Education leaders from across the state gathered at Miami University Friday for a summit to address the critical shortage of high-quality teachers in Ohio and across the nation.
The number of newly licensed teachers in Ohio has fallen from nearly 8,000 in 2010 to just 5,000 this year.
The situation threatens to have ripple effects impacting both quality of life and economic growth across the state, said Jason Lane, Dean of the College of Education, Health and Society at Miami University.
"So if Ohio is going to really remain competitive and attracting the best businesses to come and create new jobs across the board, we've got to be able to have a solid educational pipeline that's producing talent that is going to fill those jobs. And we can't do that without great teachers," he said.
Lane said the summit presents an opportunity to leverage the collective assets of the region to better support new teachers.
"Too often, we focus on isolated impacts of one university or one district doing something that's interesting or innovative. But then we don't scale that or we don't work together in a way that's really going to move the needle on the crisis."
Five conferences in all are planned across the state, including one hosted by The Ohio State University on November 3.
