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Report

Educating for Equity: Alder Graduate School’s Teacher Residency

Published
By Cathy Yun Julie Fitz Tomoko M. Nakajima Chris Mauerman
A teacher presenting a lesson while a student teacher watches.

The Alder Teacher Residency began in 2010 as an in-house new teacher preparation program for Aspire Public Schools, a California charter network, and has since evolved into an independent graduate school of education and the largest residency preparation pathway in California. During the 2022–23 academic year, Alder enrolled 325 residents, who were grouped into regional cohorts, and partnered with 47 local education agencies (LEAs) across California, including public school districts, public charter schools, county offices of education, and a Special Education Local Plan Area (SELPA). The university featured multiple subject, single subject (math, science, social studies, English, and world languages), and education specialist credentialing pathways and had developed a coursework sequence that allowed all residents to attain a Master of Arts in Education in addition to their teaching credential.

Through our research, we found that the program maintained a high standard of teacher preparation and produced teachers who were consistently well-equipped to enter the profession. On average, Alder residents assigned high ratings to the program, with 97% of graduates rating the program as effective or very effective on the 2022–23 California Commission on Teacher Credentialing completer survey. Overall, 95% of Alder graduates have been hired as full-time teachers following the residency year, and 90% of Alder graduates have been rated by their school leaders as more effective than other first-year teachers working in the same schools. Alder residency graduates exhibited consistently higher retention rates than teachers prepared through other pathways: On average, 57% of Alder graduates were still working in the same LEA after 3 years as of 2023, compared with only 33% of new teachers in those LEAs who were prepared through other pathways.

Driven by a focus on equity and the goal to build a more racially diverse teaching workforce, Alder had almost doubled the proportion of enrolled residents who identify as members of historically underrepresented groups, from 45% in 2010–11 to 83% in 2022–23. Alder promoted equity by applying a “high-touch, whole adult” approach to support residents throughout their time in the program. By incorporating strong supports throughout the program, Alder recognized and attempted to address systemic inequities that might have prevented some candidates from developing specific skills due to a lack of opportunity. Alder viewed this high-touch, supportive approach as key to preparing the diverse pool of educators they recruit and bring into the profession.

Case Study Methods

The case study presented in this report was conducted in 2023 and was guided by the overarching question “How do successful residencies do their work?” It is part of a larger multiple-case study of five California teacher residency programs across four different institutions of higher education, conducted with the goal of documenting the details of their program infrastructure; program design; recruitment strategies; resident, mentor teacher, and graduate supports; partnership; leadership; and financial sustainability. By understanding the details of how these residencies developed and operated their programming, we are able to share insights that can inform the design and continuous improvement of residency programs across the country.

Overview of Residency Features

Program Design. Residency coursework began during the summer, before residents started engaging in their clinical placements, which allowed the residents to build relationships with their cohorts, become acquainted with reflective practice, learn the basic principles of inclusion and asset-based teaching, and take a subject-specific methods class before they entered their placement classrooms. In the fall and spring semesters, residents took synchronous and asynchronous online coursework that accommodated their clinical placement schedules. Course objectives and content were aligned to four Program Learning Outcomes (PLOs): (1) asset-based community and cultural responsiveness; (2) developmentally appropriate, whole child, and inclusive practices; (3) pedagogical content knowledge; and (4) critical, reflective, and research-based orientations to teaching. The integration of these PLOs into each course allowed residents to see and experience similar concepts across courses, which helped reinforce learning and encouraged residents to reflect on their clinical experiences in relation to the PLOs throughout the residency year.

During the fall and spring semesters of the residency year, residents spent 4 days per week in clinical experience at a school site specially selected to host residents. Alder guided partners’ selection of placement sites with a set of criteria that helped ensure that these sites met school demographic requirements, had appropriately qualified principals or site leaders who were committed to the program, and could identify and select highly qualified mentors. Alder provided multiple structures and resources to help integrate residents into a mentor teacher’s classroom as coteachers in a sequenced and supportive manner, and the clinical schedule was designed to afford residents opportunities to coplan with their mentor teacher and participate in grade-level team meetings and school-based professional development opportunities. In addition to their core coursework, residents attended a full-day in-person seminar 3 times per month that was designed to help bridge clinical practice and coteaching with academic coursework.

Recruitment and Admissions Process. Alder focused on recruiting candidates who have been historically marginalized—including candidates of color and candidates from less affluent communities—into the teaching profession, typically drawing on individuals who were already working in Alder partner schools as substitute teachers, paraprofessionals, instructional aides, after-school support providers, and other classified staff. To lower barriers to application, the university developed admissions requirements that minimized the number of documents applicants must submit up front and did not require candidates to have already met the basic skills and subject matter requirements for licensure. Admissions also involved an interview process in which candidates deliver a lesson plan and receive feedback, then have the opportunity to revise and deliver the lesson again. The support and feedback aspects of the interview helped level the playing field and built equity into the admissions process by allowing applicants with less background experience in planning and implementing lessons to demonstrate their ability and willingness to incorporate coaching and feedback to improve their work.

Resident Supports. Residents received support to cover living expenses through stipends provided by Alder’s LEA partners. Acknowledging that residents may nonetheless experience financial hardship during the residency year, Alder provided a robust suite of supports through the Office of Student Services. The office proactively worked to identify the specific challenges faced by Alder residents, both through surveys and one-on-one conversations, and it connected students with financial, food, housing, health care, academic, social, and hiring supports according to their specific needs. This proactive approach has been shaped by the institution’s mission to create pathways into the teaching profession for populations that have been historically marginalized and for a student population whose financial precarity constitutes a potential barrier to their ability to access and complete a graduate-level degree.

Partnerships. Over the years, Alder has built a word-of-mouth reputation, and, as California’s state grant program has created more interest in residencies, Alder is regularly approached by LEAs that are interested in starting a residency. This increased interest has allowed Alder to be more intentional about the LEAs they partner with and to spend more energy on the alignment of their values and goals as well as financial sustainability. Each partnership was managed by a clinical director, an LEA employee who was also a clinical faculty member at Alder. The clinical director ensured alignment between both sides of the partnership and oversaw most day-to-day residency operations. Alder leadership met at least annually with each partner LEA superintendent or executive director to present LEA-specific data on the impact of the residency. This annual check-in meeting grounded the partnership with a review of Alder’s mission, vision, and values and how they align with partner LEA goals. This process of making LEA-specific residency impacts explicit and connecting them to the LEA’s goals was critical to ongoing partnership and cohesion.

Organizational Structure and Culture. At Alder, a key organizational value is collaboration. The Alder team was a tightly knit and highly coordinated group in which each member’s perspective and experience were valued. Multiple regular meetings, each with a different purpose, created regular opportunities to build relationships and make cohesive decisions throughout the organization. Each internal team met regularly, typically weekly, and cross-team collaborations were also scheduled to ensure a coordinated and supportive experience for residents throughout the program. Meetings also included two in-person retreats each year, monthly optional town-hall style meetings, monthly professional development meetings focused on equity, and an equity-focused book club in which all Alder personnel participated. These structures helped promote a collaborative culture and strengthen values-driven coordination, cohesion, and consistency across the organization.

Continuous Improvement. Alder routinely collected and analyzed data as part of its effort to continuously improve. Data collection and analysis were done throughout the year using various data sources including those from LEA partners, the National Center for Teacher Residencies, and Alder-created surveys. These activities were documented in Alder’s Annual Data Cycle Calendar and findings were reported in an Annual Program Assessment Report that is presented to Alder’s Board of Directors and publicly available online.

Financial Model. Alder’s financial model combined short-term grants, tuition, community resources, and LEA contributions. Thirty percent of Alder’s budget came from both private and public grant funding. Through 2022–23, Alder has obtained approximately $14 million in Teacher Quality Partnership (2020, 2022) and $19 million in Supporting Effective Educator Development (2018, 2020) funding, with roughly half of these funds going to LEA partners as subgrantees. Alder encouraged all LEA partners to apply for grants through the California Teacher Residency Grant Program (TRGP). In addition to TRGP funding, LEA partners used local control funding formula dollars to fund Alder resident and mentor stipends and supplement the clinical director’s compensation. In 2022–23, Alder was 50% funded through tuition, and it expected to reach its target of 70% to 80% tuition funding by 2026–27. The university did not aim to become fully reliant on student tuition because it intended to keep tuition rates low enough to be able to recruit and enroll candidates from diverse backgrounds.


Alder Graduate School Teacher Residency: Centering Equity by Cathy Yun, Julie Fitz, Tomoko Nakajima, and Chris Mauerman is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License.

This research was supported by the Gates Foundation. Core operating support for LPI is provided by the Carnegie Corporation of New York, 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.

Cover photo provided by Alder Graduate School of Education.