Teacher Residencies: State and Federal Policy to Support Comprehensive Teacher Preparation

Teacher residencies are a strategy for simultaneously improving the quality of preparation and providing a long-term solution to teacher shortages. As school systems work to recover from the COVID-19 pandemic, states continue to grapple with persistent and, for some, deepening teacher shortages. When schools struggle to fill teaching positions they often turn to short-term solutions, ranging from expanding class sizes or canceling courses to hiring uncertified or underprepared individuals to fill positions. All of these options can undermine student learning. The proliferation of abbreviated pathways into the profession, and districts’ growing reliance on these pathways to meet their pressing staffing needs, poses a serious challenge to advancing the long-sought learning recovery.

In addition, despite the growing evidence that teachers of color can strengthen learning outcomes for students of color, teachers of color comprise only about 20% of the workforce—a share that has not budged since 2015—even as the number of people of color has grown to comprise about 40% of the U.S. population. While more new teachers of color have been recruited over the past several years, the overall share of teachers of color remains essentially the same, suggesting that high turnover rates are undermining considerable recruitment efforts.

Teachers’ effectiveness and their likelihood of staying in teaching are strongly influenced by the quality of preparation they receive, and well-designed teacher residencies have been found to support both of these outcomes. Research suggests that teacher candidates who receive their preparation through teacher residencies—which combine comprehensive, financially supported preparation with a post-program service requirement—tend to be retained in their districts longer than other candidates, on average, thereby lowering rates of new teacher attrition and reducing the need to hire more new teachers. Research also shows that teacher residencies have been successful in recruiting talented candidates into high-need fields and school districts, and have helped new teachers to become effective, bringing greater capacity and stability to their teaching force.

This research is based on the initial designs for residencies that guided the federal legislation on residencies and several early state adoptions. These designs created postbaccalaureate preparation programs featuring:

• strong partnerships between educator preparation programs and local education agencies who work together to design and manage the residency program;
   
• a full academic year of residency working alongside an expert mentor teacher, who is the teacher of record, while taking tightly interwoven credential coursework;
   
• financial supports for residents’ tuition and living expenses, in exchange for a commitment to teach within the partner local education agency;
   
• induction and mentoring support following the residency year;
   
• compensation and training for expert mentor teachers; and
   
• a priority to address critical workforce needs in high-need districts and subject areas and/or to increase the diversity of the workforce.

States and the federal government are seeking policy strategies to better recruit, prepare, and retain a qualified teacher workforce. Many states are expanding the availability of pathways into the profession that broaden access to comprehensive teacher preparation and promote the retention of new teachers. These pathways, including teacher residencies and other Grow Your Own programs, are a key strategy to address the roots of long-standing inequities in access to well-prepared and certified teachers.

A recent estimate suggests that by the 2023–24 school year, there were over 440 teacher residency programs operating across the country. Some states have created variations in the model that have yet to be studied. For example, although most of the early models and current research were based on graduate-level programs tightly tied to service commitments in sponsoring districts, recent models also include undergraduate teacher preparation programs that are not always tied to a service requirement. Additional research will be needed to explore the outcomes associated with these variations in design.

To understand the growing evidence and policy landscape, this report begins with an overview of research on the teacher residency model and then describes state and federal policy trends and opportunities supporting teacher residencies. This includes a look across recent efforts in 12 states to fund and grow high-quality, research-aligned residencies: Arizona, California, Delaware, Indiana, Mississippi, Montana, New Mexico, New York, Pennsylvania, Texas, Washington, and West Virginia.

Research on Teacher Residencies

As the number of teacher residencies has grown, so too has the research base examining the impacts and outcomes of residencies. This report reviews findings from this research, which has focused on programs instantiating the residency designs described above. Among other things, this research has found that:

• Well-designed residencies support teacher preparedness and effectiveness. Residency graduates have typically expressed overwhelmingly positive perceptions of the quality of their preparation, and principals who hire residency graduates tend to perceive them as more effective than other novice teachers. The few studies that have also looked at student outcomes suggest that residency graduates typically perform as well as or better than other novice teachers on student outcome measures.
   
• Well-designed residencies support teacher retention. Residency-prepared teachers typically remain in teaching at higher rates than other novice teachers in their districts. While multiyear service commitments—a key feature of most residencies—naturally support teacher retention, a number of studies document high retention rates even beyond the fulfillment of residents’ service commitment.
   
• Well-designed residencies help diversify the teaching profession and address teacher shortages. By design, the residency model is intended to address ongoing staffing shortages, and evidence from numerous studies suggests that residencies prepare teachers to fill shortages in high-need schools and high-need subject areas. Of the 2021–22 graduates of 47 programs partnered with the National Center for Teacher Residencies, for example, 25% taught in math, science, or technology fields; 25% taught special education; and 18% specialized in teaching English learners—all widespread shortage areas. Paid residencies have also supported efforts to increase the racial and ethnic diversity of the teacher workforce, another critical area of staffing needs for schools, and have attracted a more racially diverse pool of candidates than the broader pool of practicing teachers. However, early research from California and Pennsylvania suggests that the amount of financial support provided to residents is related to the program’s effectiveness in meeting diversity goals.

Trends in State Support for Teacher Residencies

Over the past several years, states have significantly expanded access to comprehensive teacher residency programs. According to Education Commission of the States, 22 states and the District of Columbia have created or supported teacher residencies in state policy, though the design of these policies—and of the residencies they support—has varied. To understand different state approaches and strategies, this report synthesizes trends from Arizona, California, Delaware, Indiana, Mississippi, Montana, New Mexico, New York, Pennsylvania, Texas, Washington, and West Virginia and highlights the ways in which their state policies incorporate supports for teacher residencies. In many of the states we studied, most or all of the features of high-quality residencies identified in prior research were reflected in state policy. Taken together, these different models offer a range of approaches for others to consider when launching or expanding teacher residencies.

In addition to these research-backed designs, state policies often include supports that enable ongoing and sustainable implementation, such as capacity-building and technical assistance. Some states also include an evaluation component in their policy and investments to track progress, engage in continuous improvement, and guide future state decision-making.

Teacher Residencies: State and Federal Policy to Support Comprehensive Teacher Preparation by Ryan Saunders, Julie Fitz, Michael A. DiNapoli Jr., and Tara Kini is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License.

This research was supported by the Carnegie Corporation of New York. Additional core operating support for LPI is provided by the Heising-Simons Foundation, William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, Raikes Foundation, Sandler Foundation, Skyline Foundation, and MacKenzie Scott. We are grateful to them for their generous support. The ideas voiced here are those of the authors and not those of our funders.