UNLV teaching program keeping classrooms full

Jeffrey Libby

Saturday, Nov. 11, 2000 | 4:09 a.m.

The aggressive recruiting drive to entice teachers to the Las Vegas Valley stretches around the globe.

The Clark County School District's innovative advertising schemes reach out to soldiers at far-flung military outposts.

Teachers interview on the sly with Las Vegas administrators in parking lots outside East Coast school fairs. Local principals fan out across the nation to tout "normal life" in Sin City in an effort to lure the roughly 1,400 new teachers required for another bumper crop of students.

But the biggest help might be coming from a source just down the street -- UNLV.

Through more than a half-dozen partnerships with the school district, the College of Education at UNLV has quietly emerged as the fastest-growing program on campus, graduating the most students for four years running.

In 1999 the education department graduated 779 students, up from 567 in 1996. Of the recent graduates, 235 earned degrees in elementary education and 85 in secondary education. Those two disciplines were up 68 percent and 64 percent respectively from 1996. The university as a whole awarded 3,071 degrees in 1999.

Of the 779 graduates in education, 510 took jobs with the local school district. That number of graduates actually taking teaching jobs -- 65 percent -- is nearly double the national average, according to Linda Quinn, associate dean of education at UNLV.

The College of Health Sciences, working hard to supply new recruits for the critical shortage of hospital medical staff, also saw a significant increase in growth, graduating 209 students in 1999, an increase of 25 percent.

Hotel administration and liberal arts graduates were slightly ahead of the growth curve, but remained relatively stagnant. Degrees awarded in business and engineering colleges dropped significantly.

While national educators have been speculating as to how the country will field 1 million new teachers in the next 10 years, and, locally, contractors frame out a new school campus every month, George Ann Rice has been quietly wearing a rut in the three miles of East Flamingo between the Clark County School District and UNLV.

Rice, assistant superintendent of human resources at the school district, meets with university educators regularly to brainstorm new ways to place more locals at the head of Clark County classrooms.

One of the newest programs, dubbed e-March, should enroll its first students in January. The new recruits may come, via the Internet, from as far away as Okinawa, Japan.

The e-March program in the distance education department allows prospective teachers to take online classes and receive training while they are still on other jobs. The program takes aim at imminent military retirees who have undergraduate degrees and who agree to teach in Clark County.

When the online program and the military service are completed, the new employees must practice teach for a period time before they enter the classroom full-time.

Advertisements for the two-year program are running in four international military publications.

Military inquiries

More than 100 military personnel have already inquired about the program, said Charlotte Farr, director of distance education at UNLV.

"If we can use technology to do a more efficient job of getting content across and to develop a rapport, a warmth and a dialogue, we could expand to people other than the military," Farr said. "A lot more people would teach if they could go after the job," but many are limited by sheer physical distance, lack of money to buy a car and other factors, she said.

Educators at UNLV say that level of commitment extends to the classrooms.

Professor Gerald Kops, who teaches an educational law class for the distance education department, a required class for all education students, says he has willingly become a one-man band.

"Not only do I have to be the content provider, but I have to operate the camera, the videotape and a computer," Kops said. He watches himself on one monitor -- to see what his students are seeing -- and on a second monitor he watches one student in Pahrump, seven at Advanced Technology High School in Las Vegas, and two more at Nellis Air Force Base.

Farr said the funding for the distance learning program comes "out of our hide, literally. There is no additional funding at this point. It's just something that's welling up. It succeeds because people put in a lot of extra work above and beyond any compensation because they believe and understand how significant it is to Nevada."

The accelerated program programs allows people who are trapped by incomplete degrees and by economic circumstances to escape from low-wage jobs and become special education teachers.

The program, which is headed by Special Education Department Chairman Thomas Pierce, is an intense one-year licensure program 10 years ago that meets 40 hours a week to help turn out teachers for Clark County schools.

"Most people come to us because they want it, but we light fires. We try to test that heart and soul thing that way," Pierce said. "We take teachers' aides, bus drivers, cafeteria ladies -- many are from under-represented groups and this is their ticket out."

The school district pays the students their former wages while they are enrolled in the class with the agreement that they will teach in Clark County schools.

Pierce reports a 98 percent hiring rate for graduates of the accelerated program over the past five years. Of 179 graduates, 177 have found jobs with the school district.

"1999 was the first year the school district had all its positions (for special education) filled," Pierce said. "So that was exciting, to say finally that need had been met."

But despite Pierce's success, 70 percent of the 1,400 Clark County hires for fall 2000 still came from out of state. Educators say they would like to reverse that figure, with only 30 percent of new teachers coming from out of state.

Many educators say the shortage of local talent is not from the lack of trying.

Richard Moore, founding president of the proposed state college at Henderson, disputes that view. He says there are able teachers in the Las Vegas Valley who haven't been tapped and that by providing "more choice" the state college will enroll them.

"I was told that same information three years ago when I started a teacher program at CCSN (Community College of Southern Nevada), and I got 500 to 800 students the first year," Moore said.

In a survey conducted earlier this month of 3,000 households with children in high school, 39 percent of families said they would consider "encouraging (their) child to apply" to a state college in Henderson, Moore said. Another 39 percent answered "maybe."

Moore is backed by local politicians eager to build a college in their fast-growing town and some university system regents who say they want to provide for the future of the valley by graduating more teachers and nurses.

With the population of Clark County expected to increase by 60 percent in the next 10 years, and high school graduates to more than double, from 7,000 to 17,000 in 2010, Moore said that need is more immediate than some might suspect.

Which is why he's unhappy that funding for initial school buildings in Henderson was put off by the state public works board in September, possibly delaying any construction until 2003. With construction expected to take more than a year, the first graduates with four-year degrees couldn't be expected until 2009.

Teachers' pay

But many observers say wrangling over a new university doesn't address the real issue -- teachers' pay.

Regent Steve Sisolak says students constantly tell him they can't make a decent living working in a classroom.

"We can turn out more teachers, but that's not going to solve the problem," Sisolak said. "We need to have decent pay so they can earn a living. I certainly don't want to build a college and educate a bunch of teachers and have them exported to another state (that pays more)."

Educators agree. They say the shortage of teachers is indicative of deep-set cultural attitudes in Las Vegas that will not be changed overnight.

It's the Strip, stupid, they say.

And until teachers earn wages on a par with casino jobs and those promised by a high-tech job, the migration of teachers to greener pastures will continue in ever larger numbers.

In the meantime, educators at UNLV and the school district continue to brainstorm on new ways to bring better teachers to local classrooms, both from abroad and from around the corner.

"When people say to me the Henderson school will provide this, or that UNLV is doing enough, I say we shouldn't worry about competition until we've met everyone's needs," said Farr, the director of distance education at UNLV. "We should just be out there working. Our needs are tremendous here in Nevada, and we need to do a better job educating our young people."

Part of that work will be convincing young students that they can find more satisfaction from teaching others at $24,000 a year than they can parking cars at a casino for closer to $70,000 a year, said John Filler, president of the UNLV Faculty Senate.

Just ask Kerry Gross, 29, a first-year teacher at the Paradise Professional Development School, a short walk north of the UNLV campus. She gave up an 11-year career as an optometrist's assistant and took a significant cut in pay to take on the challenge of a classroom of second graders, many of whom don't speak English.

"It's the kids," she said. "I don't like the preparation, all the stuff before and after and in the middle, but I like the kids. And I want to make a difference."

archive