Create scholarships to recruit new teachers

Administration boosts teacher recruitment, but not with scholarships

Updated: Tuesday, December 22nd, 2009 | By Louis Jacobson

During the presidential campaign, Barack Obama promised to "create new Teacher Service Scholarships that will cover four years of undergraduate or two years of graduate teacher education, including high-quality alternative programs for mid-career recruits in exchange for teaching for at least four years in a high-need field or location."
 
No program by this name was included in either the Education Department's fiscal 2010 budget request or in the final appropriations bill funding the department.
 
Other programs that received funding do address some of the same goals of attracting nontraditional teachers. Teach for America -- a nonprofit that places recent college graduates in disadvantaged schools for two years -- will receive $18 million in federal funds in fiscal year 2010, up $3 million from the president's request. (Teach for America did not receive any funds in fiscal year 2009.) Two other programs -- Troops-to-Teachers and Transition to Teaching -- will receive the same amount in 2010 as they did in 2009, at $14.4 million and $43.7 million, respectively.
 
But the administration failed to convince lawmakers to spend any money on a new National Teacher Recruitment Campaign, for which the administration had sought $30 million.

So the Obama administration has made some progress on the broad goal of improving recruitment of nontraditional teachers, with more money than the president requested. But it hasn't succeeded in creating the new national teacher scholarships that it described during the campaign. So we rate this promise Stalled.

Sources:

Education Department, " Fiscal Year 2010 Budget Summary and Background Information ," accessed Dec. 20, 2009
 
Education Department, " Department of Education Fiscal Year 2010 Congressional Action ," accessed Dec. 20, 2009