(1)(a) The recruiting Washington teachers program is established to recruit and provide training and support for high school students to enter the field of education, especially in shortage areas. The program shall be administered by the Washington professional educator standards board.
(b) As used in this section, "shortage area" has the definition in RCW
28B.102.020.
(2) The program shall consist of the following components:
(a) Targeted recruitment of diverse high school students including, but not limited to, students from underrepresented groups and multilingual, multicultural students in grades nine through twelve, through outreach and communication strategies. The focus of recruitment efforts shall be on encouraging students to consider and explore careers in the field of education;
(b) A high school curriculum that: Provides future educators with opportunities to observe classroom instruction at all grade levels; includes preteaching internships at all grade levels with a focus on shortage areas; and covers such topics as lesson planning, learning styles, student learning data and information, academic disparities among student subgroups, cultural competency, college success and workforce skills, and education policy;
(c) Academic and community support services to help students overcome possible barriers to becoming future educators, such as supplemental tutoring; advising on college readiness and college course selection, college applications, and financial aid processes and financial education opportunities; and mentoring. Support services for program participants may continue from high school through the first two years of college; and
(d) Future educator camps held on college campuses where high school students can: Acclimate to the campus, resources, and culture; attend workshops; and interact with college faculty, teacher candidates, and certificated teachers.
(3) As part of its administration of the program, the Washington professional educator standards board shall:
(a) Develop the curriculum and program guidelines in consultation with an advisory group of teachers, representatives of teacher preparation programs, teacher candidates, high school students, and representatives of diverse communities;
(b) Subject to the availability of amounts appropriated for this specific purpose, allocate grant funds through a competitive process to partnerships of high schools, teacher preparation programs, and community-based organizations to design and deliver programs that include the components under subsection (2) of this section. The board must prioritize grants to partnerships that also have a running start program under chapter
28A.600 RCW; and
(c) Conduct periodic evaluations of the effectiveness of current strategies and programs for recruiting educators, especially multilingual, multicultural educators, in Washington and in other states. The board shall use the findings from the evaluation to revise the recruiting Washington teachers program as necessary and make other recommendations to teacher preparation programs or the legislature.
