Arizona receives grant to help address teacher shortage

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(The Center Square) - The Arizona Department of Education received a $300,000 grant to address the state’s teacher shortage.

The department will receive the money over the next two years from the nonprofit Ascendium Education Group. The money will go toward expanding the department’s teacher apprenticeship program, including supporting 100 apprentices.

The money will help pay teachers and train them, Tom Horne, the Arizona superintendent of public instruction, told The Center Square on Thursday.

Horne said the apprenticeship program is one of numerous alternative pathways through which people can become a teacher in Arizona.

Such pathways allow people who are “knowledgeable and want to teach” to become teachers, he added.

The money from the grant is important because Arizona has a “terrible teacher shortage,” Horne noted.

Arizona continues to lose more teachers than it hires, the superintendent said. “Recruiting, training and supporting teachers is vital and the teacher shortage has reached catastrophic proportions."

“These funds will be used to expand our already robust efforts to help bring more teachers into the profession and retain those valuable educators currently in the classroom,” he added.

Between July 2025 and November 2025, Arizona saw over 1,000 teachers quit their jobs.

Horne noted Arizona needs to “continue to push for more help for educators by increasing teacher pay using State Land Trust funds with no new taxes, and ensuring school administrators support teachers on classroom discipline.”

He added that these are the two main issues teachers mention “as reasons to leave the profession.”

Last week, Arizona Gov. Katie Hobbs signed a new $18.29 billion budget into law. It did not include funding to raise teacher pay, according to Horne.

For the 2024-2025 school year, the National Education Association reported the average teacher salary in Arizona was $64,291, ranking 31st in the country. Arizona teachers saw a 2.5% increase in average pay from the 2023-2024 school year, when it was $62,714.

All the states bordering Arizona had higher average teacher salaries for the 2024-2025 school year.

The Center Square reached out to the Arizona Education Association, the state’s largest teacher union, but did not hear back before publication time.