Project RESTART: Preparing Nontraditional Adult Teacher Education Candidates to Become Special Education Teachers

In North Carolina, where the state must hire 10,000 teachers every year just to fill existing classrooms, highly qualified special education teachers are included in the top three areas of greatest teacher shortage, behind math and science. Such needs, which include an increase in teachers from ethnic minorities, challenge teacher educators to seek innovative methods for recruitment and retention of pools of nontraditional teacher candidates. In this article, the authors report that at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro (UNCG), "Project RESTART: Recruitment and Retention: Students on Alternative Routes to Teacher Training", a U.S. Department of Education personnel preparation grant (H325H020046) for high incidence disabilities, has worked to address the critical shortage of special education teachers in North Carolina. The purpose of the project was to enhance the development and implementation through assessment of a model teacher preparation program that was designed to recruit and retain a pool of highly qualified special education teachers from underrepresented teacher candidate groups.