Dive Brief:

• The U.S. Department of Education has approved Wyoming's plan, the "Wyoming Plan to Ensure Equitable Access to Excellent Educators," which satisfies the first phase of the state's participation in the federally-mandated Excellent Educators for All Initiative. 
• The state's study of teacher inequity revealed two main problem areas, according to the Wyoming Tribune Eagle: "higher teacher turnover rates in districts with more inexperienced teachers and less highly qualified special education teachers in districts with higher minority and poverty rates."
• The plan lays out various ideas for the state, with a primary focus on creating a statewide high school program for future teachers, and the state's next step is to strategize its implementation. 

Dive Insight:

Coincidentally, the suggestions within the "Wyoming Plan to Ensure Equitable Access to Excellent Educators" are being released while the University of Wyoming's Board of Trustees and College of Education staff are "beginning a complete overhaul of the teacher prep program as part of the Trustees Education Initiative," the Wyoming Tribune Eagle reports. That bodes well for implementation.

Solutions offered by the state's plan to improve teacher equity seem clear-cut. Fewer applicants to college teaching programs result in less teachers, while a lack of a special ed program at UW leads to a lower rate of highly qualified special education teachers. The report suggests that UW "create a special education minor within the College of Education's teacher preparation program," a step that the dean of the UW College of Education says would have been taken with or without the new state plan.

As for boosting the state's supply of teachers, the "proposed future teachers organization [will] help provide information and guidance to students who hope someday to become teachers, which then might raise applicant numbers."

Thus far, a total of 33 other states and the District of Columbia have had their plans approved under the Excellent Educators for All Initiative, which is supposed to make sure that all U.S. students have equal access to quality education.