Recruiting and Retaining Teachers for Richmond Public Schools: Partnership Efforts

Abstract

Virginia Commonwealth University and the Richmond Public Schools have been frequent partners in education projects and initiatives over the past 30 years. Recent partnership efforts have focused on four issues specific to the needs of an urban school system: preparing teachers for work with students in high-needs urban classrooms, recruiting teachers, mentoring beginning teachers, and retaining successful, experienced teachers in these same classrooms. This paper describes school-university efforts around these issues and identifies the challenges still to be met.