The Trump administration has defunded a program designed to help states and districts create and sustain teacher-apprenticeship models—a new and increasingly popular way to address educator shortages through paid on-the-job training for nontraditional candidates.
The U.S. Department of Labor canceled a five-year contract for the Educator Registered Apprenticeship Intermediary May 2, ending the program in the middle of its second year. The contract, worth up to $13 million, paid a coalition of education research organizations, led by the North Carolina-based Research Triangle Institute, to guide apprenticeship providers through the legal, logistical, and fundraising hoops necessary to launch new programs.
“We are so proud to have worked with over 80 partners from 35 states with designing, launching, and/or scaling their teacher-apprenticeship programs—which has resulted in the recruitment of nearly 1,000 apprentices, with many more to come over the next months and years,” the ERA program said in a May 8 social media post announcing the end of the contract.
That termination came even after the ERA changed its contract to ensure it was in compliance with President Donald Trump’s order banning diversity, equity, and inclusion efforts in federal programs.
Supporters said teacher-apprenticeship programs said they will continue after the end of the intermediary contract. The Labor Department has not ended support for teacher apprenticeships, which can rely on a mix of state and federal funding. But they will have one less source of support to help them implement the emerging model.
The decision seems ironic because the Trump administration frequently champions state and local control in education, said Amaya Garcia, director of PreK-12 research and practice at New America, a left-leaning think tank that contributed to the ERA effort.
“These apprenticeship programs, that’s what they do,” she said. “Most of these programs are run by people at the district level and are pulling in people who, a lot of times, are already employed by the district.”
Apprenticeships are a growing model of teacher training
The apprenticeship model allows teacher-candidates to train on the job in an approach traditionally used to train professionals in trades, like electricians or welders. Under the model, states or school districts typically partner with a college or university to offer participants the chance to earn a degree and/or teaching license while working in a school under the supervision of a licensed teacher.
The advantage: Districts can recruit from existing staff who are already familiar with the working environment, like paraprofessionals, increasing their chances of retaining them for the long term. And candidates can avoid going into debt, which is often a barrier to pursuing a teaching degree.
The Labor Department officially recognized teacher-apprenticeship programs in 2021, allowing programs to seek targeted federal funds for apprenticeship programs. Tennessee became the first state to receive federal approval for its program.
Today, 48 states, the District of Columbia, Puerto Rico, and the U.S. Virgin Islands have gotten approval to offer registered teacher-apprenticeship programs, which were a priority of the Biden administration.
Many of those programs launched before the creation of the intermediary program, but the ERA helped programs scale up, measure impact, and identify areas to improve, Garcia said. It also collected data that could help programs make a case for additional fundraising when federal aid fell short.
Contract’s end comes as Trump administration makes dramatic cuts
The abrupt termination of the contract comes as federal agencies slash staffing and programs and pull grants under efforts led by billionaire Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency effort.
In February, the U.S. Department of Education abruptly terminated three major teacher-training programs—the $70 million-a-year Teacher Quality Partnerships program, the $80 million-a-year Supporting Effective Educator Development, or SEED grants, and the $64 million-a-year Teacher and School Leader Incentive program—citing concerns about mentions of diversity, equity, and inclusion in program descriptions.
It’s unclear why the Trump administration, which has a stated goal of promoting apprenticeships across industries, canceled the apprenticeship intermediary contract. But the decision came days after Infowars, a far-right website that often promotes conspiracy theories, published an article claiming the federal government “was sneakily getting woke teachers hired across the nation,” citing a resource ERA had published about using the nontraditional pathway to increase teacher diversity.
A follow-up article, also republished by Infowars, quotes an email from Courtney Parella, the assistant secretary for public affairs at the Labor Department, who wrote to the article’s author to alert him of the defunding decision, without citing a specific reason.
Parella did not respond to emailed questions from Education Week.
Organizations that worked with the ERA believed the program was in compliance with Trump’s anti-DEI order.
The program’s leaders included teacher diversity in a list of goals in the initial proposal in alignment with grant priorities set by the Biden administration, but they later adjusted the contract to ensure compliance with Trump’s order.
While apprenticeships can help recruit a more diverse pool of teachers, the primary goal is training new educators from all backgrounds in hard-to-fill roles like special education, science, and math, Garcia said.
“The demographics of our country are changing, and we want the workforce to mirror that,” she said. “But that’s not the primary focus of apprenticeships.”
Teacher apprenticeship work continues
States have pressed forward with teacher-apprenticeship programs, even as they weigh more general concerns about uncertain federal spending priorities. Those efforts are funded in part by separate federal apprenticeship grants that help establish and expand programs.
“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,” Christina Guevara, apprenticeship specialist for the Utah Department of Education, told Education Week in March. “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.”
The National Center for Grow Your Own, a nonprofit that helped pioneer the teacher apprenticeship model, will continue to provide technical assistance and support for state programs, Founder and Managing Partner David Donaldson said in a statement.
The center worked with Henry Mack III, Trump’s nominee for Assistant Secretary of Labor, when he supported workforce development programs as chancellor of Florida’s education department, Donaldson said.
“We know he is a champion and innovator in this work, and we look forward to working with him again once confirmed,” the statement said.
