Local newspaper hails Capito, Portman bill to boost nation’s supply of CTE teachers

A bipartisan measure introduced by U.S. Sens. Shelley Moore Capito (R-WV) and Rob Portman (R-OH) warrants endorsement, according to an April 30 editorial published in the Bluefield Daily Telegraph.

“Area lawmakers are backing a bipartisan measure that seeks to address a shortage of career and technical education [CTE] teachers in the nation, including right here in West Virginia and Virginia,” according to the Bluefield Daily Telegraph, a seven-day morning daily newspaper in Bluefield, W.V., that covers surrounding communities in McDowell, Mercer and Monroe counties in West Virginia, as well as Bland, Buchanan, Giles and Tazewell counties in southwest Virginia, including the town of Bluefield, Va.

“The common sense measure merits strong support,” according to the paper. “There are many jobs in our nation today that require students with specific technical skills. However, in order to help meet these in-demand jobs, we must have experienced and quality career and technical education teachers available to train our students.”

U.S. Sens. Tim Kaine (D-VA) and Tammy Baldwin (D-WI), co-chairs along with Sen. Portman of the Senate Career and Technical Education Caucus, joined Sen. Capito in introducing the Creating Quality Technical Educators Act of 2018 on April 24. The four senators introduced a similar bill in 2015.

The 2018 proposal would amend the Higher Education Act of 1965 and create a teacher residency grant program to help address the shortage of CTE teachers in United States schools. It also would create partnerships between elementary, middle, or high schools and higher education institutions to offer one-year teacher residencies to train CTE educators, according to a draft of the bill provided by Sen. Capito’s office.

An eligible partnership that receives a grant under the bill would be directed to establish an effective secondary school CTE teacher preparation program that would be “available to mid-career professionals or recent graduates of an institution of higher education, who have expertise in a program area in which a skilled career and technical education teacher shortage has been identified through a needs assessment,” according to the bill’s draft.

Additionally, the partnerships would apply the model used by the Richmond Teacher Residency program, a partnership between Virginia Commonwealth University and Richmond Public Schools, to CTE-focused programs, according to an April 25 blog by WorkforceGPS, which is sponsored by the U.S. Department of Labor’s Employment and Training Administration.

“Through grants in the Higher Education and Opportunity Act of 2008 (HEOA), many teacher residency partnerships already exist between post-secondary institutions and local schools to train prospective educators, but none are CTE focused,” according to WorkforceGPS.

Sens. Capito and Kaine said the measure takes a proactive approach to recruit and train high-quality CTE teachers who will be able to better prepare students with the skills needed to fill in-demand jobs, according to the Bluefield Daily Telegraph.

In an April 25 joint statement with the bill’s cosponsors, Sen. Portman also pointed out that quality CTE teachers help increase students’ access to high-quality CTE programs while ensuring they and their parents “recognize the value of a CTE education — all of which helps lead to more and better job opportunities for students.”

The bill has garnered the support of the Alliance for Excellent Education, the American Federation of Teachers (AFT), the Association for Career and Technical Education (ACTE), and Advance CTE.