Impact Story: Charting Pathways toward a Strengthened Educator Workforce in Colorado

Across the United States, vacancies in the educator workforce have drastically increased, exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic. Leading up to the 2021-22 school year, Colorado schools sought to fill 5,729 teaching positions, representing 10.33% of all teaching positions in the state. A high-leverage need to attract, prepare, and retain teachers in the education profession created an opportunity for state education leaders to collaborate with federal technical assistance providers, determine possible solutions, and take steps toward strengthening and diversifying Colorado's educator workforce. The Region 12 Comprehensive Center (R12CC) project "Using Place-Based Decision Making to Strengthen the Colorado Educator Workforce Pipeline" was established, in partnership with the Colorado Department of Education (CDE) and Regional Educational Laboratory Central (REL Central), to address this high leverage need. The "Strengthening the Colorado Educator Workforce Pipeline" geographic information system (GIS) map supports education leaders to better understand, and address, the factors influencing educator shortage challenges. To build awareness, use of, and engagement with the GIS map, R12CC launched sessions for interested parties, using virtual meetings due to the COVID-19 pandemic. These sessions served two purposes: (1) to introduce and acclimate users to the GIS map tool, how to use it, and the types of research questions supported by the tool; and (2) to support usage of the map so that education leaders could examine their regions, see factors promoting or prohibiting a strong educator workforce, and develop plans to address workforce development and diversification. This report discusses lessons learned from the project and project outcomes.