I guess irony can be pretty ironic

We had the ABCTE South Carolina launch last week with full press coverage and teacher recruitment events in Charleston, Greenville and Columbia. We had over 1,000 people request information from South Carolina – that is a pretty large group wanting to become teachers PLUS over 300 people attended the events and so far 40 have enrolled! Not a bad start and the Governor is doing a signing ceremony with me next week.

The irony – while I was in my hotel in Columbia, I ran into over 40 Pakistani teachers with varying degrees of English proficiency who have been brought in to teach in South Carolina schools. While this is an excellent exchange of cultures, the reality is that it just makes it that much harder to learn math and science.

NOTE: South Carolina has the BEST teacher recruitment and shortage data and should be the model for all states to truly get a handle on this problem: Visit CERRA Publications and click on supply and demand data.

Obviously, from our initial foray into the state, there are many South Carolinians who want to teach – they just needed to be recruited, have the right program and the right support to get them trained and ready to teach. And it seems like we are on the right track.