WHAT IS SMARRT?
The Science and Mathematics Alliance for Recruiting and Retaining Teachers (SMARRT) is a collaborative partnership pursuing aggressive strategies to recruit high quality elementary, middle, and secondary minority teachers to teach in high need schools in San Antonio urban school districts.
This partnership is dedicated to recruiting, preparing, and retaining high quality teachers with strong academic content knowledge in science and/or mathematics and a wide repertoire of research-based teaching practices including ESL strategies. The SMARRT three-year project is designed to allow urban school districts experiencing severe shortages in mathematics, science and ESL teachers to create a pipeline of highly qualified teachers by partnering with the University of the Incarnate Word to recruit, prepare, and retain teachers.
The SMARRT activities include:
- Data collection and analysis of teacher supply and demand in the schools,
- recruitment of minority mathematics and science teachers, particularly Hispanic teachers,
- creation of an innovative program to recruit science and mathematics majors from the community colleges into the teaching profession,
- redesign of curriculum in the Masters of Arts in teaching program to include content courses,
- to provide full scholarship support for 100 graduate students seeking a Masters of Arts in teaching and full scholarships for 50 teachers to receive ESL certification to increase significantly the number of highly qualified math, science, and ESL teachers in K-12 urban high-need schools, and
- to provide a collaborative, research-based support system for teachers during their first three years of teaching in urban high-need schools.
Scholarships are funded by the U.S. Department of Education through Teacher Quality Enhancement Grants program, Title II of the Higher Education Amendments of 1998.
