Providing Missouri students a highly qualified, appropriately credentialed workforce has grown steadily more challenging over the past decade. Unsurprisingly, the pandemic made it even harder. Multiple surveys indicate Missouri educators' growing dissatisfaction over the last two years. These data, coupled with figures on declining enrollment in teacher preparation programs, increased vacancies, uncompetitive salaries, and declining retention rates, have prompted state education leaders to take bold steps to improve teacher recruitment and retention in Missouri. Fifty years of research have fully established and repeatedly confirmed that the quality of the teacher and their teaching is the number one school-related factor affecting student learning. Investments in improving teacher quality have direct outcomes for students. Thus it is critical that the Missouri Department of Elementary and Secondary Education (DESE), the state board of education, governor, and state legislators take new, unprecedented steps to address these teacher recruitment and retention challenges.