Colorado’s K-12 education system is in crisis. While students have not caught up to pre-pandemic learning levels, district leaders reported opening schools this fall without licensed teachers in more classrooms than ever before. They describe ensuring classrooms had adults in the room by using long-term substitutes, employing students who haven’t completed a bachelor’s degree (but are doing so while teaching), tapping para-professionals or volunteer parents to serve as behavior monitors while students are “instructed” from a remote teacher by video, hiring international teachers while applying for h1-visas to keep them in the US. Exacerbating this challenge is a weak “teacher” pipeline” (low enrollments in traditional teacher preparation programs) and record numbers of teachers leaving the profession in response to stress partly due to student mental health challenges, national and localized negative discourse and rhetoric and incidents of violence and increasing numbers of mass killings in schools.
Drs. Julie O’Brian and Kent Seidel will share their perspectives and insight on this ongoing Colorado’s K-12 education crisis and how the system (including schools, districts, the state department, and teacher preparation providers) is responding and adapting. An engaging Q&A session will follow moderated by Dr. Chris Weible.
You won’t want to miss this engaging discussion.
October 27, 3:00 – 4:00
Boettcher room in Student Commons and ZOOM: Link for Zoom
Presenters
Dr. Julie O’Brian
Co-Director Center for Practice Engaged Education Research (C-PEER)
Executive Director of Assessment and Program Improvement
School of Education & Human Development, University of Colorado Denver
Dr. Kent Seidel
Founding Co-Director, Center for Practice Engaged Education Research (C-PEER)
Affiliate faculty: Leading Educational Organizations / Urban & Diverse Communities doctoral programs
School of Education & Human Development, Dept of Research & Evaluation Methods, University of Colorado Denver
Moderator
Dr. Chris Weible
Co-Director Center for Policy and Democracy
School of Public Affairs, University of Colorado Denver