Dr. Liebars Participates in $3.3 Million U S Dept of Education Grant

In partnership with the New Jersey Department of Education and the Ewing, Trenton, Pemberton and Vineland Public Schools, TCNJ received a 3.3 million dollar grant funded by the United States Department of Education. This grant project will help New Jersey to integrate powerful new recruitment and retention strategies for high need districts into its overall educational reform effort to improve education of all of New Jersey's students.

Professors Cathy Liebars of the Department of Mathematics and Statistics and Sharon Sherman of the Department of Elementary and Early Childhood Education are TCNJ's principal investigators. Both professors are co-directors of TCNJ's Center for Mathematics, Science and Technology. The New Jersey Teacher Quality Enhancement Recruitment (TQE-R) grant project addresses the need to recruit and retain highly qualified teachers in high poverty, low achieving schools, particularly in the hard to staff areas of math and science.

Research indicates that to deal with teacher shortages in at risk schools, strategies are needed across the continuum of professional practice -from pre-service through ongoing professional learning in order to retain teachers once recruited into high risk schools. New Jersey's TQR-R grant proposal outlines strategies across this continuum in its three strands: Recruitment for High Need Districts; Preparation for High Need District Teaching; and Induction and Professional Learning in High Need Districts. The partners will build on New Jersey's strong teacher quality reform platform and the positive historical relationships of all partners involved in the project.