Apprenticeships for Teacher Preparation

The U.S. Departments of Labor and Education have urged states and school districts to create and register apprenticeship programs for teaching, which comes with federal funding that can pay for on-the-job training, wages, and other supportive services, such as textbooks or child care. At a time when many states are lowering standards to fill classroom vacancies, advocates point to apprenticeship models as a way to expand the pool of potential teachers without sacrificing quality.

An apprenticeship program—an approach to job training that dates back to the Middle Ages and remains particularly popular in Europe—allows workers to train for a new career at little to no cost while earning a paycheck. President Joe Biden has prioritized the model throughout his time in office, including as a way to combat teacher shortages.

Tennessee was the first state to be approved by the Department of Labor to establish a permanent grow-your-own model in January. Now seven other states have a registered apprenticeship program for teachers—Arkansas, Colorado, Iowa, Kansas, New Hampshire, Texas, and West Virginia. Several other states are in the process of pursuing or developing teacher apprenticeship programs.

“Our goal is creating a world in which aspiring teachers can become a teacher for free and be paid to do so,” said David Donaldson, the founder and managing partner of the National Center for Grow Your Own, a nonprofit that provides technical assistance to states and school districts to set up apprenticeship programs.

With federal dollars up for grabs, “I actually think that’s a possible scenario,” he said.

Grow-your-own programs, which broadly focus on preparing community members to take teaching jobs, and teacher residency programs, which feature a year of student-teaching, have been around for years. Both offer prospective teachers—including paraprofessionals, career-changers, and high school or college students—the chance to work in the classroom and earn money while completing their preparation to become a licensed teacher. These programs been found to be particularly effective at recruiting teachers of color.

Here’s what the recruitment firms will do: ZipRecruiter has launched a new online job portal for K-12 school jobs, including teachers, nurses, and school counselors. Indeed will facilitate virtual hiring fairs for educators across the country. And Handshake, an app that helps college students find jobs, will host a free virtual event in October to help current undergraduate students learn about careers in education.

Also, the Education and Labor departments issued a joint letter to state and local education and workforce leaders with three recommendations to address staff shortages in education.

First, policymakers should leverage federal funding to establish more teacher-apprenticeship programs, in which candidates get on-the-job experience—and a paycheck—while training to become a teacher, the letter says. Typically, these programs are meant for paraprofessionals or other school employees who are interested in getting their teaching degree.

Also, the secretaries urged more partnerships and collaboration between workforce and education systems. Ideally, workforce-development boards are supporting district hiring efforts, and schools are preparing students for in-demand careers, the letter says. Workforce-development boards can also be instrumental in connecting teacher candidates to supportive services, like assistance for child care, transportation, testing costs and licensure fees, and housing.

Donaldson said registering these types of programs with the Department of Labor is “phase two.” It opens up a new source of federal money to help offset the cost of such an intensive style of teacher preparation, he said. The money can also be braided with other federal education dollars—such as from Title II of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act or the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act—and philanthropy, Donaldson said.

‘People are lining up to become teachers’

At the beginning of 2022, a robust grow-your-own program at Austin Peay State University in Clarksville, Tenn., became the first registered apprenticeship program for teaching in the country. The model, which is in partnership with the Clarksville-Montgomery County school district, has been in place since 2018 and serves recent high school graduates, paraprofessionals, and other community members looking to make a career change.

“This is not a shortcut, this is not a replacement for teacher education,” said Prentice Chandler, the dean of the college of education at Austin Peay. “This is university-based teacher education—it’s just better.”

The program is three years long. Candidates who need a bachelor’s degree first take classes at a community college, which is free in Tennessee. They then finish up their coursework at Austin Peay while working as an educational assistant at Clarksville-Montgomery schools. Tuition and fees, including textbooks, are covered by the program, and candidates earn a salary and benefits for their work at the school district.

After the teachers complete the program and earn their certification, they must teach for three years in the school district. The teachers will all hold dual certification to teach special education, a crisis shortage area for the state. Most people who go through the program will also be certified to teach elementary school, but some prepare to teach middle school science and math—the program tries to tailor the cohorts to meet the needs of the district. Right now, there are 126 prospective teachers in the pipeline. The last two cohorts have each been about half teachers of color.

“A narrative around teacher education is that people don’t want to be teachers,” said Lisa Barron, the associate dean and director of teacher education and partnerships at Austin Peay. “We have found the opposite to be true.”

Said Chandler: “Once you take the barriers and obstacles away, people are lining up to become teachers.”

The federal Department of Labor money has allowed the program to assist with child care and transportation, too, Barron said: “Students who previously had to drop out because of life challenges like that, now we can say, ‘No, we can help you.’”

Rhonda Davis, a 1st grade teacher at Hazelwood Elementary School in the Clarksville-Montgomery school district, went through the apprenticeship program after spending most of her career working in hospice. This is the 58-year-old’s first year as a fully certified teacher.

“I’d always wanted to go back [to school], but I just thought at my age, I don’t have that many years [left] in the career, and I don’t want student debt going into retirement,” she said. “It was a big game changer for me not having to pay all those expenses.”

Starting in high school

In May, West Virginia followed Tennessee to become the second state to register a grow-your-own model with the Department of Labor. But the Mountain State’s apprenticeship program takes a different approach—it’s focused on current high school students.

The aspiring teachers will complete 24 to 30 dual-enrollment or Advanced Placement credit hours in a range of subjects, including introductory education courses, while they’re still in high school, for free. Then, they’ll go to a participating university in the state for their sophomore and junior years and do a paid field experience on top of their coursework. During their senior year, the candidates will go back to their community and serve as the teacher of record, with support from an experienced educator.

The state recommends that participating counties require their students to commit to teaching for three to five years in their hometown after they graduate college.

“We are harvesting students from the community for the community,” said Carla Warren, the director of educator development and support services for the West Virginia Department of Education.

The state is not covering tuition for the candidates’ two years at a university, but they will receive free materials and textbooks and the opportunity to take the Praxis certification exam for free. And students will work in schools throughout their time in the program, earning an hourly rate that gradually increases from $9 to $11 an hour. When serving as the teacher of record, they will earn a salary.

Warren said the state’s eventual goal is to eliminate the cost of tuition, so candidates can earn a teaching license completely for free. The program is targeting rural, first-generation college students who come from low-income households, she said. “We know that we have a population of students who want to be successful in college, but they need those wraparound services to do that,” Warren said. “The apprenticeship model is going to lift some of that financial burden.”