Diversifying Recruiting and Hiring: Lessons From the California Teacher Residency Grant Program's New Partnerships

• In Event: AERA Roundtable Session 3
  In Roundtable Session: A Wicked Problem: Diversifying California's Teacher Workforce

Abstract

How well are California’s teacher residency grantees preparing diverse, well-prepared STEM, bilingual, and special education teachers who take jobs in and are retained in high-need schools?

The state of California dedicated $75 million in 2018 to develop and expand teacher residency programs across the state through the California Teacher Residency Grant program. Grants of $20,000 per resident were released to 33 LEA grantees in March 2019, funding a total of 38 LEA-IHE residency partnerships to develop or expand residencies. Funds are intended primarily to cover or offset costs related to teacher preparation, resident and mentor teacher stipends, and induction (i.e., support for residency completers during their first years of teaching). Grant-funded residents are expected to teach in their residency LEA for at least four years.

Data: Data collection efforts in 2019/20 included surveys of all participating residency partnership team members, mentor teachers, residents, and supervisors in winter 2019 (yielding a response rate of 76%) and in spring 2020 (response rate 69%); interviews with the leads from each partnership in a sample of 10 programs (selected to represent program urbanicity, residency specialization, and program status (i.e., expansion or launch site); and a review of program documents.

Results: The partnerships reported making progress toward increasing the number of teachers in shortage areas, as well as the proportion of teachers of color (approximately 70 percent of responding teacher residents identified as people of color), and residents in grantee programs better reflect the racial diversity of students they serve compared with the existing teaching workforce. At the same time, partnerships continue to note that recruitment of high-ability residents, particularly residents of color, is their greatest area of need. Moreover, a majority of residents reported they had experienced financial hardships -- approximately one out of every five residents reported experiencing housing insecurity and approximately one out of four reported experiencing food insecurity. Multiple partnerships also reported challenges establishing strong connections between coursework and clinical experience, and evidence also suggests that training and support for mentor teachers could be strengthened (although some programs are doing this well).

Significance: These results represent the initial lessons from a large state investment in strengthening and diversifying teacher preparation across California. The financial stability of these models will be a key concern moving forward; it will be important to ensure that residency stipends can be supplemented with additional financial aid and support to make the full-year residency a financially viable pathway. Also, learning from and building upon California's residency grant experience will be helped by the state's ongoing efforts to link teacher data across preparation and K-12 institutions; typically, each California preparation program and/or initiative leader must now collect, link, monitor, and report teacher placement/hiring and retention data on their own.

Author

• Reino Makkonen, WestEd