Meeting Urban and Rural District Needs for Educators: California State University, Bakersfield’s Teacher Residencies

With a decade of experience in creating and running teacher residencies—numbering seven around the region as of 2024—California State University, Bakersfield (CSUB) and its partners have developed strong residency structures that allow for the variations that different communities need. We studied two of the university’s residency programs: one focused on preparing teachers to work in an urban district in the large city of Bakersfield and one focused on preparing teachers to work in rural districts within Tulare County, a region located between Fresno and the Sierra Nevada.

The university, located in the southern part of California’s Central Valley, launched its first residency program in 2014 and has continuously operated teacher residencies ever since. As a result, the university houses substantive institutional knowledge on the design and operation of effective residency programs, which it has gained through years of experience and extensive, ongoing guidance from technical assistance providers such as the National Center for Teacher Residencies and WestEd. All of the university’s teacher residencies partner with one or more local education agencies (LEAs), and they work closely with their LEA partner(s) to tailor preparation in accordance with localized staffing needs and collaboratively determined priorities.

Through our research, we found that CSUB residencies represent high-quality preparation options. Across the seven residencies, residents gave their programs high ratings, with an average of 4.3 out of 5.0 overall on the 2021 California Commission on Teacher Credentialing (CTC) completer survey. The individual residencies studied in this report prepare candidates who are hired and retained at high rates within partner districts and who tend to be more diverse than California’s general teacher population.

In this report, we present case studies conducted in 2023 of two CSUB residencies: the Kern Urban Teacher Residency (Kern Urban) and the Teacher Residency for Rural Education (TRRE). Kern Urban, established in 2016, is CSUB’s longest-running residency program and partners with a single urban school district, Bakersfield City School District (BCSD). As of 2022, Kern Urban has graduated a total of 114 residents, 92% of whom have continued to work in BCSD. TRRE, in contrast, hosted its first cohort in 2020 and prepares residents to teach in a specifically rural context. For this residency, CSUB partnered with the Tulare County Office of Education (TCOE), which facilitated placements in three rural districts during the 2022–23 academic year.

Within similar structures, the two programs’ differences, shaped by their contrasting contexts, illustrate how the residency model can be modified to meet the needs of both large urban and small rural districts.

Case Study Methods

The case studies presented in this report are guided by the overarching question “How do successful residencies do their work?” They are part of a larger multiple case study of five California teacher residency programs across four different institutions of higher education. The goal of these case studies is to document the details of their program infrastructure; program design; recruitment strategies; resident, mentor teacher, and graduate supports; partnerships; leadership; and financial sustainability. By understanding the details of how these residencies develop and operate 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

Institutional Support. CSUB’s suite of teacher residency pathways has developed, in part, due to a supportive institutional climate. The residencies at CSUB were viewed as essential to the institution’s teacher preparation approach rather than as “add-on” or “special” programming. Educator preparation program (EPP) leadership valued the multiple residency programs, coupled with traditional and internship pathways, for providing prospective teachers with many options for acquiring their credentials and entering teaching.

The EPP helped support and promote cohesion across its seven residency programs through the creation of the CSUB Residency Consortium. The Consortium is a professional learning community that brought together on a monthly basis all of the university’s residency coordinators—the faculty members who managed each residency’s day-to-day operations. In addition to supporting alignment across programs, it allowed for residency coordinators to share successful practices, exchange ideas, and support each other through challenges.

Program Design. During the 2022–23 academic year, both Kern Urban and TRRE carefully aligned coursework with residents’ clinical practice and incorporated the unique contexts of the districts where residents were placed and where they were likely to teach. Although all CSUB residencies share a standard set of course requirements for all Multiple Subject and Single Subject credentialing pathways, each residency had residency-specific course sections that were only open to the program’s residents. This design allowed programs to create highly collaborative residency cohorts and cluster in-person coursework on a single day of the week when residents were not scheduled to attend their clinical placement.

During the fall and spring semesters, TRRE residents attended their clinical placement 3 days per week, whereas Kern Urban residents attended 4 days per week. Both sets of residents were paired with a mentor teacher at the beginning of the school year and cotaught in this person’s classroom, taking on progressively more responsibility over time in accordance with a program “phase-in schedule.” TRRE residents remained with the same mentor for a full year, whereas Kern Urban residents cotaught with different mentors, commonly at a different school, during the fall and spring semesters. In both programs, residents were observed by and received ongoing informal and formal feedback that was based on the Danielson Framework for Teaching from their mentor teacher and a clinical coach from the university. Mentor teachers received ongoing professional learning that was designed to build their capacity as a clinical educator, which supported their ability to effectively reinforce program priorities within the resident’s clinical practice.

Recruitment and Admissions. Both residency programs recruited locally. Kern Urban recruited applicants by advertising the program on BCSD and CSUB web pages and posting program flyers on CSUB’s campus and at the BCSD district offices. Given the program’s many years of operation, much recruitment occurred via word of mouth. TRRE, which served a more geographically disparate area, relied heavily on web-based and social media marketing. In addition to online marketing, the program established a presence in the community by tabling at large local events and posting flyers on bulletin boards at local businesses. Both TRRE and Kern recruited students who were enrolled in CSUB’s liberal studies program, where academic advisors informed students about both residency programs as a credentialing option. During the application period, both residency programs regularly hosted informational meetings via Zoom at which prospective candidates could learn more about the program. Furthermore, both programs’ residency coordinators extended personalized support to applicants to help them navigate complicated application requirements.

In both programs, the residency’s LEA partner actively participated in the admissions process. TRRE hosted virtual “advisement meetings” at which representatives from CSUB, TCOE, and the district partner conducted candidate interviews and then collaboratively determined whether the resident was a good fit for the program. Similarly, Kern Urban’s group interviews were jointly hosted by CSUB and BCSD, and partner representatives deliberated together on admissions decisions. BCSD deeply valued its involvement in the admissions process. As BCSD Executive Director of New Teacher Development Mike Havens shared, “I want to be a part of choosing our residents because we’re going to make a commitment to them, and they are also going to make a commitment to us. And yes, they’re Cal State students, but they are going to be BCSD employees, hopefully until they retire.”

Resident Supports. All CSUB residencies provided a resident stipend that supported residents with their living expenses and tuition payments. The studied programs created opportunities for residents to earn additional income by requiring them to get an Emergency 30-Day Substitute Teaching Permit, which allowed them to substitute teach while they were still in the residency program. Both programs’ partners provided unique additional financial supports. For example, TCOE funded tuition for TRRE residents’ prerequisite coursework, and BCSD reimbursed all fees associated with joining the program, including fees for residents’ tuberculosis tests, Certificates of Clearance, Emergency 30-Day Substitute Teaching Permit, Live Scan, liability insurance, transcripts, physicals, SAT score verification, and all required fees for the California Subject Examinations for Teachers (CSETs).

Program supports extended beyond the provision of financial resources. Each residency built in supports for residents as they prepared to apply for their Preliminary Credential, most notably by providing a 2-semester course sequence that prepared residents for the submission of their first and second California Teaching Performance Assessment (CalTPA) Instructional Cycles. They also featured strong cohort structures, reinforced by weekly gatherings for in-person coursework, that provided residents with valuable social support, both during the program and after they accepted teaching positions in partner districts. As residents prepared to transition into full-time employment, residency staff helped them connect with open positions within the program partner district(s).

Partnership. Although partnership structures looked different between the two residencies, partnerships in each were characterized by intensive collaboration and coconstruction of residency programming. Kern Urban’s single-district partnership allowed the program to tailor preparation to BCSD’s specific context and to be nimble in adapting to changes in district priorities. The program leadership team, which included representatives from BCSD and CSUB, gathered for 90-minute biweekly meetings and maintained an active agenda that all leadership team members could contribute to between meetings. The partners articulated the commitments taken on by each party in a yearly letter of understanding and delineated, with greater specificity, the roles of the BCSD program specialist and CSUB residency coordinator (both of whom were the most actively involved team members in day-to-day residency operations) in a separate document. Constructive conflicts naturally arose as both partner organizations grew and changed, and role divisions between the LEA and the institution of higher education periodically required renegotiation.

TRRE operated as a partnership between CSUB and TCOE. Involving a county office as a residency partner is a relatively uncommon practice that, for TRRE, had many benefits. First, TCOE took the lead on brokering the relationship between TRRE and the three collaborating districts in which the program placed residents for their clinical experience. The long-standing relationships between the county office and district staff facilitated this collaboration. Second, TCOE’s fiscal administration of the program, enabled by the organization’s extensive experience with federal grants management and reporting, took this load off of overburdened university and district staff, allowing them to focus on resident and mentor development. Between CSUB and TCOE, program governance was informal, and decision-making was a collaborative effort. Program leads from each organization met weekly—and sometimes more frequently—to address programmatic needs.

Financial Model. The programs drew on different sources of funding. Kern Urban was started with a grant from a private foundation and has also received funding from the California Teacher Residency Grant. During the 2022–23 academic year, however, resident stipends were fully funded by the program’s district partner, BCSD, which drew on funds from California’s school funding formula, the Local Control Funding Formula (LCFF), to support the program’s ongoing operations. In contrast, TRRE drew core operational support from a 5-year Teacher Quality Partnership grant during its start-up years and, at the time of the study, was in the process of planning a transition to more sustainable funding sources. Like Kern Urban, the program’s cooperating districts used LCFF funds to partially fund residents’ stipends, and program leadership viewed LEAs’ contributions as an essential component of a financially sustainable program.

Continuous Improvement. During the residency year, CSUB’s programs kept close tabs on resident development through ongoing feedback from mentor teachers, midyear surveys from site principals, and formal observation data collected by clinical coaches. Informal, qualitative data were also very important to the program. If data suggested that residents required additional support in a given area, program leads weren’t afraid to course-correct midyear. At the conclusion of the program, residents completed end-of-year surveys to provide feedback on their experiences, which the residencies also used to support planning for the subsequent year. Residency leaders also continued to collect data on residents after they had left the program.

Well-developed data practices within residencies allowed the programs to communicate bright spots to justify these pathways as worthwhile ongoing investments. On the basis of strong residency outcomes, EPP leaders successfully advocated for two new tenure lines for additional faculty to support residency preparation. 

Meeting Urban and Rural District Needs for Educators California State University, Bakersfield’s Teacher Residencies by Julie Fitz and Cathy Yun 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 Kern Urban Teacher Residency.