After a promising surge of federal support for new teacher-preparation models, the leaders of 40 programs came to Capitol Hill this week with a message for Congress: Now is not the time to take your foot off the gas.
The leaders, largely deans of teacher colleges, met with senators and representatives to push for federal policies and funding that support efforts like teacher apprenticeships and residencies, which allow participants to learn on the job while teaching under the supervision of a credentialed educator.
Those programs show promise as tools for remedying teacher shortages in areas like STEM and special education, said the leaders, who are members of Deans for Impact, an organization that advocates for practice-based teacher training.
Such training “has the potential to be transformational,” said Tom Philion, the dean of the college of education at Northeastern Illinois University. “When a person training for a job not only gets to learn about the critical concepts of that trade, gets to practice some of the skills, but then actually goes into the setting and has hands-on experience—that’s just tremendously powerful.”
The conversations took place during a tumultuous time for teacher education. The change in presidential administrations, abrupt termination of some federal grants, and talk of longer-term funding cuts have left leaders concerned for their programs’ futures.
Shift in administrations creates uncertainty
Winning federal approval as a registered apprenticeship allows teacher-preparation programs to qualify for streams of federal workforce funding and related benefits. Programs with the designation can use the money to cover tuition, wages, or other supportive services for candidates who may otherwise have a hard time affording the costs of becoming a teacher. Many programs, for example, recruit paraprofessionals already working in schools.
President Joe Biden’s administration stressed teacher apprenticeships, encouraging districts to develop the pathways as part of their COVID-recovery efforts. During his term, nearly every state secured approval to offer at least one registered teacher-apprenticeship program.
While the Trump administration has emphasized the role of apprenticeships more generally, the president’s rhetoric has focused more on traditional trades jobs, like plumbing and welding. In May, the U.S. Department of Labor abruptly defunded a program that offered states and districts technical assistance to create and sustain teacher-apprenticeship models.
The Trump administration has also canceled grants for teacher training and contracts for education research. In the longer term, President Donald Trump’s budget proposal calls for dramatic spending cuts by eliminating nearly four dozen federal grant programs and combining others into block grants. Many of those programs are key for supporting teacher training.
Leaders of teacher-preparation programs asked Congress to maintain current $2.19 billion Supporting Effective Instruction State Grants, which President Donald Trump has proposed consolidating with other federal programs. They also called for maintaining current funding levels for these programs that Trump has proposed eliminating:
- The $90 million Supporting Effective Educator Development grant program
- The $70 million Teacher Quality Partnership program
- The $15 million Hawkins Centers for Excellence program, which primarily supports teacher-preparation programs that serve minority students
- The $60 million Teacher and School Leader Incentive Program
The Deans for Impact members, representing 22 states, also pressed their congressional delegations to support bipartisan policies that would support strong teacher-preparation programs, said Patrick Steck, the organization’s vice president of external affairs.
Those include the Partnering Aspiring Teachers with High-Need Schools to Tutor bill, previously sponsored by Sen. Cory Booker, D-N.J., along with Sens. John Cornyn, R-Texas, Chris Murphy, D-Conn., and Roger Wicker, R-Miss. It would provide $500 million in grant funding to support partnerships between universities, community organizations, and K-12 schools to get people who want to pursue teaching into paid tutoring roles. That bill, which was reintroduced in 2023, has not been introduced in the current congressional session.
Deans also support policies that would strengthen partnerships between teacher-preparation programs and K-12 schools and streamline some federal reporting requirements, Steck said. Deans for Impact plans to release a more detailed policy roadmap in the fall.
“We’re asking folks, when a piece of policy comes across your desk, ask yourself two high-level questions: Is it going to make teaching more affordable? And is it going to make those who complete teacher-training programs more effective at their jobs?” Steck said.
Reframing the narrative around teaching
Deans also pitched efforts to “reset the national conversation around teaching and learning” by establishing a national commission on the teacher workforce and creating an “Aspiring Teacher Recognition Day.”
That call comes as parents increasingly say they don’t want their own children to become teachers. Increasing respect for the profession would bolster recruitment and retention, the leaders said.
Two teacher apprentices joined the deans to tell their congressional delegations how they took paths to teaching jobs after they previously planned to become a doctor and a lawyer.
Luis Rodriguez, a rising senior at Sam Houston State University, said he decided to become a middle school math teacher after taking a class for aspiring teachers in high school and realizing he could convey his love of STEM to students.
As a participant in the university’s teacher-residency program, Rodriguez will finish his education by teaching his own classes, spending more time in schools than he would have as a student-teacher in a traditional teacher-preparation program.
Creators of residency and apprenticeship programs say that kind of experience helps graduates feel more prepared for the job and weather the difficulties that cause many early-career teachers to quit.
“Flexibility is my biggest takeaway” from working in a classroom, Rodriguez said. “You can read something in a textbook that says ‘do this,’ but it’s not until you’re actually in that scenario where you’re like, ‘OK, I have to think on my feet.’”
Kendrick Mason is a recent graduate of Virginia State University’s teacher-residency program, but he’s already spent more than a year training in the special education classroom where he will work full time in the fall. As a recent graduate, he will step right into a lead teaching role.
Mason planned to go to law school until he volunteered with a summer tutoring program, where he “caught the teaching bug.”
“I wanted to advocate for students who not only look like me but students who might have a difficult chance navigating the educational system,” said Mason, who is Black.
Philion, the Northeastern Illinois University dean, has worked with the Chicago school district for two years to develop a teacher-apprenticeship program that would help meet a need for teachers in bilingual education, physical education, and special education roles.
The program needed to be approved as a registered apprenticeship, a process Philion started while Biden was still in office. After the change in administrations, he heard very little from the Labor Department until May, when his application was approved. Once planners clear a few more logistical hurdles, the program will teach cohorts of 22 future teachers directly in the classrooms where they will one day work.
Philion said he wants to advocate a pathway for those who are a few steps behind him in the process of creating new teacher-training models and to push for continued federal funding.
“A lot of the research shows that when teacher-candidates are employed in positions in schools and classrooms, they retain better,” he said. “They’re more diverse and they actually perform better as beginning teachers.”
