2025 EDUCATION AND WORKFORCE DEVELOPMENT PRIORITIES
STATE ISSUES
EARLY CHILDHOOD CARE AND EDUCATION Having access to high-quality early childhood care and education programs encourages parental/guardian employment, which creates more economic security and better opportunities for families. The Chamber recognizes that finding solutions to ongoing childcare needs will require collaboration with federal, state and local governments, business and industry, philanthropic and nonprofit community and education providers. The Chamber steadfastly supports early childhood education, prenatal to five years old, and full funding of pre-K and kindergarten programs. Targeted spending on our youngest children is simply a smart investment. LONG-TERM, STRATEGIC EDUCATION FUNDING The Chamber supports development of a long-term strategic plan that will enable improvement in classroom teaching and academic performance. This should include increasing the minimum number of instructional hours, currently 1,080 hours, required for a complete school year. In addition, we are supportive of extended summer learning opportunities and after school programs. We also support ongoing funding to enable schools to achieve targeted classroom sizes.
receive training to help them prepare for challenges facing students such as being English language learners, living in high poverty and from urban areas. • Support specialized “grow-your-own” training initiatives such as the OKCPS Foundation Bilingual & Diversity Teacher Pipeline program (in partnership with UCO, OCCC, Rose State and OSU-OKC), UCO’s Paraprofessional Residency to Educator Pathway (PREP) or other Registered Teacher Apprenticeship programs and partnerships, as well as UCO’s Urban Teacher Preparation Academy for early career teachers that provides progressional development and mentorship. This includes support of programs and resources for teacher preparation and students enrolled part-time and providing public funding streams to supplement private funding initiatives already in place. This could include changing current scholarship and incentive programs to allow support for students taking fewer than 12 hours per semester. • Implement teacher retention and mentor teacher programs. • Support continued investment in the “Inspired to Teach” scholarship and incentive program. • Increase access to STEM education and training opportunities. • Support adjustments to the teacher retirement system and other strategies that help encourage retention and re-entry of experienced teachers and educators. • Encourage development of programs that encourage students to pursue teaching as a profession. This should include increased public relations and advertising campaigns to recruit teachers. It may also include various programs that offer students tutoring experience, such as Oklahoma’s
TEACHER PREPARATION, RECRUITMENT AND RETENTION
Oklahoma has a teacher shortage. Oklahoma needs to improve our teacher preparation pipeline systems to train, attract and retain more high-quality teachers. We support legislation to: • Reward teacher performance and experience. • Incentivize teachers to work in high priority areas and
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