State education officials told members of the State Board of Education that Tennessee’s additional endorsement program has helped qualify more than a thousand educators with the ability to teach additional subjects including special education, English as a second language and computer science.
According to Brooke Amos, the Tennessee Department of Education Assistant Commissioner of Human Capital, and Taylor Reid, the department’s senior director of educator licensure, 1,257 individual educators across the state from 2020 to 2023 added additional endorsements to their licenses under the program. Of those, 451 educators earned a K-8 special education interventionist endorsement, 272 earned a grade 6-12 special ed interventionist endorsement and 210 gained credentials for comprehensive K-12 special ed intervention. In addition, 675 educators earned endorsements for English as a second language.
Reid said 995 of the 1,257 added just one endorsement, while 175 added two, 81 added three and six added all four. She said that enrollment peaked during the 2021-2022 cycle, with an average of 92 percent enrollment compared to capacity, while enrollment fell in 2022-2023 to an average of 56 percent of capacity. However, despite enrollment declines, she said, the number of approved endorsements increased each year, which indicated increased rates of program and assessment completion among participants. Reid added that although 1,257 educators added additional endorsements to their license, workforce changes “did not yield any notable results in vacancy rates.”
“We have ended funding for the current program. I think individuals who are in the program are completing that, and we are looking for a strategy for future iterations but have partners in place who we’re hoping can [help strategize] for future iterations,” Amos noted, adding that the program has been mostly funded through COVID-19 relief funding up until now.
Amos said that starting next school year, all middle schools and high schools in Tennessee will begin providing computer science courses. Middle schools will provide computer science courses for at least one grading period during a student’s middle school career, while high schools will offer at least one high school credit of computer science, creating the need for more educators in that area. Computer science will also be integrated into elementary school content, Reid said.
Reid and Amos also noted during Thursday’s board workshop that recent revisions to state educator licensure policies added a new option for educators with a valid practitioner-level or professional-level Tennessee teaching license to obtain an computer science endorsement via an additional endorsement program developed and administered by the state Department of Education.
“The requirements [for this path] are a practitioner or professional level teaching license and individuals who are on an occupational-to-academic pathway would also be eligible for this pathway,” Reid said, adding that requirements also include successfully completing the CSEP or Computer Science Endorsement Program pathway.
Reid noted that 175, or about 23 percent, completed the CSEP program in the spring of 2023 and 223, or 56 percent, went through the pathway program during its fall of 2023 cohort.
“My licensure team is certainly hearing from district and school leaders about this endorsement and the need to fill it, especially with the upcoming school year,” Reid said of the need to train computer science teachers moving forward.
