Andrew Guckes | Staff Writer
Teach Coalition, a national organization that advocates for equitable government funding and resources for Jewish day schools and yeshivas, is proposing a program that would reward Pennsylvania public school STEM teachers with additional paid opportunities to teach STEM in nonpublic schools, which includes a number of Jewish schools.
The program would see schools partner with current and former Pennsylvania teachers to apply for state funding to pay them for work done outside of their normal duties. The work is regulated by the Pennsylvania Department of Education and there are limits to work set by the legislature. The plan is still in the process of being hashed out, although the proposal from Teach Coalition has been published.
While there is no word yet on when this program could start, Teach Coalition’s regional director Hadassa Levenson said that it will increase STEM fluency across grade levels and add earning pipelines for teachers. The program is based in part on one that has achieved success in New Jersey.
“In the past, we tried introducing a bill. The other way is that we can just get money put into the budget,” Levenson said. “So we’re looking for a million dollars to start the program, and then the Department of Education would create a set of rules and teachers would apply to schools, and there would be a mutual selection process.”
The Pew Research Center reported last spring that the average student in the United States dropped 13 percentage points in math from 2018 to 2022.
Rebecca Zisholtz, the director of marketing for Teach Coalition, said that STEM is “critically important” to the future of the United States’ workforce. However, creating avenues for children to explore the sciences, technology, engineering and math can have other effects on their general well-being, too.
“There’s more jobs than ever in the STEM fields, but we’ve also found that it’s sometimes an area where kids excel where they don’t otherwise excel. Investing in those long-term programs [for a] kid who might not be great at reading or English builds their confidence in a different way,” she said.
She said there are plenty of examples from the program in New Jersey of a student being spurred on by additional STEM education. She used the example of one who gets to work with robots in an engineering lab, something they take to immediately, which raises their confidence. She said that evidence shows their grades will rise across the board.
“It’s an important area to invest in, both from a long-term career perspective, but also just generally challenging our students and finding new avenues for them to get excited about,” Zisholtz said.
The exchanges don’t just benefit students, though. Even though the program would accommodate private schools of all types, Zisholtz said that there have been a number of teachers in New Jersey who came to Jewish day schools and found a passion for a community they didn’t even know about.
“We’ve had numerous stories come out of teachers coming from public school and not having been familiar with Jewish day schools or the Jewish community in general and really forming special relationships and bonds with the students,” she said. “They end up coming back here and requesting to stay at the same school, because they formed a connection with the students there. So there is that element of [teachers] getting exposed to these new communities.”
For Pennsylvania, which has a shortage of teachers like many other states, this is an attractive way for educators to earn more money.
For many teachers, who already take second jobs, it might as well be a job that you can already do.
“What we found is that this is a huge incentive for public school teachers to be able to take a second job that’s not outside of their normal realm of teaching. It’s a continuation of their job,” Zisholtz said.
Levenson said that the organization’s mission of securing funding and supporting Jewish day schools in the state takes them all over. They work with nonprofits, conduct security trainings and host donor events.
They also bring legislators into schools to meet and speak with students and parents to discuss why private education is important and why Jewish schools in particular need their support.
However, each year, there is one event that reminds everybody — the organization, the students and the legislators who make the important decisions — why they do this.
“We have an annual mission to Harrisburg where we bring students and lay leaders from across the state. We like to say it’s the largest gathering of kippahs in Harrisburg,” she said.
“The legislators love it, right? They are so much happier talking to children than adults!”