TNTP’s Philadelphia Teaching Fellows program has helped solve a special education teacher shortage, and continues to play an integral role in efforts to put excellent teachers into high-need schools.
Every year, teacher resignations, sabbaticals, medical leaves, and changing student enrollment leave urban schools with dozens of openings to fill in the middle of the school year. In cities like Philadelphia, such vacancies too often become a revolving door for inexperienced teachers, to the detriment of students. In 2003, with funding from the Wachovia Foundation, The New Teacher Project (TNTP) radically adapted its alternate route to certification program model to create the Philadelphia Teaching Fellows (PTF), an innovative “mid-year” program hiring new teachers to fill chronic vacancies in the School District of Philadelphia’s high-need schools.
In its first year, PTF recruited and selected a cohort of approximately 50 new teachers, all of whom were eligible to teach high-need subject areas. By beginning their teaching careers in January rather than September, these hires helped the district fill critical vacancies mid-year. The success of the first PTF cohort encouraged the district to invest further in the program, while the Wachovia Foundation also extended its commitment, allowing PTF to more than double in size and begin recruiting a fall cohort of approximately 100 teachers.
Since its launch, the impact of the Philadelphia Teaching Fellows has been pronounced. In 2006, for the first time in years, the district filled all of its special education vacancies. To date, the program has supplied 434 talented teachers and accounted for a significant portion of the district’s new teacher hires (16 percent of new hires for the 2008-09 school year were Fellows). To become Fellows, candidates must exhibit outstanding achievement and dedication, and go through a rigorous selection process; only 14 percent of applicants to the 2008 cohorts were selected to join the program. Among the 133 new Fellows in 2008, average GPA was 3.43, 68 percent were eligible to teach shortage subjects and 26 percent were people of color.
Abby Gray personifies the dedication and effectiveness of Philadelphia Teaching Fellows. A career changer who has worked extensively in non-profit management, Abby is a member of the third cohort of PTF and teaches special education at Shaw Middle School. Through her own initiative, she developed a new leadership position in which she collects, organizes and analyzes assessment data and coordinates with teachers and tutors to provide intervention for struggling students. All Shaw students who under-perform on standardized tests receive at least two hours of one-on-one support per week. Abby also helped coordinate a silent reading initiative so every student would take 15 minutes each morning in homeroom to read on an independent level.
Today, the Philadelphia Teaching Fellows program is a model for addressing chronic teacher shortages nationwide. Jim Alton, lead recruiter for the School District of Philadelphia, told The Philadelphia Inquirer in 2008: “These are people who are very passionate about teaching, who come to it by choice. They bring content. They’re going through a lot of hoops, showing drive and focus, to become teachers.”
In 2006, for the first time in years, the School District of Philadelphia filled all of its special education vacancies.
