Launched in 2015 within the Bank Street Education Center, Prepared To Teach helps realize an important progressive vision for building sustainable teacher residency models and re-envisioning how institutions of higher education can forge deeper partnerships with public schools through the creation of integrated teacher preparation programs with extended clinical practice. In July 2023, Prepared To Teach became an independent organization. Discover reports, resources, and other materials developed by Prepared to Teach through June 2023 below or learn more on the Prepared To Teach website
A Path to Equity: Solving New York’s Teacher Turnover & Quality Challenges
Frames both the case for and an approach to addressing persistent teacher quality, diversity, and turnover challenges in the State of New York, which is based on a growing set of research and promising practice and intended to offer a high-level understanding of the complexities around how the economics of teacher preparation both drives educational inequities and can be shifted to promote educational quality and equity by investing in funded teacher residencies.
Federal Funding for Aspiring Teachers: An Investment in the Nation’s Future
Provides a high-level overview of the case for and a pathway to achieve universal residencies across the nation created to inform policy discussions at the U.S. Department of Education.
Registered Apprenticeship Programs and Teacher Residencies: Building Shared Understandings Between Workforce Development and Education
This brief is the first in a series exploring principles that Prepared To Teach has surfaced as helpful for designing Registered Apprenticeship Programs for teacher residencies to promote and support high-quality teacher preparation systems.
Teacher Preparation Programs and Teacher Candidates Supporting Staffing Needs During COVID-19 – Program Highlights
Compiles programs from across the Prepared To Teach National Learning Network that have creative staffing models that directly address staffing and substitute teaching shortages.
Money Matters in Teaching
Breaks down the potential of funded teacher residencies where students can earn while learning, which can alleviate financial burdens and recruit a more diverse, committed teaching workforce.
Beyond Tuition, Costs of Teacher Preparation: Descriptive Analytics from the Aspiring Teachers’ Financial Burden Survey
Shares analyses from the national survey of aspiring teachers carried out by Prepared To Teach during the 2019–20 school year, diving into the income sources, expenses, debt, and work realities of aspiring teachers across the country and identifying where candidates are in need of additional support.
Dollars and Sense: Federal Investments in Our Educator Workforce
Supporting aspiring educators during preparation is essential. The field is ready to embrace shifts that will make teacher preparation more uniformly strong, sustainable, and equitably accessible—investments in preparation will make such shifts possible. This report makes the case for a renewed commitment to excellent teacher preparation, made possible by federal investments.
Going Further Together: Building Ownership and Engagement to Support High-Quality Teacher Preparation
By drawing on effective, lasting collaboration among stakeholders who have not traditionally worked together—both within organizations and across organizational lines, programs can successfully identify sustainable funding sources for the long term. This report highlights programs across the country that have successfully sustained and grown the kind of commitments that ensure program development and longevity.
The Residency Revolution: Funding High-Quality Teacher Preparation
Focuses on strategies for reinvestment—one of our 3 Rs of sustainably funded teacher preparation. Provides guidance for districts to make shifts that permanently embed residency funding in local budgets. Shares ways that partnerships can identify and maximize their savings from a high-quality residency program.
Simple Shifts: Paying Aspiring Teachers With Existing Resources
Focuses on strategies for reallocation—one of our 3 Rs of sustainably funded teacher preparation. Highlights ways partnerships can redesign work roles to better support preparation efforts and to allow candidates to earn compensation during their clinical practice. Shares how districts and programs have leveraged the skills of aspiring teachers to support classroom learning.
The Affordability Imperative: Creating Equitable Access to Teacher Preparation
Focuses on strategies for reduction—one of our 3 Rs of sustainably funded teacher preparation. Shares ways universities can maximize access to financial aid sources and minimize costs associated with quality programs. Spotlights programs that have successfully implemented strategies to reduce costs to aspiring teachers.
Five Domains for Teacher Preparation Transformation
Describes the process of establishing the current Prepared To Teach theory of change, which supports national communities of practice in five domains identified by the Network’s learning agenda in the 2019-2020 school year: mindset shifts, educator roles, labor market alignment, school improvement, and deeper learning.
Aspiring for More: Deeper Partnerships for Sustainable Residencies
Shares lessons learned from 12 university/school district sites as they implemented teacher residency programs during the 2019-2020 school year. Focuses on findings from this work in six areas: sustainability, partnership development, program redesign, supporting school improvement, mentor development, and resident learning.
#MoreLearningLessDebt: Voices of Aspiring Teachers on Why Money Matters
Shares the results of a 2019–2020 survey of teacher candidates’ financial burdens at 12 institutions in seven states. Provides recommendations for practice, policy, and research to improve recruitment and retention in teacher preparation programs.
Co-Designing Teacher Residencies: Sharing Leadership, Finding New Opportunities
Focuses on the development of a teacher residency partnership between Western Washington University and Ferndale School District. Shares lessons from their process of collaboration for other university/school system partnerships interested in creating embedded residency programs.
Sustainable Strategies for Funding Teacher Residencies: Lessons from California
Highlights California teacher residencies with known financial sustainability efforts in which partners are leveraging local resources to support residents and mentor teachers. These concrete examples of creative residency funding strategies are meant to help California’s new investments in teacher residencies become sustainable over time.
Making Teacher Preparation Policy Work: Lessons From and For New York (pdf)
Shares lessons from New York’s clinically-rich preparation pilot including principles for policy to support funded teacher residencies in New York and beyond. Provides guidance for state-level policy change to help grow and scale teacher residencies.
Practice Makes Preparation (Part 2)
Highlights unique preparation programs that are working towards a better system, introduces teacher candidates, and details the weekly spending of student teachers in an effort to share more about what teacher candidates go through to become certified.
Following the Money: Exploring the Economics of Quality Teacher Preparation (pdf)
Provides an in-depth look at the economics of teacher preparation and the systemic shortcomings of current models. Explores how, with a modest investment, the teacher labor market could dramatically shift to allow more strong individuals to enter the profession and, in turn, create better schools.
Practice Makes Preparation (Part 1)
Showcases video interviews with real teachers about their preparation experiences to help elevate stories of quality preparation, identify places for improvement, and add to the conversation about what teacher training should look like. See video responses from ten different teachers answering questions about their careers and preparation.
Clearing the Path: Redesigning Teacher Preparation for the Public Good (pdf)
Draws on lessons from early innovators effectively implementing co-teaching preparation programs to present strategies for the development of strong partnerships that support funding models providing stipends for teacher candidates in full-time residency positions.
Selected Research Supporting Sustainable Funding for Quality Teacher Preparation
Outlines four persistent teacher quality challenges facing schools and districts that can be positively impacted through the establishment of funded year-long pre-service clinical placement.
Investing in Residencies, Improving Schools: How Principals Can Fund Better Teaching and Learning (pdf)
Shares a case study of an innovative charter school in California. Describes how the school’s financial model enables the funding of co-teaching positions for new teachers within the school.
For the Public Good: Quality Preparation for Every Teacher (pdf)
Identifies public funding streams to support residency program nationwide and outlines how teacher preparation providers and school districts can establish mutually-beneficial partnerships to support high-quality teacher preparation and incentivize positive change across the entire educational ecosystem.
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