By Wilborn P. Nobles III, nola.com

A $13 million dollar federal grant has been awarded to two New Orleans universities and four nonprofits in an effort to recruit and train 900 diverse teachers for Louisiana by 2020.

The U.S. Education Department’s Supporting Effective Educator Development Program grant will fund the task set forth by Xavier University and Loyola University, according to school officials Monday morning (Nov. 13) at Xavier’s campus. The schools will be collaborating with Teach For America Greater New Orleans, teachNOLA, Relay Graduate School of Education, and New Schools for New Orleans to address teacher pipeline challenges in the city.

The federal funding comes as figures from Tulane University’s Education Research Alliance for New Orleans showed the rate of teachers leaving the profession or leaving the city was as high as 25 percent annually as of 2015. With this in mind, New Schools CEO Patrick Dobard said the funding serves as a “starting point” as organizations seek longterm sustainable strategies to fund and retain teachers in the city and the region.

Dobard said New Orleans needs to fill 800 teacher vacancies annually, and that doing so would contribute to the improved quality of its public schools. Drawing attention to the C-rating awarded to Orleans Parish schools by Louisiana’s Department of Education, Dobard stressed that “too many of our children are still not receiving the quality education that we’ve come to expect in New Orleans….”

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