Rural Educator Preparation Partnerships: Partnering to Success

Abstract

Alaska, like other states, faces a teacher shortage. Like other states, the shortage is geographically specific. That is, shortages occur only in some schools and some communities. In Alaska, the majority of the schools facing shortages are in rural communities off the road system. These schools, year in and year out, have difficulty attracting and retaining teachers. In fact, the 18 school districts with the highest turnover rates in the state-that is, rates averaging 20 percent annually over the period 1996-2000-are all, with one exception, remote rural districts (McDiarmid, 2002). Averaging turnover rates and using district rather than school data mask the fact that, each year, some remote rural schools experience I00 percent turnover. Section 2 of this report evaluates the program's success in meeting objectives one through four. The fifth objective-to evaluate REPP graduates in the classroom-calls for more directly assessing whether REPP has succeeded in putting well- qualified teachers into rural Alaskan classrooms. Section 3 discusses our methodology for and findings from those observations.