STATE ISSUES 2024 EDUCATION AND WORKFORCE DEVELOPMENT PRIORITIES
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, birth to eight 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. We also support ongoing funding to enable schools to achieve targeted classroom sizes.
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 (supported by UCO, OCCC, Rose State and OSU-OKC) and UCO’s Urban Teacher Preparation Academy. • 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 Math Tutoring Corps, Educators Rising and Teach For America’s Ignite Fellowship. ADJUNCT, ALTERNATIVE AND EMERGENCY CERTIFIED TEACHERS The Chamber recognizes the need for Adjunct, Alternative and Emergency certified teachers will continue to increase. We support efforts to increase retention and make sure these teachers are as prepared as possible and as quickly as possible. We support:
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 receive training to help them prepare for challenges facing
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