September 27, 2022 – The National Center for Teacher Residencies (NCTR) has been awarded a three-year federal Supporting Effective Educator Development (SEED) grant of $6.7 million from the U.S. Department of Education to develop and scale teacher residencies to recruit, prepare and retain highly effective educators, particularly teachers of color, to teach in underserved schools and districts to further address the national teacher shortage.
NCTR’s Centering Equity, Building & Scaling Teacher Residencies (Centering Equity) builds upon the organization’s 15 years of developing, supporting and scaling teacher residency programs focused on meeting the needs of teachers of color and serving the needs of underserved students.
Centering Equity will develop and scale teacher residency programs for under-represented, diverse teacher candidates in Connecticut (Connecticut Teacher Residency Program), Delaware (Delaware State University Teacher Residency Program), North Carolina (Elizabeth City Pathways to Teach), Tennessee (Nashville Teacher Residency), and Virginia (RTR Residency). New teacher residency programs will be developed at East Carolina University and Winston-Salem State University. NCTR will partner with the Center for Racial Equity in Education (CREED) to provide NCTR’s Residency Foundations programming to historically Black colleges and universities (HBCUs) in North Carolina with the goal of developing teacher residency programs at those HBCUs over the three-year grant term.
“We are excited to develop and scale teacher residency programs over the next three years with this investment,” said NCTR CEO Kathlene H. Campbell, Ph.D. “NCTR’s long-standing commitment to candidates of color will be further supported by this grant, and we look forward to working with additional HBCUs as we recognize the invaluable contributions HBCUs make in preparing a large percentage of teachers of color.”
NCTR will also partner with SRI International to conduct the evaluation of Centering Equity. The grant also includes partnerships with Education Resource Strategies (ERS) and the Teacher Development Network. ERS will work with NCTR to build out the financial sustainability work NCTR does with teacher residency programs to ensure their long-term success. The Teacher Development Network will develop a teacher residency mentor professional development program that centers the experiences and needs of teacher residents of color and equips mentors of all racial and ethnic backgrounds to be thoughtful, intentional, and efficacious mentors for them ensuring teacher residents of color are ready on day one to be effective teachers of record.
Ultimately, Centering Equity will directly serve 625 diverse, under-represented teacher residents; and impact 35,219 students in 412 school districts and charter schools, of which 354 are Title I schools.
The U.S. Department of Education’s SEED program supports evidence-based practices that prioritizes educators’ growth across the continuum of their careers. New investments under the SEED program include 22 new three-year grants totaling more than $60 million, bringing the Biden-Harris Administration’s additional support for teachers through Fiscal Year 2022 grant competitions to more than $285 million, according to the U.S. Department of Education press release.