Maryland’s “Feds to Eds” program, designed to encourage fired federal workers to consider careers in the classroom, is working on ways to speed up the process so that potential hires can become licensed teachers faster.
The traditional path requires that prospective teachers have a bachelor’s degree or higher, complete an approved program for licensure and obtain passing scores on state teaching exams. There have been other routes for applicants, including obtaining a conditional teacher’s license.
At the Maryland State Board of Education meeting Tuesday, Assistant State Superintendent Kelly Meadows told the board that a subcommittee has been formed to study ways to streamline the licensure process for former federal workers who want to teach.
The concept would be to “focus on those individuals who have content knowledge, whether that’s in course work or just life experience, job experience, and how can we leverage that content knowledge without telling them that they need to start over,” Meadows said.
That subcommittee will meet Thursday, and an update will be submitted to the professional standards board on April 3, Meadows said.
The Maryland State Board of Education has dedicated a new webpage to encourage former federal workers to consider a career in education.
“If you have not checked out our Teach Maryland website, please do,” Meadows said.
The page is designed to answer some basic questions about obtaining a teaching license or becoming conditionally licensed. That would allow an applicant with a bachelor’s degree to teach, but a “pathway to licensure” would have to be completed within three to five years, depending on the area of licensure.
The state board of education is also looking at hiring a consultant to help identify where federal workers are living, “and where could they potentially want to work,” Meadows said.
State Board member Joan Mele-McCarthy said, “I’m just excited about this work,” explaining that there are a lot of “dedicated, smart people” at the U.S. Department of Education, which has seen its workforce slashed by President Donald Trump’s administration.
Referring to the talent pool there, Mele-McCarthy said, “It would be a gift to have some of those people join our classrooms.”