How is NYS trying to improve recruitment of new teachers?

On Board Online • July 20, 2026

By Sara Foss
Special Correspondent

During the COVID-19 pandemic, the number of people pursuing teaching careers in New York dropped. Enrollments at the state's educator preparation programs (EPPs) declined, and retirements rose. To plug gaps, schools increasingly relied on substitutes and teachers working outside of their certification areas.

To encourage more people to enter the teaching profession, the State Education Department (SED) launched the online platform TeachNY.org in 2024 to identify and nurture the next generation of New York teachers. To date, 85,000 people have created an account with TeachNY.

TeachNY.org serves as a centralized hub for information about the teaching profession, providing prospective teachers with free support, resources and connections to help them successfully navigate the sometimes confusing process of becoming a teacher.

Teacher training programs attribute some of their admission applications to TeachNY. Statewide data on the impact of the program is being gathered but is not currently available.

According to New York State United Teachers, enrollment in education preparation programs has dropped 42% since 2009, and program completions are down by at least 35%.

"There's been a more acute need for teachers in the past several years," said Alex Trikalinos, assistant commissioner for SED's Office of Teacher and Leader Development.

Goals of TeachNY include increasing the number of people entering the teaching profession, with a particular emphasis on subject areas with chronic shortages, while also diversifying the teaching pipeline by bringing more people from marginalized communities into the classroom.

Among other things, TeachNY gives aspiring teachers access to:

• A search engine to explore New York's 86 educator preparation programs, with information about what they offer and links to their websites.
• One-on-one and group coaching sessions with teachers and certification experts.
• A database of scholarships and funding available for future teachers.

TeachNY launched in partnership with TEACH.org, a national non-profit organization formed by the U.S. Department of Education in 2015 to reduce the national teacher shortage, improve the image of the teaching profession and support anyone interested in teaching.

SED requested $1.3 million of funding for TeachNY for the fiscal year beginning July 1, and the Legislature and the governor provided $500,000, plus $1.5 million for "teacher recruitment strategies."

Prospective teachers hail from all walks of life. Some are older adults changing careers; others are recent high school graduates beginning to think about a future career. Some are already working in schools, perhaps as a paraprofessional or long-term substitute, and could become a classroom teacher with proper training and certification.

TeachNY also helps address one of the biggest barriers to becoming a teacher: how to pay for it.

The website has a "Financial Support for Teachers" page that optimistically states in a headline: "Where there's a bill, there's a way." It lists scholarships available through TeachNY, such as the $1,000 TeachNY Classic Scholarship, as well as scholarships offered by EPPs, such as Nazareth University's STEM teacher scholarship, which awards up to $20,000 per year to juniors and seniors willing to commit to teaching chemistry, biology or math to students in high-need districts. TeachNY will also reimburse up to $100 in application-related expenses.

So, how many people with TeachNY profiles have enrolled in educator preparation programs? SED is working to gather that information from SUNY and CUNY educator preparation programs, but it has data from EPPs at independent colleges. So far, nearly 2,000 TeachNY signups have enrolled in an EPP at an independent college.

"Those 2,000 people represent about 28% of the teaching vacancies we have in New York," Trikalinos said. "Given the fact that TeachNY has been going for less than two years, we're very excited." He added, "We're looking to do some more analysis of that data. Are those folks enrolling in programs that are aligned with our shortage areas? Is TeachNY going to help us address some of those shortages that we have over time?"

New York has persistent teacher shortages in a number of areas, including special education, high school science, career and technical education and high school English language arts. In New York City, there's a big shortage of library media specialists, but not so much upstate.

Many of the people who complete EPPs in New York go on to teach at the elementary school level, which is not one of the state's shortage areas. "If all of those individuals did a dual education program and also got special ed certified, it would really help," Trikalinos said. "We're hoping that over time, as people become aware of where the teaching vacancies are and where the jobs are, it might help them make the right choices of what teaching certification to pursue."

Trikalinos said SED is interested in leveraging TeachNY to support local initiatives that recruit new teachers from within the community, usually called "grow your own" (GYO) programs. The agency plans to work with TEACH.org. to create tools and resources for school districts and BOCES to develop GYO programs. These programs could take different forms, such as clubs for middle and high schoolers who are interested in teaching or residencies that create opportunities for adults to enter the profession within their own school communities.

In January, New York State United Teachers addressed the state's teacher shortage in a report called Forging a New Future: Teacher Recruitment and Certification. Recommendations included scaling up grow your own programs, reducing financial barriers and strengthening support for new teachers. Ideas discussed in the report included potential statewide efforts to:

• Create a new statewide paid student teaching program providing $10,000 stipends to student teachers in shortage areas.
• Expand teacher residency and apprenticeship programs statewide.
• Increase funding for mentorship and teacher pipeline programs.
• Reimburse the cost of master's degree tuition at SUNY rates.
• Cover all state-mandated certification costs, including exams, workshops and fingerprinting.

The solution to the teacher shortage "is not to lower professional standards," the report said. "Instead, New York must remove the true barriers to entry into the profession: the costs, complexity and lack of support that discourage prospective and new educators."