MassTeach: A Statewide Strategy to Increase STEM Teacher Diversity at Scale

Massachusetts Department Of Higher Education, Malden MA

Investigators

Abstract

MassTeach is a Robert Noyce Scholarship Track 1 project. In Massachusetts, the community college student population is the most diverse higher education student body, including underrepresented minorities, low income, and first generation students. As such it provides an untapped recruitment pool for potential teachers who can better understand the experiences of similarly diverse K-12 student populations who are enrolled in Massachusetts' local high needs school districts. MassTeach will build upon Massachusetts' newly implemented Associate-to-Bachelor's degree transfer pathways to create a seamless 2-to 4 year STEM teacher pathway in multiple STEM disciplines and leverage other statewide student support strategies to diversify the teacher workforce. Three goals animate the MassTeach project. First, it seeks to increase the number of highly qualified teachers in STEM classrooms who are teaching within their licensure area in high demand subject areas. Second, the project team aims to diversify the teacher workforce in Massachusetts to better reflect student demographics and close the diversity gap. Third, MassTeach will increase teacher retention thereby reducing the percentage of low-income students taught by first-year teachers in high need districts. Additionally, this program will be scaled throughout the entire public higher education system in Massachusetts by the conclusion of the grant. Through the funding period, MassTeach will place over fifty teachers in secondary STEM subject classrooms by 2023 and will have over 100 college juniors and seniors in the pipeline to become certified STEM teachers. The Massachusetts Department of Higher Education will collaborate with three community college-state university partners as pilot sites during the first two years of this grant. Berkshire Community College and Massachusetts College of Liberal Arts will partner with Pittsfield Public Schools, and Holyoke Community College. Westfield State University will partner with Springfield Public Schools. Quinsigamond Community College and Worcester State University will partner with Worcester Public Schools. A primary focus of these partnerships include recruiting potential Scholars and placing them in STEM classroom teaching assignments in partnering districts' schools after graduation. MassTeach will share best practices learned from the pilot sites and scale the MassTeach program to the other twelve community colleges and the four state universities with teacher education programs in the final three years of the project, as well as with the Massachusetts Department of Elementary and Secondary Education. MassTeach will be evaluated on its ability to (1) provide an efficient and transparent transfer process, (2) recruit and retain program participants from community colleges, (3) place and retain MassTeach Scholars, and (4) scale the program across the Commonwealth. As a result of this project, MassTeach will inform the local and national teacher preparation community of a robust strategy to create a sustainable, system-wide scaled response to diversify the STEM teacher pipeline through a 2-to-4 year public higher education pathway that places STEM graduates to teach in K-12 classrooms. This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.