Prepared To Teach

News & Publications

Prepared To Teach helps the field imagine and enact systemic shifts in teacher preparation so that every aspiring teacher is prepared through high-quality, sustainable, and affordable pathways that disrupt inequities in the education system.

Miguel CardonaFireside Chat with U.S. Education Secretary Miguel Cardona

Shael Polakow-Suranksy, GSE ’00, President of Bank Street College, and Karen DeMoss, Executive Director of Prepared To Teach, joined US Education Secretary Miguel Cardona for a fireside chat. During this important conversation, Cardona laid out his vision for supporting educators across the country and elevating the teaching profession before an audience of teachers and teacher candidates.

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Cover page of the reportA Path to Equity: Solving New York’s Teacher Turnover & Quality Challenges

This white paper frames both the case for and an approach to addressing persistent teacher quality, diversity, and turnover challenges in the State of New York. A growing set of research and promising practice informs the report, which is intended to offer a high-level understanding of the complexities around how the economics of teacher preparation both drives educational inequities and can be shifted to promote educational quality and equity by investing in funded teacher residencies.

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Cover page of the reportFederal Funding for Aspiring Teachers: An Investment in the Nation’s Future

This concept paper is a high-level overview of the case for and a pathway to achieve universal residencies across the nation created to inform policy discussions at the U.S. Department of Education.

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Cover page of the report

Brief: Registered Apprenticeship Programs and Teacher Residencies: Building Shared Understandings Between Workforce Development and Education

This brief is the first in a series exploring principles that Prepared To Teach has surfaced as helpful for designing Registered Apprenticeship Programs for teacher residencies to promote and support high-quality teacher preparation systems.

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Cover page of reportTeacher Preparation Programs and Teacher Candidates Supporting Staffing Needs During COVID-19 – Program Highlights

A compilation of programs from across the Prepared To Teach National Learning Network that have creative staffing models that directly address staffing and substitute teaching shortages.

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Beyond Tuition, Costs of Teacher Preparation coverBeyond Tuition, Costs of Teacher Preparation:
Descriptive Analytics from the Aspiring Teachers’ Financial Burden Survey

This report shares analyses from the national survey of aspiring teachers carried out by Prepared To Teach during the 2019–2020 school year. Beyond Tuition, Costs of Teacher Preparation dives into the income sources, expenses, debt, and work realities of aspiring teachers across the country and identifies where candidates are in need of additional support.

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Dollars and Sense coverDollars and Sense: Federal Investments in Our Educator Workforce

Supporting aspiring educators during preparation is essential. The field is ready to embrace shifts that will make teacher preparation more uniformly strong, sustainable, and equitably accessible—investments in preparation will make such shifts possible. This report makes the case for a renewed commitment to excellent teacher preparation, made possible by federal investments.

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Going Further Together: Building Ownership and Engagement to Support High Quality Teacher PreparationGoing Further Together: Building Ownership and Engagement to Support High-Quality Teacher Preparation

By drawing on effective, lasting collaboration among stakeholders who have not traditionally worked together—both within organizations and across organizational lines, programs can successfully identify sustainable funding sources for the long term. This report highlights programs across the country that have successfully sustained and grown the kind of commitments that ensure program development and longevity.

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The Residency Revolution: Funding High-Quality Teacher PreparationThe Residency Revolution: Funding High-Quality Teacher Preparation

(Re)Investment—one of our 3 Rs of Sustainably Funded Teacher Preparation—helps districts find ways to make shifts that can permanently embed residency funding into local budgets. The Residency Revolution is about identifying and maximizing the savings that a high-quality residency program can bring to a district.

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The Affordability Imperative: Creating Equitable Access to Quality Teacher PreparationThe Affordability Imperative: Creating Equitable Access to Teacher Preparation

Reduction—one of our 3 Rs of Sustainably Funded Teacher Preparation—helps universities maximize access to financial aid sources and minimize costs associated with quality programs. The Affordability Imperative focuses on ways to make great teacher preparation affordable, spotlighting programs that have successfully implemented strategies to reduce costs to aspiring teachers.

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Simple Shifts: Paying Aspiring Teachers With Existing ResourcesSimple Shifts: Paying Aspiring Teachers With Existing Resources

Reallocation—one of our 3 Rs of Sustainably Funded Teacher Preparation—helps partnerships redesign work roles to better support preparation efforts and to allow candidates to earn compensation during their clinical practice. Simple Shifts shares ways in which residents can bring value to the classroom and how districts and programs have leveraged the skills of aspiring teachers.

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Five Domains for Teacher Preparation TransformationFive Domains for Teacher Preparation Transformation

This report describes the process of establishing the current Prepared To Teach theory of change, which supports national communities of practice in five domains identified by the network’s learning agenda in the 2019–20 school year: mindset shifts, educator roles, labor market alignment, school improvement, and deeper learning. Read how these domains are explored through residency partnership programs, how individual programs both solidified and strengthened existing partnerships, and how to expand the benefits partnerships can reap through their work together.

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Aspiring for MoreAspiring for More: Deeper Partnerships for Sustainable Residencies

This partnership-focused report shares lessons learned from 12 university/school district sites as they implemented teacher residency programs during the 2019-20 school year. Sites began their programs in 2019, after a year of development and co-construction activities facilitated with Prepared To Teach, and contributed to a national learning network. The report focuses on findings from this work in six areas: sustainability, partnership development, program redesign, supporting school improvement, mentor development, and resident learning.

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#MoreLearningLessDebt#MoreLearningLessDebt: Voices of Aspiring Teachers on Why Money Matters

During the 2019–2020 school year, Prepared To Teach conducted a survey at 12 institutions across seven states to explore aspiring teachers’ financial burdens. This report shares the many anxieties that aspiring teachers face during preparation, the difficult choices they are often forced to make in order to pursue their passion for teaching, and the impact this has on the quality and diversity of our nation’s pool of teacher candidates.

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Co-Designing Teacher Residencies: Sharing Leadership, Finding New OpportunitiesCo-Designing Teacher Residencies: Sharing Leadership, Finding New Opportunities

This report focuses on how a group of university teacher educators at Western Washington University’s Elementary Education program and district administrators at Ferndale School district reconsidered their approach to teacher preparation. Read about the outcomes of their work, including revisions to residency-like work opportunities, a revised placement process, a district “on-boarding” process, and responsive professional development throughout the residency.

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Practice Makes Preparation 2019Teacher helping school kids using tablet computers in lesson

In the second iteration of Practice Makes Preparation, current teacher residents and student teachers wrote about their experiences in preparation programs. The page highlights unique programs that are working towards a better system, introduces teacher candidates, and details the weekly spending of student teachers in an effort to share more about what teacher candidates go through to become certified.

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Sustainable Strategies for Funding Teacher Residencies: Lessons from California

To learn about how teacher residencies across California are funding their innovative work, the Learning Policy Institute and Prepared To Teach at Bank Street College of Education partnered to examine the current state of practice around residency sustainability. This report highlights California teacher residencies with known financial sustainability efforts in which partners are leveraging local resources to support residents and mentor teachers. These concrete examples of creative residency funding strategies are meant to help California’s new investments in teacher residencies become sustainable over time.

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Brief: Money Matters in Teaching

Prepared To Teach focuses on creating financially accessible pathways to teaching for aspiring educators because research shows that limiting costs to candidates can make a difference for schools, teachers, and students. Teacher preparation includes few opportunities to earn while learning, unlike other professional programs. By restructuring teacher preparation to be similar to medicine, we can alleviate financial burdens for students and recruit a more diverse, committed teaching workforce. This two-page document breaks down the potential of funded residencies to address these issues with point-by-point citations from the research.

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Making Teacher Preparation Policy WorkMaking Teacher Preparation Policy Work

In order for teacher residencies to be successful, states and localities need to enact supportive policies that lay the groundwork for sustainability. This report shares principles for policy that make sustainability possible, based on successful programs and policies in New York State. The report includes a page highlighting the potential for long-term sustainable teacher residency growth using real numbers from New York, shared here as a standalone document.

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Practice Makes Preparation 2018

Bank Street partners with District 13 for a new Residency in Childhood General and Special Education programWe asked real teachers to share their preparation experiences in video interviews to help elevate stories of quality preparation, identify places for improvement, and add to the conversation about what teacher training should look like. See video responses from ten different teachers answering questions about their careers and preparation.

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Following the MoneyFollowing the Money: Exploring Residency Funding through the Lens of Economics

At the root of the challenges in our current teacher preparation system is the means by which we fund programs. The economic challenges in our education system are well known, but in this report, we dive into the realities of funding for teacher preparation specifically—and call for the creation of a knowledge base about the system in order to support quality.

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Clearing the PathClearing the Path: Redesigning Teacher Preparation for the Public Good

Sustainability needs to be a part of residency program development from the earliest stages. Schools, districts, and preparation programs can leverage structures that facilitate strong partnerships and reduce student financial burdens—but those pieces need to be integrated into each step of the planning, design, and implementation process. This report examines how partnerships can work together to sustain residencies and create lasting change in our education system.

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Investing in Residencies, Improving SchoolsInvesting in Residencies, Improving Schools: How Principals Can Fund Better Teaching and Learning

School leaders structure budgets to make room for innovative programs, creative staffing plans, and new initiatives. Principals have the opportunity to do the same when it comes to residencies—and when they do, it’s not only aspiring teachers who benefit. The entire community sees positive impacts. Using funding models from California public schools, this report explores where there might be room for co-teaching in every public school classroom.

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Brief: Selected Research Supporting Sustainable Funding for Quality Teacher Preparation

Teacher residency models have proven impact on four persistent teacher quality challenges: attracting strong candidates, teaching key skills, preparing for high-needs positions, and retaining talent. Prepared To Teach helps districts and preparation programs harness local strengths to develop residencies that meet their needs by preparing excellent, committed teachers.

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For the Public GoodFor the Public Good: Quality Preparation for Every Teacher

It’s time to transform our system to ensure that teachers have the practice and support they need to be successful in 21st-century classrooms. Teaching is a clinical practice profession, and teacher preparation should reflect that. We believe that preparation programs and districts can work together to create a better system. This publication is our framework for change.

View Report Read “Train Teachers Like Doctors” Op-Ed