New York in their work to support teacher-led initiatives that strengthen teachers’ professional learning and improve student outcomes.  And organizations like Spotify and the College Football Playoff Foundation will launch new efforts to support and encourage great teaching.

Progress to Support Great Teachers and Help All Students Succeed 

Today, the White House and the Department of Education are releasing a report highlighting the nation’s educational progress since the President took office – from reducing the number of dropouts, to raising academic standards to prepare students for college and career in nearly every state, to expanding the availability of high-quality preschool and digitally connecting America’s classrooms.  The pace and scale of change in America’s educational system would have been impossible to achieve without the committed work of educators at every level of school governance – from the classroom teacher to state superintendents.

The report released today details the steps President Obama has taken since the Recovery Act to support education, showing results under efforts such as the Race to the Top – which catalyzed a profound wave of education reform across the country – and the Investing in Innovation program – which has contributed to testing, validating, refining and expanding new solutions and strategies to close achievement and opportunity gaps in America’s schools.  The report underscores the steps the Obama Administration has taken to increase equity and give teachers the tools they need to help students succeed.

Below are a few highlights of the progress achieved over the last seven and a half years:

  • High Academic Standards that Prepare Students for Success in College and Careers: Today, 49 states and the District of Columbia (D.C.) have adopted and are implementing college- and career-ready standards and aligned assessments for their students. In the future, with the recent passage of the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA), every state will hold all of their students to such standards. 
  • Record-High Graduation Rates: In 2008, a quarter of our high school students did not earn a high school diploma on time. Since President Obama took office, the graduation rate has increased steadily and students in the United States are graduating from high school at a higher rate than ever before, at 82 percent. Some of the greatest progress has been made by African American and Latino Students. Since the 2010-2011 school year, African American high school students experienced a 5.5 percentage point increase in graduation rates while Latino students experienced a 5.3 percentage point increase.
  • Stemming the Tide of School Dropout: The number of schools where 40 percent or more of students do not graduate on-time has gone down sharply during this Administration. In 2008, there were roughly 1,800 of these schools across the country; by 2014, the number of these schools was reduced to 1,040.The percentage of young people who drop out of high school altogether has decreased.  In 2008, before the President entered office, the dropout rate among Hispanic students was 18 percent. That percentage shrunk to just below 12 percent in 2013 – a marked improvement from before President Obama entered office and a significant shift from more than two decades before, when the share of Latino youth who were dropouts was 35 percent.
  • Advancing High-Quality Preschool: In 2009, only 38 states offered students access to state-funded preschool, according to the National Institute for Early Education Research at Rutgers University. Today, all but four states offer access to state-funded preschool, and since the President called for universal access to high-quality preschool in his 2013 State of the Union Address, 38 states and D.C. have invested more than $1.5 billion in support of preschool. Beyond these state investments, the Obama Administration has dedicated $750 million toward the development and expansion of high-quality preschool, enabling 230 high-need communities to provide more than 100,000 additional children with access to preschool.
  • Investing in our Great Educators:When President Obama took office, the U.S. economy was in free-fall, and state and local government budgets were in trouble and facing significant cuts – jeopardizing our education system. The President took action, signing into the law the Recovery Act, which saved or created more than 400,000 jobs, most directly in education – keeping teachers, principals, librarians, and counselors on the job. In addition, since 2009, the Obama Administration has invested more than $2.7 billion in grants to develop educator talent through the award of competitive grants for better recruitment, training, support, and rewards for our educators, particularly those in high-need and rural districts.
  • Transforming Education Technology: In 2013, only 30 percent of school districts had access to high-speed internet, leaving 40 million students without access to that connectivity.  In 2013, the President launched his ConnectED initiative with the goal of unleashing education technology in schools and connecting 99 percent of America’s students to high-speed broadband in their schools and libraries by 2018.   Today, we are on track to meet that goal – 77 percent of school districts and an additional 20 million students now have access to high-speed broadband. This transformation is supported by 2,200 superintendents who have committed to President Obama’s Future Ready vision to help teachers and principals unleash new models of teaching and learning that make use of technology and digital tools like Open eBooks.
  • Inspiring STEM Education and Computer Science for All:  The Obama Administration’s efforts have resulted in an unprecedented all hands-on-deck effort in support of STEM education and STEM teachers, including securing more than $1 billion in private investments in support of STEM education. Additionally, the President has advanced efforts to inspire and recognize young inventors, discoverers and makers by hosting the first-ever White House Science Fairs and the first-ever Maker Faire in 2014.  Earlier this year, the President announced a bold new call to action: to empower every American student from kindergarten through high school to learn computer science and the computational thinking skills needed to succeed.

New Announcements in the Effort to Support Great Educators

In addition to highlighting the progress under this Administration, the White House and Department of Education are also announcing the following actions being taken to support excellent educators:

Reaching the President’s Goal of 100,000 new and Excellent STEM Teachers

To meet the challenges of the 21st century, more of our students will need to be prepared with strong STEM skills in order to succeed. The need is real — last year, there were more than 600,000 tech jobs open across the United States. But there are large disparities in student access and engagement in STEM courses, with only half of high schools nationwide offering calculus and only 63 percent offering physics. One quarter of the high schools with the highest percentages of African-American and Latino students do not offer Algebra II and a third of these schools do not offer chemistry. To address these challenges, President Obama issued a call to action in his 2011 State of the Union address to put 100,000 new STEM teachers in the classroom in ten years to equip a new generation of problem-solvers with the STEM skills they need to revitalize our economy, lead our nation, and solve the globe’s most pressing challenges.

In response to that call to action, 100Kin10, a network of 280 organizations, including school districts, universities, foundations, corporations, museums, nonprofits, and government agencies, was formed to mobilize commitments to achieve the ambitious 100,000 excellent STEM teacher goal by 2021.

Today, at the critical halfway point in the ten-year effort, 100Kin10 is announcing that its network has already trained more than 30,000 teachers, and that its partners have made commitments to recruit and train an additional 70,000 by 2021 – meaning they will meet the President’s goal and yield more than 100,000 excellent STEM teachers by the ten-year mark. These projections have been verified by the American Institutes for Research, which has concluded that 100Kin10’s estimates are reasonable.

Making an Impact: Teacher Impact Grants

Today, the U.S. Department of Education is announcing that it is working with ASCD, the National Board for Professional Teaching Standards (“National Board”), The Leona M. and Harry B. Helmsley Foundation Charitable Trust, and Carnegie Corporation of New York to provide direct support to teacher-led initiatives to strengthen professional learning and improve student outcomes. These Teacher Impact Grants will cultivate the robust expertise of teachers to accelerate positive change in professional learning at the classroom, school, and district levels.

The program will be administered by ASCD and financially supported by The Leona M. and Harry B. Helmsley Foundation Charitable Trust and Carnegie Corporation of New York. The funding will provide $5,000-$15,000 grants with the goal of supporting and empowering teachers in their work, so they may enhance the impact our schools have on the well-rounded success of each child. The commitment from the Helmsley Charitable Trust and Carnegie Corporation of New York will provide the resources needed to make teacher innovations a reality.

The private grants build on work by the Teach to Lead initiative, which was founded in 2014 by the Department of Education and the National Board to help advance student outcomes by expanding opportunities for teacher leadership. As part of Teach to Lead, the Department, ASCD, and National Board have hosted Teacher Leader Summits and Teacher Leader Labs across the country where hundreds of educators have created locally-driven plans to help improve student outcomes. 

Encouraging More Great Individuals to TEACH

TEACH is a public-private collaboration led by the U.S. Department of Education and Microsoft.  TEACH’s public service campaign, in partnership with the Ad Council, aims to inspire the next generation of teachers by reaching millions of college students who are considering career choices and providing them with information about how the teaching profession matches the criteria they have for their ideal career, including many opportunities for innovation and creativity, leadership and skill development, and personal fulfillment. Today TEACH is announcing that the following organizations are taking steps to support its work:

  • Microsoft will renew its financial support with an additional two-year $3 million commitment and continue to provide leadership and strategic guidance to TEACH.
  • Facebook is providing pro-bono creative work and donated media on Facebook’s platform and leveraging the platform’s detailed targeting capabilities to directly reach college students and recent graduates who have demonstrated an interest in STEM subjects.
  • MyCollege Options, the nation’s largest college planning platform, is partnering with TEACH to access over 6 million high school and college students nationwide and identify those with the highest propensity to become teachers. 

The College Football Playoff Foundation: Lifting Up Excellent Educators

The College Football Playoff Foundation is announcing that it will make a $100 million impact on teacher-related initiatives over the next ten years. The Foundation and its media affiliates will work with TEACH over this year to develop a campaign that supports and enhances the status of the teaching profession throughout the United States. In only two years, the College Football Playoff Foundation’s “Extra Yard for Teachers” initiative has impacted more than 5,000 schools, and funded 6,000 classroom projects, reaching over 1.2 million teachers and students. Extra Yard for Teachers specifically seeks to increase the recruitment and retention of quality teachers in the United States by supporting the efforts of organizations including the U.S. Department of Education, TEACH, Teach for America, DonorsChoose.org and Educators Rising.  The College Football Playoff Foundation and universities across the country will also pay tribute to teachers during Extra Yard for Teachers Week from September 17-24 and again during the College Football Playoff bowl games. 

Spotify: Supporting Educators Through Music and Stories

Spotify is committing to celebrate the creativity of America’s teachers and supports programs that bring music to all students. Spotify will create a series of initiatives that highlight creativity in education.  Launching this week, it will encourage its community to share songs and stories about influential teachers using #ThankATeacher. Throughout the year, Spotify will leverage its platform and community to showcase the importance of providing creative tools for educators and the power of music education for students. Spotify will also be collaborating with organizations like Girls Rock Camp and Music Mural & Arts Project in 2016 to ensure that more students have access to the power of music.