David Donaldson gets animated when telling the story of his mother, who worked in a school cafeteria and taught Sunday school for over two decades, but never felt she could afford to pursue her dream job as a teacher.
“You shouldn’t have to go into debt to become a teacher,” said Donaldson, the founder and managing partner of the National Center for Grow Your Own, a nonprofit that provides technical assistance to states and school districts to establish teacher-apprenticeship programs. “When you remove the financial barriers, it’s amazing how many people want to become a teacher.”
Donaldson sees apprenticeships as a way to allow aspiring teachers to follow their dreams without going into debt—similar to the way plumbers or welders receive on-the-job training in approved apprenticeships programs. It’s one solution to the nation’s teacher shortage problem; currently, the country faces at least 42,000 unfilled K-12 teaching positions.
Donaldson’s vision was realized in November 2021, when the U.S. Department of Labor officially recognized registered apprenticeship programs for K-12 teachers, opening up a stream of federal funding that can pay for tuition assistance, wages, and other supportive services, such as textbooks and child care assistance.
Just months later, in January 2022, Tennessee became the first state in the country to receive federal approval for a registered apprenticeship program for teaching. (Donaldson served as the lead author on Tennessee’s proposal.)
In the three years since, the programs have exploded in popularity nationwide. Now, 48 states, the District of Columbia, Puerto Rico, and the U.S. Virgin Islands have gotten approval to offer registered teacher apprenticeship programs. Strong support from the Biden administration helped fuel the rapid-fire growth of these programs in their first few years.
But with a new administration that has different priorities, future federal support for teacher residency apprenticeships remains unclear.
Manny Lamarre, former deputy assistant secretary of the U.S. Department of Labor, once praised apprenticeships as “an effective ‘earn and learn’ model.” Now Lamarre, who resigned from his position with the department in January, expresses doubts for the program’s future.
“I think there will be negative impacts to teacher registered apprenticeship programs, and most importantly to students who need highly trained teachers,” he said. “Teacher registered apprenticeships are relatively new. … With increased uncertainty in funding and limited engagement from the U.S. Department of Labor, states may slow down their activities until there’s more certainty, especially since most states are newer in the space.”
Shifting administration priorities may affect federal funding
Former President Joe Biden touted his work expanding registered apprenticeships across in-demand fields, such as K-12 education, as a key accomplishment from his time in office. His administration committed millions of dollars in grants for apprenticeships, including teaching ones.
But federal funding is now in a state of upheaval. Since President Donald Trump took office for a second term in January, the U.S. Education Department has made huge cuts to teacher-training programs, including the $70 million-a-year Teacher Quality Partnerships program and the $80 million-a-year Supporting Effective Educator Development, or SEED, grants, both of which provide funding that underlies many of the nation’s teacher residency programs.
Further, Trump’s calls to dismantle the U.S. Department of Education have fueled additional uncertainty about the future of programs tied to public schools that rely on federal funding.
There’s no set funding formula for how registered teacher apprenticeship programs launch or grow. In a webinar providing information on the programs that was hosted by National Center for Grow Your Own, Donaldson suggested that states “leverage federal funding to establish proof of concept, then get [state] legislators to put money behind it.”
Given that most states already have established apprenticeship programs, the focus now shifts to how they’ll be able to continue moving forward.
Donaldson, however, remains optimistic. “I believe apprenticeship is bipartisan,” he said, “and thus I am cautiously optimistic about the Secretary of Education designee and Secretary of Labor designee clearly voicing their support for apprenticeship.”
States are moving forward with the apprenticeship model
Christina Guevara describes Utah’s hardest teaching positions to fill as those for elementary teachers and special education teachers. But Guevara, the state’s apprenticeship educational specialist, is hopeful the state will soon be able to fill these stubborn vacancies with apprenticeship-trained teachers.
The Utah Registered Apprenticeship Program for Teachers received a stamp of approval from the U.S. Department of Labor in July 2024. Since then, Guevara has been leading efforts to recruit employment partners and instructional providers to the program. For now, she said, they have the funding to proceed.
“We’ve received state apprenticeship expansion formula grants, and we have that for the next two years,” she said.
Funds from the grant, awarded by the U.S. Department of Labor, will be used to support two applicant pools—pre-apprentices, who can start the program right out of high school, and apprentices, who already hold bachelor’s degrees. In addition to the usual recruitment platforms that schools use, the state plans to post open apprenticeship positions on the Apprenticeship Utah website.
“That way, those who are outside of established educator circles also have opportunities to see what pathways are available for them if they’re interested in teaching,” Guevara said.
The grant covers $4,000 for two years during a candidate’s pre-apprenticeship, and $10,000 a year for up to three years for apprentices getting their teaching licenses, Guevara said.
She’s optimistic these plans will remain intact.
“We’re hearing from the field, and [received] guidance from our state agency, that we in Utah are not experiencing any significant [funding] changes at the moment,” she said. “Certainly that can change at any time with whomever is providing that oversight from the federal level—so we really are in a kind of a wait and watch period.”
For now, Guevara said she’s applying lessons of flexibility learned during the pandemic.
“COVID helped us to be prepared to be ready to flex, and to be open to going back and reworking budgets and really shifting priorities,” she said. “But for right now, today, we can speak pretty comfortably that there haven’t been any concerns about funding that’s allocated for the apprenticeship program.”
In Nebraska, there are currently registered teacher apprenticeship programs in place in 29 school systems, including a non-public school, said Lane Carr, administrator for the office of policy and strategic initiatives at the Nebraska Department of Education.
Carr said a blend of funding from the U.S. Department of Labor and the state’s department of labor helped launch the program. Currently, the program has 61 apprentices enrolled, and the goal is to graduate 180 fully certified teachers by 2027.
“This program has taken the country by storm,” Carr said. “The possibilities are only stifled by availability of funding.”
