{"id":130171,"date":"2024-05-04T16:25:35","date_gmt":"2024-05-04T20:25:35","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.thevalleyledger.com\/?p=130171"},"modified":"2024-05-04T16:25:35","modified_gmt":"2024-05-04T20:25:35","slug":"house-education-committee-hearing-highlights-importance-of-restoring-pennsylvanias-skilled-diverse-educator-workforce","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.thevalleyledger.com\/?p=130171","title":{"rendered":"House Education Committee hearing highlights importance of restoring Pennsylvania\u2019s skilled, diverse educator workforce"},"content":{"rendered":"

HARRISBURG, May 3 \u2013<\/strong>\u00a0<\/strong>The Pennsylvania House Education Committee convened a public hearing Friday afternoon to discuss initiatives to restore Pennsylvania\u2019s teacher pipeline.<\/p>\n

State Rep. Peter Schweyer (D-Lehigh), Majority Chairman of the House Education Committee hosted the hearing at the West Chester University Alumni & Foundation Center ballroom.<\/p>\n

Friday\u2019s hearing featured seven testifiers across three panels, who discuss the impacts of decreasing issuance of Instructional I certificates and the exponential increase in the issuance of emergency permits is having on not only the educator workforce, but also with students in the classroom.<\/p>\n

\u201cNumbers don\u2019t lie and the numbers for training educators in Pennsylvania are staggering; it\u2019s not an exaggeration to say there is a critical shortage of teachers,\u201d said Schweyer. \u201cWhere we used to train roughly 15,000 educators a year, for the past few years, Pennsylvania has been training less than 5,000 educators. We need to ensure we not only support those talented and dedicated people who want to teach in our schools, but also ensure our children are receiving the quality education they are entitled to receive through our state constitution.\u201d<\/p>\n

Testifiers with PSEA detailed initiatives such as the\u00a0Educators Rising Program<\/a>\u00a0which introduces students who are interested in a teaching career to the professional skillsets and define what they will need in order to be effective educators in the classroom. Additionally, testifiers also discussed the importance of the legislature to fully fund the\u00a0student teacher stipend program<\/a>\u00a0which exceeded applications within days of its implementation last month.<\/p>\n

\u201cMany student teachers struggle to cover basic living expenses during that period, which impedes their ability to focus on teaching responsibilities,\u201d said Dr. Desha Williams, Dean of Education and Social Work at West Chester University. \u201cTo adequately address this, the General Assembly needs to increase state funding for this program and add measures so the students with the most need are prioritized.<\/p>\n

Friday\u2019s hearing can be viewed in its entirety\u00a0here<\/a>, while testimony can be found\u00a0here<\/a>.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Information provided to TVL by:
\nThomas LeClair
\nResearch Analyst
\nHouse Democratic Education Committee<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

HARRISBURG, May 3 \u2013\u00a0The Pennsylvania House Education Committee convened a public hearing Friday afternoon to discuss initiatives to restore Pennsylvania\u2019s teacher pipeline. State Rep. Peter Schweyer (D-Lehigh), Majority Chairman of … Continue reading House Education Committee hearing highlights importance of restoring Pennsylvania\u2019s skilled, diverse educator workforce<\/span> →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":130172,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[69],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-130171","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-in-the-valley"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"acf":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.thevalleyledger.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/05\/teacher-cert.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thevalleyledger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/130171"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thevalleyledger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thevalleyledger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thevalleyledger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thevalleyledger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=130171"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.thevalleyledger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/130171\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thevalleyledger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/130172"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thevalleyledger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=130171"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thevalleyledger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=130171"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thevalleyledger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=130171"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}