Prepared To Teach works across the country to solve a key problem in education: making sure everyone who wants to be a teacher can afford to attend a quality preparation program.
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Dollars and Sense: Federal Investments in Our Educator Workforce
Karen DeMoss
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.
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Simple Shifts: Paying Aspiring Teachers with Existing Resources
Hannah Dennis and Karen DeMoss
Reallocation helps partnerships redesign work roles to better support preparation efforts and to allow candidates to earn compensation during their clinical practice. Simple Shifts shares ways in which residents can bring value to the classroom and how districts and programs have leveraged the skills of aspiring teachers.
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The Residency Revolution: Funding High-Quality Teacher Preparation
Hannah Dennis and Karen DeMoss
(Re)Investment helps districts find ways to make shifts that can permanently embed residency funding into local budgets. The Residency Revolution is about identifying and maximizing the savings that a high-quality residency program can bring to a district.
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The Affordability Imperative: Creating Equitable Access to Quality Teacher Preparation
Hannah Dennis, Karen DeMoss, and Divya Mansukhani
This report is one of three case studies on the "3Rs of sustainably funded teacher preparation" (reallocation, reduction, and reinvestment) developed by Prepared To Teach. This case focuses on reduction—the strategies and stories inside are intended to help universities maximize access to financial aid sources and minimize costs associated with quality programs.
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Program Cost Tool
Amie Kaufenberg and Prepared To Teach, Bank Street College
For a comprehensive look at a preparation program budget, this Excel-based tool will estimate five years of costs and potential savings to assist in your immediate and long-term planning. Administrators or program leaders might find this especially helpful for considering shifts in teacher preparation programming. See the introduction document for guidance on how to use.
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#MoreLearningLessDebt: Voices of Aspiring Teachers on Why Money Matters
Divya Mansukhani and Francheska Santos
This report delves into a 2019-2020 survey that Prepared To Teach conducted at twelve institutions across seven states and explores aspiring teachers’ financial burdens with a specific focus on the link between said burdens and the desire for strong teacher preparation programs that include clinical practice. Learn about the many daily anxieties that aspiring teachers face, the difficult choices they are often forced to make in order to pursue their passion for teaching, and the impact this has on the quality and diversity of teacher candidates. Finally, find out why the future of the teaching profession depends on improving access to quality preparation programs by ensuring that aspiring teachers are supported financially in their journey to becoming the best-prepared educators they can be.
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Aspiring for More: Deeper Partnerships for Sustainable Residencies
Zachary Paull, Karen DeMoss, and Divya Mansukhani
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. Sites began their programs in 2019, after a year of development and co-construction activities led by Prepared To Teach, and contributed to a national learning network. The report focuses on findings from this work in six domains: sustainability, partnership development, program redesign, supporting school improvement, mentor development, and resident learning. Learn more about the residency implementation process in different contexts and the key takeaways for universities and districts looking to establish a sustainable residency program.
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ARP Webinar Slide Deck
Prepared To Teach, Bank Street College
Slide deck for Prepared To Teach webinar on May 17th, 2021.
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District ARP ERRA Funds
Prepared To Teach, Bank Street College
This document contains ideas for districts to leverage ARPA funds.
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ESSER Logic Model for Teacher Residencies
Prepared To Teach, Bank Street College
This document provides support for Local Education Agencies (LEAs) who might wish to use their Elementary and Secondary Emergency Relief (ESSER) Funds to develop teacher residency programs. Residencies are explicitly allowable under federal guidance, as they can address both immediate COVID-19 learning opportunity gaps and help districts "build back better" by diversifying the teaching force, reducing turnover, and improving outcomes. The logic model above is part of the new resource that LEAs can use to complete their required ESSER plans.
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Exploring District Investments in Residencies
Prepared To Teach, Bank Street College
This one-page document illustrates ways school districts can adjust existing funding streams to support teacher candidates during their residency year. Examples of include substitute teaching days for residents, professional development opportunities, and co-teaching alongside mentor teachers.
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Forming and Sustaining an Advisory Group
Prepared To Teach, Bank Street College
This slide deck outlines the basics of forming an effective advisory group to develop a strong residency partnership. By developing trust and collaborating on shared, mutually beneficial work, advisory groups can support both short-term and long-term partnership goals. The presentation includes supplementary notes on many slides.
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Guidance: Resident Expectations and Agreements
Prepared To Teach, Bank Street College
This document outlines expectations that residency programs might want to make explicit for those who will be enrolling in the residency. Many of these considerations also would be included in formal agreements between individual residents and preparation partnerships, for example when residents must agree to serve as teachers in a district in exchange for receiving funding during the program.
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Integrating Residencies into Substitute Teaching
Prepared To Teach, Bank Street College
This one-page document illustrates the possibilities and benefits of having residents take on substitute teaching roles in a district. Dollars previously allocated to substitute teaching can be redirected toward candidate stipends while substitute teaching needs are largely met by the cohort of residents.
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Preparation Program and District Partnership Agreement Considerations
Prepared To Teach, Bank Street College
This document outlines key considerations to keep in mind when building a residency partnership. Articulating agreements can help clarify the responsibilities of each party—programs and schools or districts—as well as foster a shared understandings of the mutual goals and responsibilities the partnership wishes to embrace. Agreements can remain informal or can form the basis for a formal Memorandum of Understanding (MOU).
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Sample Formal Resident Agreement
Prepared To Teach, Bank Street College
This sample Resident Commitment Agreement is a skeleton for partnerships to use and edit in ways that best fit their needs. This formal contract model not only embeds expectations for the residency but also sets out terms for residents' receipt of financial supports during the residency, such as agreements to take positions in a district once they have completed the program.
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Sample Residency Partnership Memorandum of Understanding (MOU)
Prepared To Teach, Bank Street College
This residency partnership sample MOU can be edited and adapted in ways that best fit local partnerships' needs and goals. The MOU includes collaborative goals and shared responsibilities, followed by specific program and district responsibilities.
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Sample State Application Language for Residencies in ARPA
Prepared To Teach, Bank Street College
This document contains sample language for state plans. Please feel free to adapt this document for use in your efforts to encourage your state education agency to include residency funding in its application for the last third of ARP dollars, which is due June 7th. For more information, contact PreparedToTeach@bankstreet.edu
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Supporting Candidates' Financial Needs
Prepared To Teach, Bank Street College
This document takes the affordability lessons found in our report, The Affordability Imperative: Creating Equitable Access to Quality Teacher Preparation, and offers preparation program leaders a set of guiding questions to help them find more ways to reduce the financial burdens of their aspiring teachers.
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Teacher Residency Website Guidance
Prepared To Teach, Bank Street College
This document provides guidance on how to design an effective teacher residency webpage that can support partnerships in garnering support, interest, awareness, and enrollment. Guidance is rooted in four key principles: Highlighting partnership values, telling stories, centering navigability, and focusing on keywords.
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Using ESSER Funds to Support Teacher Residencies
Prepared To Teach, Bank Street College
This document details the opportunity that Local Education Agencies (LEAs) have to leverage Elementary and Secondary Emergency Relief Funds (ESSER) to develop teacher residency programs at their school sites. It is not only allowable, but also advisable under Federal guidance that these funds can support teacher candidates working for a full year, co-teaching within classrooms with accomplished mentor teachers, helping lead to a more diverse teacher workforce, reducing teacher turnover, and improving instructional outcomes.
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Going Further Together: Building Ownership and Engagement to Support High-Quality Teacher Preparation
Maria Salciccioli, Melissa White, Karen DeMoss, and Hannah Dennis
Building shared ownership and engagement over teacher preparation can help ensure that efforts to sustainably fund high-quality programs will endure beyond initial start-up funding. 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 shares strategies for building ownership and engagement and highlights programs across the country that have successfully sustained and grown the kind of commitments that ensure program development and longevity.
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Beyond Tuition, Costs of Teacher Preparation: Descriptive Analytics from the Aspiring Teachers' Financial Burden Survey
Francheska Santos, Divya Mansukhani, Susann Skjoldhorne, and Neal Finkelstein
This report shares analyses from the national survey of aspiring teachers carried out by Prepared To Teach during the 2019-2020 school year. Beyond Tuition, Costs of Teacher Preparation dives into the income sources, expenses, debt, and work realities of aspiring teachers across the country and identifies where candidates are in need of additional support.
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Roles for Candidates in the Classroom
Charlotte Wells
This animated PowerPoint presentation shows different models for integrating aspiring teachers into the classroom to help with instruction while furthering their own learning. With more than a dozen examples, it's a helpful starting point for partnerships seeking to shift towards a more cohesive P-20 education system.
The presentation includes voiceovers and timed animations. You can choose to present without these if you'd prefer. Settings are in the slideshow tab of PowerPoint.
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Five Domains for Transforming Teacher Preparation
Charlotte Wells, Karen DeMoss, Divya Mansukhani, and Zach Paull
This report 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. Read how these five domains are explored through existing residency partnership programs, how individual programs both solidified and strengthened existing partnerships, and important insights into how to expand and share the benefits partnerships can reap through their work together. Finally, explore how the domains center the need for systemic changes built upon the cornerstones of justice and equity in order to construct an educational system that helps every student thrive.