The Teach Louisiana Web site

Louisiana State Department of Education

Baton Rouge, LA
 

Introduction/Overview
Organizational Change
Budget & Finance
Professional Development
Technology Infrastructure
Outcomes
Evaluation
Contact Information
 

Introduction/Overview

Launched in January 2002, The Teach Louisiana Web site (www.teachlouisiana.net) was a joint endeavor of the Louisiana Department of Education (LDOE), the Board of Elementary and Secondary Education, the Board of Regents and the Governor's Office. Teach Louisiana is currently housed in the LDOE Division of Teacher Certification and Higher Education.

Teach Louisiana is an established online career development Web site for educators providing recruitment, certification, teacher preparation, and professional development resources. The site allows both new and veteran teachers the opportunity to search for job openings and submit online applications for positions within Louisiana’s public school system. School district human resource staff can review job applications online and use the site to fill vacancies. Through resources available on this site, parents can verify qualifications of their child’s teacher, applicants and administrators can check the status of certification requests, and teachers can access up-to-date certification information. Visitors to the Teach Louisiana Web site can explore the variety of pathways that lead to successful teaching careers in Louisiana. Teach Louisiana provides all of Louisiana’s public school districts with a free online recruiting tool, enabling them to place certified teachers into K–12 classrooms. The goal of Teach Louisiana is to increase the number of certified teachers in Louisiana classrooms and to provide resources that can be used to improve teacher quality throughout the state.

Organizational Change

In response to the need to increase the numbers of certified teachers in Louisiana classrooms and to provide continued support to teachers, planning was initiated by the LDE Office of Quality Educators. Planning teams were made up of staff from the LDE divisions of Teacher Certification and Higher Education, Professional Development and the Louisiana Center for Educational Technology, School District Personnel Directors and representatives from the Blue Ribbon Commission on Teacher Quality and the Louisiana Board of Regents. The teams focused on developing a teacher preparation center, a teacher recruitment center, a professional development center, and a teacher certification center. These centers became the four main sections of the Teach Louisiana Web site. The Louisiana Center for Educational Technology also coordinated with the Division of Planning, Analysis, and Information Resources to ensure that Teach Louisiana was driven by data stored in the Teacher Certification database. Since the launch of Teach Louisiana in January, 2002, the site has been maintained by a full-time Teach Louisiana coordinator.

Budget & Finance

Teach Louisiana was developed and maintained by the Louisiana State Department of Education. Funding for the Teach Louisiana coordinator was provided by a Title II Teacher Quality Grant until July 2004. In addition to the coordinator’s salary, recurring costs include ongoing maintenance, license fees, and updates. The Office of Quality Educators recently sent out a Request for Proposals to plan and implement a public awareness campaign for Department of Education Teacher Quality initiatives and programs. Teach Louisiana will be one of the focuses of this public awareness campaign.

Professional Development

The majority of professional development regarding the utilization of the Teach Louisiana Web site has been directed toward district personnel directors. This group uses Teach Louisiana to post job vacancies and review job applications. The Teach Louisiana coordinator has provided training to district personnel directors in person and over the phone. The Division of Teacher Certification and Higher Education has also developed a blackboard site to facilitate discussions between district personnel directors on their use of the Teach Louisiana Web site and related issues. This has provided a forum where questions can be asked and recommendations for improvements can be made. Meetings have also been arranged with other key user groups, including university deans and regional certification counselors. School principals participating in the LEADTech professional development initiative are also introduced to Teach Louisiana. Teach Louisiana is a fairly intuitive Web site and users generally require limited training. For this reason, the focus has been on public awareness, rather than professional development.

Technology Infrastructure

Teach Louisiana is a data-driven Web site that utilizes active server page (ASP) technology to access teacher certification data. Both the Web pages and the SQL databases are housed on a Dell Poweredge 6450 Web server running Windows 2000. In the next 6 months, the Teach Louisiana Web pages and databases will move to a Blade server running Windows 2003. Site content is updated remotely via an online content management system.

Outcomes

The Teach Louisiana Web site has provided for an increased knowledge of teacher certification policy and structure. State department, school district personnel, and the public at large are using the Web site to access updated teacher certification information. The Teach Louisiana Web site has also increased public awareness concerning the various pathways to teaching in Louisiana. The site provides information on traditional and alternative teacher preparation programs and the state approved teacher preparation program providers. An increasing number of parents are using Teach LA to inquire into the credentials of their children's teachers. One unanticipated outcome is the increasing number of principals and school administrators who use Teach Louisiana to verify the credentials of their staff. It was anticipated that school districts would use the Teach Louisiana Web site to increase the number of certified teachers teaching in their classrooms and this has been the case. As public awareness of the Teach Louisiana Web site increases, the number of districts regularly posting jobs and reviewing job applications will also rise. Small school districts especially have benefited from Teach Louisiana. Often these districts don't have a full-time personnel director and can't afford large-scale advertisement campaigns. Teach Louisiana provides an efficient recruitment tool that allows school districts to reach a large audience and secure certified teachers more quickly than they would have otherwise been able to. Currently, the Teach Louisiana Web site receives an average of 30,000 hits a months.

Evaluation

Coordination between the division of the DOE and other major stakeholders was established at the outset of the project and continues to be maintained. High levels of coordination are critical to Teach Louisiana as the project is a collaborative effort between several state department divisions and district-level stakeholders. Strong lines of communication between state department divisions, school districts, regional coordinators and universities have also been established and are essential to the project’s success. As Teach Louisiana continues to develop, it is essential that a high level of communication is maintained so that the Web site can continue to meet the needs of the school districts and other user groups. In-house technical knowledge and skill has also been critical to the project’s success. The fact that Teach Louisiana was developed in-house means that it is very scalable and can incorporate changes and recommendations quickly.

Contact Information

Andrew Vaughan
andrew.vaughan@la.gov
225-342-1579