News Talk 94.1/AM 1600 Where The Upper Cumberland Talks
Tennessee Tech’s College of Education received high marks for graduated teacher’s employment.
According to the 2019-2020 Tennessee Educator Prep Report Card, Tech produces the highest number of teacher candidates across the state. Associate Dean Julie Baker said cooperation between Tech and school districts is a cause for this success.
“This just shows the hard work we do to build relationships with our districts in getting our completers into and staying in teaching,” Baker said.
The report card views three years of data and released Tech has a 77% rate of first year employment in public schools, 93.8% in second year retention, and 89% third year.
The third year retention rate exceeded the state average of 83.6% while the other two figures met the state average. Tech had 271 completers in each of the three years included in the report card.
Baker said Tech’s College of Education program offers more than other universities.
“We have ag education, family and consumer sciences, art education, music education, and our physical education and exercise program is one of the best in the state,” Baker said.
According to a press release, the education program has more partnerships in the state and more districts that hire its candidates than any other EPP in the state.
Tech also scored 97.3% on the number of cohort members whose classroom observation scores are level 3 or above, exceeding the state average of 95.2%.
However, Baker said Tech’s candidate profile domain was once again the weakest performance category.
“In the Upper Cumberland, our population is not racially diverse. We know we aren’t drawing teacher candidates from a racially diverse population. We are thinking outside the box to attract racially diverse candidates,” Baker said.
A candidate profile is a domain that evaluates the provider’s ability to recruit diverse candidates and prepare them to teach in areas of greatest need.
