I recently wrote about my concerns with “grow-your-own” (GYO) teacher programs. The column sparked a bunch of thoughtful reactions, including one note that really caught my eye. Lennon Audrain, formerly the national student president of Educators Rising and a teacher in a GYO program, deemed my critique unduly harsh. He agreed that these programs are narrowly tailored but said the real issue is that they just aren’t that effective, though they could be. I thought his take interesting enough that I invited him to elaborate a bit here. Audrain is an assistant professor at Arizona State and co-author of The Next Education Workforce. Here’s what he had to say.

—Rick

Dear Rick,

I had a chance to read your piece on grow-your-own (GYO) programs for high schoolers and I agree with the conclusion from the first half of your piece: Execution matters.

I disagree, however, with your view that the programs are misguided. While you argued that GYO programs put the needs of the system before those of the kids, I see it differently. I think many school districts see the program as a way to introduce teaching in the same way that they do the crafts, trades, and other professions through career and technical education—and it just so happens that this program also benefits the system.

That said, I recognize that GYO programs are flawed. Currently, many GYO programs try to be early teacher-preparation programs. Instead, I think that they should be framed as programs that provide students with multiple opportunities to engage in service learning in the context of public education.

My opinions about GYO are informed by my experiences with the programs I’ve been involved with since high school. I was the national president of Educators Rising from 2017–2018 and now lead the Arizona affiliate of Educators Rising at Arizona State University, where I am a research assistant professor. As part of my appointment, I also teach a GYO course at a high school in Mesa, Arizona.

First, some context: In Arizona, it costs around $10 million to run the programs for the roughly 10,000 students studying careers in K–12 and early-childhood education. Federal Perkins data from 2019, the last year for which data are available, indicate that more than 160,000 high school students across the country take at least two years of a program similar to those in Arizona. The number that takes just one course in the sequence is even greater.

Now, what about the outcomes? In your post, you mention that the jury is still out on the effectiveness of GYO programs. Well, the jury’s back with some strong evidence that GYO programs work—at least to a degree. A recent study found that Teacher Academy of Maryland completers enter teaching at significantly higher rates than those who did not go through the program. This is good.

But the practical significance is difficult to overlook. In the study period, 1,581 students started the Maryland program, but only 452 completed it. The percentage of those students who ended up as teachers—9.8 percent—is strikingly low.

Given all this, I take it that your response to GYO programs is that they are built for the 10 percent of participants who become teachers and not for the other 90 percent. This is a legitimate concern.

But I think we can build programs that serve 100 percent of students—even those who do not end up becoming teachers. Here are three places to start.

1. All high schoolers should not be exploring traditional classroom teaching but rather education roles broadly. There are a variety of ways that students can work in and around the education field—think social workers, experiential educators at zoos and museums, CityYear, and AmeriCorps—alongside K–12 classroom teachers.
   
2. Students should develop education policy literacy. This is already a component of most GYO programs, but the programs should include a deeper exploration of education’s systems, structures, and cultures and how to influence them. Students should leave GYO programs with an understanding of school boards, governance, school finance, and how the state and federal governments influence their local school system’s operation.
   
3. GYO programs should be grounded primarily in clinical practice and fieldwork—and students should be placed in meaningful, role-based experiences, not just observing and learning pedagogical theory. In my own GYO program, I know very few students who arrive at an interest in working in education by learning about education’s philosophies and theorists. Instead, they usually reference their experiences working with learners—including, for instance, by acting as reading and math tutors—as the moments that generated their interest in that field.

Overall, the primary objective of GYO programs should be how to make GYO students contributing members to educational outcomes today and not wait for them to be the teachers of tomorrow. GYO students can’t do that if they’re sitting in the back of classrooms observing. They need to take on new roles!

GYO programs like Educators Rising do have some of these components. A narrow focus on making GYO mini-teacher-preparation programs, however, results in school districts, higher education institutions, policymakers, and the general public worrying only about whether GYO students enter teacher-preparation programs and eventually become teachers. This happens because these outcomes are the main benchmark against which we measure teacher-preparation programs.

Too often, as you recognize, students perceive the programs as a “commit[ment] to a profession before receiving their high school diploma” and, as a result, many students don’t enroll in them. GYO advocates are partially to blame. I often hear people say, “Tell me more about the GYO program,” and the response is that “it’s a program for students who want to be teachers.” We, as GYO advocates, have to move beyond this language—and program purpose.

I think GYO programs have the potential to be the “formative, evolutionary endeavor” that you want from education. To do so, we need to reframe the purpose of GYO programs and broaden their scope. They should be an opportunity for service learning rather than simply a program to create future teachers. That way, we can execute a program to serve all students—not just the 10 percent who become teachers after college.