"Troops-to-teachers" creates new wave of instructors for districts nationwide: classrooms get savvy and experienced military personnel moving to "second career" stage.

Recruiting teachers to low-income schools is an ongoing problem for hundreds of U.S. school districts. The "Troops-to-Teachers" (TTT) program, a U.S. Department of Education (DOE) initiative, has been started to counter this problem, identifying and training quality teachers for low-income schools throughout America. Among its benefits, TTT helps relieve teacher shortages, especially in math, science, special education and other high-needs subject areas, and assists retiring military personnel in making successful transitions to second careers in teaching.

"It's a total plus for our district," says Richard Monroe, Human Resources Specialist, Robeson County (NC) Schools. "We've been working with [TTT] for a decade and [their teachers] bring huge benefits to the classroom, including their overall maturity level. Since they've been in the Military for, typically, 20 years, they're over 40 years old and have traveled extensively as a result of serving in the U.S. Military. The value of the cultural diversity and enriched experiences from living in Asia or Europe is hard to calculate, but our students-many of whom are from low-income families--definitely benefit. We've had students who have been inspired by seeing that there is a larger world outside of Robeson County."

The Robeson County School District provides a good snapshot of a district perfectly suited to take advantage of the TTT program. With an enrollment of approximately 30,000 students and 2,900 principals, teachers, and behind-the-scenes personnel, Robeson County is located in the rural southeast corner of North Carolina, far from the state's more affluent industrial and commercial centers. "We're the largest county in the state," explains Monroe, "and very rural. It's a poor area and basically has a balanced tri-racial student population at our 41 schools--Native-American, African-American and Caucasian. With a turnover rate of 18 percent each year among our instructors, we're always on the lookout for quality teachers and the TTT program is a great resource."

The TTT program, established by the Department of Defense (DoD) in 1994 to help improve public school education by providing funds to recruit, prepare, and support former members of the military services as teachers in high-poverty schools, supports the goals of the 2001 No Child Left Behind Act. In practice, the TTT program (which is still administered by DoD though authority was transferred to the Department of Education) provides assistance, including stipends of up to $5,000, to eligible members of the U.S. Military so that they can obtain certification or licensing as elementary school teachers, secondary school teachers, or vocational/technical teachers and become highly qualified teachers by demonstrating competency in each of the subjects they teach. In addition, the program helps new teachers find employment in high-need local educational agencies (LEAs) or charter schools. A "highneed LEA" has a poverty rate of at least 20 percent or at least 10,000 poor children and has a high percentage of teachers teaching out of field or with emergency credentials. In lieu of the $5,000 stipends, the program may pay $10,000 bonuses to participants who agree to teach in schools where at least 50 percent of the students are from low-income families or the school has a large percentage of students who qualify for assistance under the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act.

So far, hundreds of school districts across the country have hired former military personnel under the program's sponsorship, including:

6,447 teachers placed in schools in every state

3,094 high school teachers

1,547 in 11th & 12th grades

24% in the inner city

24% in rural areas

24% in small towns

27% in suburban fringe

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