This week, officials from the Maricopa Community College District met with cohorts from Cerritos College in California and others to discuss launching a national organization that could give community colleges a bigger role in teacher education. The organization they are talking about forming is the National Association of Community College Teacher Education Programs. Its aim is not to supplant colleges of education at four-year universities, but to help them. Think about it. Community colleges are generally viewed as being very responsive to workforce needs.
Community colleges pick up the slack.
They are the most accessible, least expensive, most flexible of our institutions of higher learning. They are the institutions most able to accommodate returning students and students already holding down full-time jobs. Some day we're going to wake up to the fact that our demand for accountability from our schools means nothing if we don't have enough teachers to go around. Over the next decade, we will need up to 2.2 million new teachers to replace the million expected to retire and to help teach an estimated 3.1 million more children than we have now in our elementary and secondary schools. Arizona alone will need 27,000 new teachers over the next 10 years as we add more than 200,000 new students.