Expand Accessible and Affordable Pathways into the Profession | GTL Center
Building and Sustaining High-Quality, Affordable, and Accessible Pathways into the Educator Profession
In states across the country the preparation of educators continues to expand beyond traditional preparation pathways. Non-traditional pathways like grow your own programs, teacher residencies, alternative certification, and registered teacher apprenticeships, continue to grow in number and form.
While increasing the number of pathways into the profession may alleviate educator supply challenges, it requires states, districts, schools, institutions of higher education and other organizations to closely consider the traditional and non-traditional preparation and pathways they invest in and sustain over time.
Building a strong, diverse supply of educators requires affordable, accessible pathways that provides high-quality preparation to all candidates.
Top Resources
Creating Pathways into the Profession While Building Diversity with Registered Teacher Apprenticeship Programs (Brief, January 2024)
Co-authored with the Branch Alliance for Educator Diversity, this brief can help state, district, and EPP partnerships intentionally design and implement registered teacher apprenticeship programs to increase teacher ethnoracial diversity in the workforce.
A Funding Guide for Supporting a Registered Teacher Apprenticeship Program With Federal and State Funds (Brief, October 2022)
Codeveloped with our partners at the CEEDAR Center, this funding guide is a helpful resource for practitioners and policy makers in the field trying to build an understanding of possible funding opportunities to grow and implement R-TAPs.
Emerging Pathways Into the Teacher Profession: Evaluating and Substantiating Their Effectiveness (Brief, November 2023)
In a new brief cowritten by AIR’s Center on Great Teachers and Leaders and the Center for Economic Evaluation, experts provide insights on how emerging pathways into the profession (e.g., Grow-Your-Own, teacher residency models, RTAPs) can be evaluated to determine their overall effectiveness and associated costs.
Take a Seat at the Table: The Role of Educator Preparation Programs in Teacher Apprenticeship Programs (Report, August 2023)
AACTE, the GTL Center, and the CEEDAR Center co-authored this report and accompanying webinar to offer insights and recommendations for EPPs on how to be involved in the design and implementation of teacher RAPs alongside states and districts.
The Rising Cost of Becoming an Educator: Reimagining Pathways Into the Profession with Affordable, Cost-Effective, and Responsive Solutions (Brief, October 2023)
Assessing the impact of the student loan crisis on the teaching profession, this brief offers potentially promising and sustainable solutions that require reimagining current programming to include cost-effective and responsive solutions.
Featured Project
National Collaborative on Educator Workforce Shortages and Diversity
To support states in addressing urgent educator workforce challenges, from 2022-2024, the Center engaged three state teams from Hawai'i, Ohio, and Louisiana to participate in a National Collaborative. This two-year, data-driven facilitated coaching process helped cross-agency, state teams understand the root causes of shortages and gaps in educator workforce diversity and find solutions that are equity-focused and built for sustainability.
