Teach For America aims to support 700+ teachers to five communities across Michigan
Teach for America Detroit is expanding across the state, aiming to recruit, retain and develop more than 700 trained educators for low-income schools in five Michigan communities, the organization announced Thursday.
The new initiative, TeachMichigan, will use a $30 million state investment to support educators in schools in Traverse City, Benzie County, Sault Saint Marie, Kentwood and Saginaw over the next five years. Armen Hratchian, executive director of Teach for America Detroit, said the effort will try to reach students in under-resourced communities, which may be feeling the impact of the teacher shortage more severely than other communities.
"We estimate roughly 200,000-plus students will have a better educator and better outcomes as a result of this investment," he said. "And importantly, longer term, we are doing this work to capture what works and doesn't work."
About 80,000 people are employed as full-time teachers in Michigan public schools, according to state data. This leaves about 1% of teaching vacancies across the state. But advocates say the data belies larger challenges for Michigan's schools: a lack of highly trained educators and an increase in annual teacher turnover. And in the 2020-21 school year, more teachers exited the teaching profession than entered — 6,553 exited and 5,871 entered.
Kevin Polston, superintendent of Kentwood Public Schools, south of Grand Rapids, said Michigan's educator shortage has left his district struggling to find teachers in specialized areas, such as special education and high school science.
"While we may still be able to fill positions, the candidate pool is much smaller," Polston said. "We're experiencing over the past few years higher levels of turnover."
The Teach for America initiative will develop fellows in three different groups: one that focuses on early career educators, one for more experienced educators looking to grow, and one for educators aspiring to be leaders within their schools and school system. The $30 million investment is a part of a $60 million state initiative focused on recruiting and retaining educators in the state. Cohort members will receive as much as $35,000 over three years in financial incentives to remain in schools and professional development.
Hratchian said the organization intends to continue its work in Detroit, too. Teach for America was founded in the '90s, working first in New York and expanding to other regions before coming to Detroit in the 2000s. The organization recruited and trained recent college graduates to work in low-income schools, drawing criticism for bringing inexperienced educators to vulnerable communities without ties to those communities. Teach For America once closed its offices in Detroit in 2004 because of district budget challenges.
More recently, teachers in TFA's corps have trained within Detroit, Chalkbeat reported. And Hratchian said the organization has worked to keep teachers in the state's largest school district, including fellowships that train Detroit educators to lead in schools.
"Over two or three years we really aligned with what the city needed, what our educators were telling us," he said.
Polston said he wants the work done with Teach for America to serve as a blueprint for the state as it works to retain and recruit more experienced educators in all schools.
"We hope that we can be a destination district for our staff and students and families and this is yet another way to do that," he said. "But we also believe we have a responsibility to the profession to make this work, so that the evidence can demonstrate that when we do invest in our people, our students are the winners."
Contact Lily Altavena: laltavena@freepress.com.
This article originally appeared on Detroit Free Press: Teach For America to expand across Michigan with $30M from state
