Almost one of every two new teachers hired last school year by Arkansas’ public school systems was not a completer of a teacher education preparation program.
The gap between the number of newly hired public school teachers and the number of those hires who have completed traditional and nontraditional teacher-preparation programs is causing state leaders to develop new ways to get teachers “Day 1 ready” for classroom work.
To that end the new Arkansas Teacher Residency Program is rolling out.
Starting as soon as 2022 and growing over time, the teacher residency initiative will provide high school and/or college students who are interested in teaching careers with opportunities to take educator-preparation courses at their high schools and/or at nearby tw0-year community colleges before finishing a bachelor’s degree from a four-year college.
Along with taking courses, the program calls for those who want to be a teacher to work in either full- or part-time paid school positions.
The candidates — who may start as tutors, bus drivers and after-school activity workers — would see their responsibilities increase to being paraprofessional aides and student teachers the closer they get to achieving bachelor’s degrees and state teaching licenses.
State education leaders Ivy Pfeffer and Karli Saracini call the Arkansas Teacher Residency Program “a grow your own teachers” initiative.
It is a partnership of state agencies, school districts and higher education institutions that will enable teacher candidates to move into a profession at low or no cost to them. They can do that while staying close to their homes, work in familiar settings and, simultaneously, earn associate and then bachelor degrees.
“What it is doing is giving them real-world, hands-on, job-embedded practice while they are learning the content and pedagogy needed to really be that Day 1 ready person,” said Pfeffer, a deputy commissioner of the Arkansas Division of Elementary and Secondary Education.
PROGRAM BENEFITS
The teacher candidates have the potential to avoid college loan debt, while even getting health insurance and acquiring teacher retirement credit.
The benefit to the school districts is the availability of new teachers who are familiar with the schools and who are prepared for classroom teaching, Pfeffer said
Participants in the teacher residency program can start as high school students, paraprofessional aides and other school support employees who already have experience working with students and in school settings, Pfeffer said.
“Statistics show that 60 percent of teachers teach within 20 miles of where they graduated from high school,” said Saracini, assistant state commissioner for educator effectiveness. “That’s national. We all know that once they go off to college, they don’t always come back. So a grow-your-own approach is so critical … to keep teacher candidates [close to their homes]. That’s why we all feel so strongly about this residency model.”
Arkansas school systems hired 3,048 new teachers in 2020-21, of whom 1,587 had completed traditional or nontraditional teacher preparations programs. About 48%, or 1,461, of new teachers were long-term substitutes or had received state waivers of license requirements to fill classroom vacancies.
That contrasts sharply with statistics from as recently as the 2012-13 school year when 92% of 2,518 new teachers had completed an educator preparation program and 8 % had not.
Those who have not completed preparation programs may or may not know the subject-area content, or teaching strategies or classroom management, Pfeffer said in a recent interview.
“This gap between new teachers being hired and teachers coming out of a preparation program … is not a path to a healthy, sustainable teacher work force for the future,” Pfeffer said.
“It’s not the Day 1-prepared workforce that will be able to effectively teach kids,” she said. “We are committed to excellence for all kids, so we have to change what we are doing at this very most basic level of the teacher work orce to be able to move forward.”
The teacher residency program calls for high schools to offer courses leading to a certified teaching assistant credential. Those courses — part of a high school’s career and technical education department — are Introduction to Education, Education Technology and a general education course. Community colleges might also provide courses and concurrent credit for the certified teacher assistant certificate and as well as associate degrees in education.
The residency program calls for school systems to provide employment for certified teaching assistants while they pursue the associate degrees and then finish up with a bachelor degrees from four-year institutions. The residency program won’t be 100% online, but candidates wouldn’t necessarily have to move to the four-year campus to get the degree — the result of cooperative arrangements that are made between the two- and four-year colleges.
“The role of higher ed is to personalize the pathways for the candidates,” Pfeffer said about the plan.
Features of the teacher residency initiative include flexible work and course schedules for the teacher candidates and opportunities for the teacher candidates to interact with mentor teachers, with each other and with students. Guidance on financial aid will be provided as will help on required certificate- and license-related testing.
Because there is a shortage of teachers, candidates can qualify for the Arkansas Futures grants, which cover community college tuition for course work in fields where there are employee shortages. Other scholarships can cover costs at the four-year colleges.
The teacher residency program can offer some flexibility in educator preparation program admission and concurrent credit requirements that have in the past been “a hard and fast 19” on the ACT college entrance exam, Sharlee Crowson, special projects coordinator for educator effectiveness in the state agency, said.
There are already successful career and technical education programs for education in some of the state’s high schools, but they are typically in northwest and central parts of the state where the teacher shortages are not as severe, Crowson said.
“We are trying to streamline this so that anyone in the state knows where they work a model like this,” she said.
Pfeffer said the residency program does not do away with the traditional education preparation programs and not every teacher candidate will be a teacher resident. Some students will go to a traditional four-year college and have that experience, she said.
“And that’s great. It’s just that right now the numbers of candidates who are coming out of those programs are not meeting the demand of what our schools need,” she said.
RETAINING TEACHERS
Saracini said too many teachers leave the profession after just a few years of work in part because they don’t feel prepared or supported. The teacher resident program can help, she said.
“If we start them early and they are already in the system, then chances are — if we provide the right support — we are going to keep them. We are not only in the business to attract teachers, to get them into the pipeline, but also to retain them. It goes back to being Day 1 ready,” she said.
Pfeffer discounted criticism on social media accounts that the residency program promotes the use of unlicensed teachers in classrooms.
“Let me say that is happening way too much right now,” she said. “The whole thing is we are putting unlicensed teachers in classrooms right now and we have to stop. This is the solution.”
“The model is not to put a first-year college student in a classroom to be the teacher of record — not at all,” Pfeffer continued. “This is providing an opportunity for people who are preparing to be teachers to get experience and exposure with the kind of work they will be doing so they are able to be better prepared.”
Pfeffer pointed to the charts showing the state’s growing number of unlicensed teachers.
“This is the way to change the trajectory and have well-prepared people,” she said.