Washington, DC –. A new entity has arisen to help meet the challenge of high needs schools in attracting and retaining well prepared, highly effective teachers—the urban teacher residency, or UTR. High needs schools usually experience rapid turnover, and are plagued with high percentages of out-of-field and poorly prepared teachers. The UTR is designed to ameliorate these problems as it attends to the recruitment, training and induction of teachers for underserved children in urban schools. Today NCATE released Urban Teacher Residency Models and Institutes of Higher Education: Implications for Teacher Preparation, which identifies key issues for higher education as it recognizes the UTR as a new model for teacher preparation designed especially for teachers in urban schools.

UTR programs are district initiated post-baccalaureate programs which partner with universities and third party organizations such as public education funds, to prepare teachers for the district schools. They provide academic and clinical preparation that is tightly woven together through a full year paid residency, in which the candidate is learning to teach under the supervision of mentor teachers, but is not the teacher of record. UTR candidates earn a masters degree from the partnering university. For example, the Chicago UTR partners with National Louis University and the University of Illinois-Chicago. National Louis University has tailored its curriculum for beginning teachers to mesh with the UTR's needs, and the University of Illinois-Chicago offers individually designed master's programs based on the needs of the candidates in UTRs in Chicago. UTRs are operating in Boston (BTR Program), Chicago (Academy for Urban School Leadership--AUSL) and Denver (Boettcher Teachers Program)

NCATE is among various stakeholders working on solutions to the need for highly qualified teachers for urban schools. Currently, schools of education are not providing enough highly qualified teachers who are prepared to teach and who choose to teach in these schools. Teacher preparation pathways are expanding to meet the needs of urban and rural schools, and the urban teacher residency model is a promising yet fledgling approach for urban schools.

“NCATE should be prepared to act as a lever of reform in teacher preparation by accrediting new models of preparation which are of high quality,” said James Cibulka, President of NCATE.

Marsha Levine, project co-director for the study of urban teacher residency programs, notes that “the UTRs illustrate how partnerships committed to developing and sustaining a more systemic approach to human capital development in education can do so. Recruitment, selection, preparation, multi-year induction programs, and opportunities for expert teachers to develop and apply their skills as mentors are seamlessly linked together in the model.”

The NCATE paper identifies issues which need to be worked out in order for higher education institutions to participate as robust partners in the residency model.

It was funded by the Arthur Vining Davis Foundations and the MetLife Foundation, and authored by Barnett Berry, President and CEO, and Diana Montgomery, Senior Research Associate of the Center for Teaching Quality, and Jon Snyder, Dean, Graduate School of Education at Bank Street College.

The paper recommends that schools of education design specific frameworks for teaching in high-needs schools, with graduating teachers skilled in teaching specific subjects as well as working with second language and special needs learners and high-needs families. The authors note that “universities cannot develop these programs themselves; school districts, local education funds, and other community-based organizations are essential.” They continue, “as districts become more adept at managing their portfolio of pathway options, universities need to provide clarity on the kinds of teachers they produce and how they can be effective where they are most needed. To do so, they must have evidence to demonstrate the added-value of their programs. There is no question that many teacher education programs do so now, but not enough of them focus on preparing students for high needs schools.”

A second key issue includes the nature of the clinical experience. The UTR clinical experience is a full year, during which the candidate works as a paid ‘resident’ in the classroom, but is not the teacher of record. This is in contrast to other alternative route programs that place candidates in classrooms as teachers of record immediately. The UTRs highlight the importance of both the length and the nature of the clinical experience. Research demonstrates the importance of this aspect of preparation in influencing the caliber of one’s ability to work well with pupils in the early years of a teaching career. The authors recommend that “institutions of higher education need to hire, support, and reward university-based educators who have sustained and knowledgeable interactions with schools and have working relationships with some of the best K-12 teachers.” The authors note that institutions may need to revise tenure regulations to recognize the importance of professional preparation and support of teachers for high-needs schools. In addition, the authors recommend that universities alter their hiring practices and priorities to staff university positions with expert teachers from local schools.

The recent re-authorization of the Higher Education Act provides a path for developing UTRs — calling for partnerships among university-based teacher education and arts and sciences programs, high-needs schools and districts, and community-based organizations to transform the preparation of a new generation of teachers. The legislation places a premium on building one-year paid, clinical training for pre-service teachers and developing induction programs for support after they begin teaching.

This paper can be found at www.ncate.org . A second paper, prepared by the Aspen Institute and the Center for Teaching Quality, with support from NCATE through grants from the MetLife Foundation and the Arthur Vining Davis Foundations, focuses in-depth on two UTR programs, and can be found at same address as the NCATE paper.

NCATE is a specialized professional accrediting body recognized by the U.S. Department of Education and the Council for Higher Education Accreditation to accredit schools, colleges, and departments of education as well as other organizations that prepare educators for professional work in P-12 schools. NCATE accredits 650 schools of education which provide two-thirds of the nation’s new teacher graduates annually, and conducts reviews of over 10,000 programs of study in teacher preparation. For more information on NCATE accreditation, visit www.ncate.org or call 202/466-7496.