Philanthropies Launch Teacher-Training Fellowships

The Woodrow Wilson National Fellowship Foundation has announced an ambitious national- and state-level fellowship program to lure college graduates and midcareer professionals to long-term teaching careers in high-need schools.

Creators say the $17 million program, underwritten by the Lilly Endowment, the Annenberg Foundation, and the Carnegie Corporation of New York, is intended to raise the profile of teaching as a career and to overhaul teacher education itself in the long run.

“We want to get excellent teachers to high-needs schools in cities and rural areas, we want to attract the best and brightest to teaching and to dignify the profession, we want to retain the top teachers, and we want to transform teacher education,” said Arthur E. Levine, the...