ED's new partner in teacher recruitment: Microsoft

“In many ways, [this project] encapsulates the power of partnerships, the promise of technology, and the benefits of international collaboration to strengthen the teaching profession,” said Education Secretary Arne Duncan at a keynote speech during Microsoft’s Partners in Learning Global Forum.

In the coming months, Microsoft will be moving the site from http://www.teach.gov to http://www.teach.org and will work to form a coalition of other private-sector companies that care about education, the company said.

Tom Carroll, a former ED official during the Clinton administration who is now president of the National Council for Teaching and America’s Future (NCTAF), said teacher recruitment and retention is critical to the nation’s competitiveness.

“We are going through a once-in-a-generation transformation of our teaching workforce that creates a pressing need to develop a new generation of educators,” Carroll said. “Over 1.5 million teachers could retire in less than eight years—in some large urban districts, as many as half the teachers are ready to retire today.”

The TEACH campaign “has the potential to significantly augment the work of many in the education and technology community who have been working for years on this challenge,” Carroll said. “As Partners in Learning picks up this project, however, it would do well to remember that recruitment alone is not enough.”

He explained: “Teaching has unfortunately become a revolving-door profession. Teacher shortages will never end until we change the unacceptable conditions that are driving digital-age educators out of the classroom, particularly in schools serving low-income students and children of color. TEACH needs to join forces with those of us who are working to transform schools into 21^st-century learning organizations where both teachers and students can thrive. Recruitment without a school transformation and retention strategy is no better than pouring water into a bucket full of holes.”

Owning and operating a website is one thing, Carroll said, while “being an effective partner in a national campaign to improve teaching quality is another. The real test will be [Microsoft’s] ability to join forces with others who are actively working to develop schools that meet the needs of 21^st-century learners.”

During the Partners in Learning Global Forum, Duncan said the TEACH campaign was inspired by the British; specifically, when Tony Blair took office in 1997, he faced one of the worst teacher shortages in the nation’s history. Four years later, the U.K. educational system had gone from having a 20-percent shortfall of teaching candidates to a 20-percent surplus.

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