Last month, Arizona Senator Mark Kelly introduced the Educators for America Act and the Building Community in America Actto expand pathways for Americans to serve as teachers, mentors, and volunteers. The bills strengthen paid teacher training and national service opportunities, with a focus on recruiting men.

Since their introduction, the bills have received broad support from local and national leaders. The pair of bills have also received national recognition on the news and social media

See coverage highlights below:

Raging Moderates, Podcast: Sen. Mark Kelly joins Scott Galloway and Jessica Tarlov

Kelly has new bipartisan legislation aimed at getting more men into education as teachers, mentors, and volunteers - and makes the case that Democrats need to spend more time on legislation like this rather than national political fights.

Richard V. Reeves, Twitter: Major development for men and boys on the national level thanks to @SenMarkKelly. Great to see momentum on this.

[…] "It's a really historic day when we have a senator introducing, for the first time, bills that specifically look at the under representation of men in such crucial professions. So, huge kudos to Senator Mark Kelly for leading this effort." […]

Of Boys and Men, Substack: Two federal bills on boys and men. Two!

This is a good day. A very good day.

It has become increasingly clear in recent years that the lack of men in our classrooms and community institutions is a problem - for the organizations and professions; for men themselves; and above all for our kids.

As far as I can tell, no bill has ever been introduced in the U.S. Congress with the explicit goal of getting more men into K-12 teaching, or into mentoring, coaching, and community service.

Until today. […]

[…] What I really like about Kelly's education bill is that it targets the pipeline - and specifically an important side door. The front door into teaching is an undergraduate education degree, and that route is now overwhelmingly female: only 17% of education BAs go to men. AIBM's work shows that men are much more likely to come to teaching later, as a career change, via alternative routes - the engineer who becomes a math teacher at 35, the veteran, the coach. Some may come into teaching from college but without an education degree.

Teacher residencies, modeled on medical residencies, let candidates earn a salary while they train in a real classroom, with no prior education degree required. Kelly's bill requires the federally funded residency programs under the Teacher Quality Partnership to make a proactive effort to recruit men. […]

[…] These are historic bills. For the first time ever, increasing the share of men in our classrooms and service organizations is the central and explicit goal of bills at the federal level. The permission space to acknowledge and act on the challenges of boys and men has widened significantly, and we are now seeing policymakers at all levels of government take up the cause. And take it up in a positive, non zero-sum way. […]

Telemundo [Video] : Buscan aumentar cantidad de maestros y mentores hombres para la juventud

El senador Mark Kelly habla sobre la importancia de hombres que sirvan como ejemplo para los niños.

Univison Arizona [Video] : El senador Mark Kelly impulsa proyectos de ley para aumentar la presencia de maestros y mentores

El senador por Arizona, Mark Kelly, presenta los proyectos de ley Educators for America Act y The Building Community in America Act para enfrentar el aislamiento de los jóvenes. Durante su visita a Univision Arizona, el senador destacó la disminución de maestros en las aulas, que cayó del 35% al 23% en los últimos años. Las propuestas buscan destinar financiamiento a la capacitación de docentes masculinos y fomentar programas de mentoría que guíen el desarrollo juvenil.

Male Educators, Instagram: Sen. Mark Kelly introduces new legislation on educators and mentors

Sen. Mark Kelly has introduced new legislation aimed at getting more men into classrooms. Kelly points to the same trend we've been tracking: just 23% of public school teachers are men today, down sharply from when he was in school.

His Educators for America Act would expand recruitment pipelines, strengthen training and mentorship support for new teachers, and address retention, the same barriers our research on male teachers has consistently pointed to as reasons men leave the profession or never enter it in the first place.

"At a time when our boys need them the most, less and less men are volunteering. In our schools, the share of male educators has been consistently declining as males continue to fall further and further behind their female classmates. So Senator Kelly's bills are right on time. The bills also go hand in hand because service can be a pathway into teaching for so many men. We can fix what's wrong in our communities with what's right: men ready to serve," notes MEN President Curtis Valentine. […]

Katie Couric, Podcast: Senator Mark Kelly discusses why he thinks more men should become teachers and mentors

Katie Couric: How are you going to get more men to do these kinds of things? These

leadership roles?

Senator Kelly: That's what the legislation does. There are two pieces of legislation. One creates paid teacher training programs. Often, if somebody wants to become a teacher, they have to do all of that on their own, and there's a cost involved.

So, and you're going into a field that, you know traditionally doesn't pay as much as it should. Teachers, in my view, are woefully underpaid. So this would pay them to do the training

to get more men in the classroom.

When we were younger, about 35% of teachers were men. Today that number is 23 %, so it's going down not helpful for young men.

The other legislation prioritizes men to go into programs like AmeriCorps. The waiting list for male mentors is a lot longer than for female mentors. Women are just more resilient at a

young age.

Scripps News: Sen. Mark Kelly wants more men in classrooms through new legislation

Sen. Mark Kelly, an Arizona Democrat, is promoting new bipartisan legislation aimed at addressing the nationwide teacher shortage by improving educator recruitment, training and retention.

Kelly said he wants to attract a broader range of teachers, including more men. He highlighted the gender gap in education, noting that only 23% of public school teachers are men and that male representation in teaching was significantly higher when he was younger. […]

KTAR: Sen. Mark Kelly proposes 2 bills to support young men and grow public service

[…] Teachers said their students had voiced concerns about not having strong male role models in their lives and that other groups were focused on in media while young men might feel left out.

Emmett Burnton, who teaches at Boulder Creek High School in the Deer Valley Unified School District, is the 2025 Arizona Teacher of the Year. He said as a history teacher, he sees this firsthand.

"I was asking them like if they were in a room just like this in history … who would you want to sit with? Who would be your people? And they were crying, literally 16-year-old boys, because they're like I don't know who I am. … They couldn't relate to any historical figure," he said. […]