Resolution in Support of the Restoration of the North Carolina Teaching Fellows Program

 

Resolution in Support of the Restoration of the
North Carolina Teaching Fellows Program

Adopted by Whiteville City Schools

WHEREAS, the NC Teaching Fellows Program was established in 1986 by the North Carolina General Assembly to address the shortage of high quality teacher candidates as well as the recruitment of more minority and male candidates; and

WHEREAS, for the past twenty-five years, the NC Teaching Fellows Commission has received almost 50,000 applications for the Teaching Fellows scholarship, thereby showing an increased interest in teaching as a career by high quality high school seniors; and

WHEREAS, research by Dr. Gary Henry at the UNC-Chapel Hill Carolina Institute for Public Policy has found that:

  • Overall, the Teaching Fellows Program provides an effective source of teachers to the state of NC.

  • Teaching Fellows appear to a much more able group of students and have higher SAT scores than any other group of teachers.

  • On average, Teaching Fellows score higher on Praxis II licensure exams than all other sources of teacher preparation.

  • Teaching Fellows are much less likely to exit NC public schools in their first three years of teaching.

  • Teaching Fellows tend to stay longer after a five-year period.
    WHEREAS, Teaching Fellow graduates are not only master teachers, but also serve their schools

    and communities and the State as public school and community leaders; and

    WHEREAS, the NC Teaching Fellows Program is a one-of-a-kind teacher preparation program that has a systemic, sequential, four full years of training and expanded opportunities beyond the regular college program; and

    WHEREAS in 2010-11, 4,000 Teaching Fellow graduates were teaching in 99 of North Carolina’s 100 counties, in rural, urban, low performing, high performing, rich, and poor school systems bringing the potential for every child in North Carolina to be taught by a NC Teaching Fellows graduate;

    NOW, THEREFORE, BE IT RESOLVED, that the Whiteville City Schools hereby acknowledges the significant contributions made by the North Carolina Teaching Fellows Scholarship Program to school systems and the State of North Carolina, and respectfully requests that the North Carolina General Assembly restore the Teaching Fellows Program and provide a 2012-13 Freshman Class so that the seventeen college\university campus programs will have a full four-year contingency of Teaching Fellows who will enter the public schools as classroom teachers upon graduation from college.

Executed this day,

12 December 2011