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CHICAGO—Joyce Randall, who’s in her third year of teaching history to 10th-graders in her hometown of Chicago, is blunt about the effort needed to succeed at her work. “This is a difficult job for anyone to do for a long period of time, especially for the money we’re paid,” she says. The 26-year-old spent 12 months at the Academy for Urban School Leadership (AUSL), a hands-on residency program for future educators, where she gained both practical experience and a master’s degree. “You need more than just a passion for the job,” she notes wryly.
Over the past several decades, a debate has simmered over how to bring fresh talent into the nation’s school systems. A variety of programs and models are being tried, but the jury is still out as to which will prove most effective in meeting the one measure that matters most—improving student achievement over the long term. Some of the best-known training programs in the United States are fast-tracking candidates, including Teach For America (TFA), which received more than 46,000 applications for about 4,500 spots last year. TFA’s summer training institutes, held at eight locations around the country, last only five weeks. By August or September, all trainees are working full-time in the classroom. While studies of student achievement have shown that TFA teachers perform, on average, as well or better than their traditionally prepared and veteran colleagues, keeping them in classrooms has proven a challenge. Only about half of the TFA graduates stick with teaching beyond their two-year commitment.
To address such problems, educators across the country have been trying new approaches, particularly in urban areas plagued by poverty and high dropout rates. Teacher residency programs, like Joyce Randall’s, reflect one new model that is spreading with the support of the Obama administration and on the strength of its initial results. Over the past two years, the federal government has awarded $143 million to 40 universities and other organizations across the country to set up residencies or to overhaul their existing teacher education systems.
One recipient of the federal funds is the University of California–Los Angeles, which has created an 18-month program for students interested in teaching pre-K, kindergarten, special education, secondary math, or secondary science. Graduates earn a master’s degree in education and a preliminary teaching credential from the state of California. UCLA’s program and others like it are modeled on medical schools, where residents spend significant time doing rounds in hospitals, observing veteran doctors, and gradually taking on more responsibilities under expert supervision.
Traditional teacher preparation programs have often been criticized for not offering similar clinical experiences. The residencies aim to change that. Participants observe master teachers, write lesson plans, design assessments, and slowly assume the reins from their mentors in the classroom. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan has noted that programs like TFA and AUSL produce fewer than 10,000 of the 200,000 new teachers needed each year in the United States. To meet this shortfall, President Barack Obama called in February 2009 for the creation of 200 teacher residency programs to prepare up to 30,000 recruits annually.
Student apprentices
AUSL, where Randall trained, is the type of rigorous program Duncan and Obama have in mind. Founded in 2001 by a teacher-turned-venture-capitalist and a former inner-city school principal, the Chicago-based nonprofit offers a year-long graduate program that starts each June with coursework and small doses of teaching (in the form of one-on-one tutoring). Aspiring teachers, called “apprentices,” earn a master’s degree from either National-Louis University or the Erikson Institute, and teaching credentials from the state of Illinois. Admission to the program is highly competitive. Last year, 933 people applied for 85 spots. The program reports that over 90 percent of its students find teaching positions immediately after graduation.
Another important test of success, says Brian Sims, managing director of AUSL’s residency, is whether principals “keep our resident graduates on staff”—which, he notes, they almost always do, though they have the power to let teachers go any time before tenure is awarded. Part of the attraction of AUSL and similar programs is that those who enroll don’t necessarily have to go deeply into debt. Historically, teacher education programs—especially at the graduate level—have been cash cows for many institutions, with students paying upwards of $50,000 to earn degrees and state certification.
To make a teaching career more financially feasible, a handful of programs now offer both a sizable stipend and discounted tuition to enrollees. The federal government, through numerous grant programs, is footing a large part of the bill. AUSL gives each of its residents a $30,000 stipend, which makes it possible for most to concentrate fully on the program instead of working part time, while National-Louis University provides a tuition discount of just over 50 percent. And those who take out federal Stafford loans can have up to $17,500 in principal and interest forgiven if they go on to teach math, science, or special education in a high-needs school for at least five consecutive years.
Columbia University’s Teachers College, in New York City, launched a 14-month residency program last September with 20 students seeking to become teachers of English as a second language or special education in the Big Apple. Each participant receives a $22,500 stipend as well as substantially discounted tuition while earning a master’s degree and state certification.
In New Jersey, Montclair State University has partnered with the Newark public schools to offer two urban residency programs for future educators. A 12-month program is geared toward those wishing to teach secondary math or science, and it comes with a $26,000 stipend. An 18-month program prepares early-childhood and elementary school teachers, who also earn special education credentials. Those who enroll receive a $39,000 stipend. Both programs cover tuition and some fees at Montclair State. Other institutions, like the University of Pennsylvania Graduate School of Education and the colleges of education and science at Texas State University–San Marcos, have developed similar urban residency programs in partnership with local school systems.
Graduates of such programs who leave before fulfilling their teaching commitments typically must pay back all or part of the stipends and tuition discounts they have received. This might help explain why 85 to 90 percent of alumni from the oldest programs—in Boston, Chicago, and Denver—are still in the classroom after five years, compared to a national average of about 50 percent for all new teachers. The other likely explanation for the higher retention rates is that residency training simply prepares urban teachers better for the daily realities they face.
Most states are still developing the costly and complex data systems needed to track student performance over time and to link it to individual teachers. Urban residency programs have shown early signs of success, but in the years to come it will be the hard data on classroom achievement that will ultimately reveal their effectiveness.
A version of this story appeared in the 2012 edition of U.S. News & World Report’s “Best Graduate Schools.”
“200,000 new teachers needed each year in the United States.”
How out of touch is our government? Where exactly are these teachers needed? If they are needed, why are we still doing layoffs and non-renews when there are TENS OF THOUSANDS of teachers (in California alone) still looking for work when the first big round of layoffs and non-renews happened three years ago. There is no shortage of teachers. There is a shortage of teaching positions. Pay attention.
How can we possibly need 200,000 new teachers EACH year when there are hundreds of teachers in EACH school district that will not have teaching positions at the end of this school year?
Hundreds of thousands of new teachers are USUALLY needed each year because of the hundreds of thousands who quit, retire or die. Remember, there are roughly three million teachers in the U.S., so it shouldn’t be terribly surprising that about 7% of the workforce needs to be replaced on an annual basis. The current situation of widespread layoffs is an anomaly — and a clear result of the recession and associated budget cuts.
Ummm, how can you use TFA’s research as evidence that their graduates perform equally or better than their veteran counterparts? Especially when there is independent research that states the exact opposite. Seriously?
A study in Arizona in 2002 held that TFA teachers had a negative or non-significant impact on student achievement. (Ildiko Laczko-Kerr and David C. Berliner, Education Policy Analysis Archives 10, no.37 (9/6/2002) )
Another study in North Carolina determined that traditionally prepared secondary teachers were more successful than beginning teachers, including TFA corps members, who lacked teacher training. (Paul T. Decker, Daniel P. Mayer and Steven Galzerman, (Princeton NJ: Mathematica Policy Research, 2004))
Maggie —
Interesting that you mention the Decker, Mayer and Glazerman study (Mathematica) from 2004 — it’s listed on the TFA site to which I hyperlinked. So are many, many other studies of TFA done almost exclusively by independent researchers who have no dog in this fight. These are decidedly not studies that TFA commissioned, which would be relatively pointless, as nobody would believe the findings. Instead, they have been carried out by highly regarded academics who do these kinds of studies for a living. The reason I linked to the TFA site when discussing research on TFA is because it’s actually a fairly comprehensive repository of relevant studies. I know of no other single location — which, we must not forget, is a constraint inherent in hyperlinking — that lists as many relevant, reputable studies on the topic at hand. If anyone else knows of a better single location, feel free to point it out! Incidentally, the findings from the 2004 Mathematica study are rather different than those you state; you might want to have a second look at it.
Hi Justin,
I will look again more closely at the Mathematica study–in truth I’ve read about it and I haven’t actually read it myself. In my understanding students of the TFA teachers did perform better in Math than the students of other novice teachers with whom they were compared. I also understand that the novice teachers had neither student teaching preparation, nor had they earned their certification. In the same study, I understand that TFA teachers didn’t raise reading scores significantly more than their counterparts. In fact, reading scores were the same or worse.
The 2004 Mathematica study says that “TFA teachers did not have an impact on average reading achievement. Students in TFA and control classrooms experienced the same growth rate in reading achievement—an increase equivalent to one percentile” [from the 14th to the 15th percentile]. In addition, many of the TFA teachers were actually more prepared than over half in the novice control group: “All TFA teachers had at least 4 weeks of student teaching, while many of the control teachers (and over half the novice control teachers) had no student teaching experience at all.”
But, I will take some time from my teaching and coaching schedule to find and read the research myself!