Teaching residency programs are a model of teacher preparation in which prospective teachers complete graduate-level coursework alongside a year-long fieldwork experience in the district in which the prospective teacher will be hired. The fieldwork experience allows the prospective teacher to practice the craft of teaching and take on increased teaching responsibility under the guidance of an experienced classroom teacher.
Recently, NCEE released an evaluation brief that examines the district and school retention rates of teachers trained through residency programs. The brief is based on a study of residency programs that received funding from the U.S. Department of Education’s Teacher Quality Partnership program. It examines two cohorts of teachers trained through residency programs—those who were in their first year of teaching and those who were in their second year of teaching as of Spring 2012. The brief updates earlier study findings (Silva et al. 2014) which examined retention as of Fall 2012. For context, like the earlier report, the brief also includes retention findings based on a representative sample of teachers with similar experience and teaching in the same districts as the residency teachers, but who were trained through other (non-TRP) programs.
The main findings are:
- TRP teachers were more likely to remain teaching in the same district than non-TRP teachers with similar teaching placements.
- School-retention rates were similar between the two groups of teachers.
- TRP teachers who moved to different schools in the same district tended to join ones where a similar proportion of students were from low-income families, a lower percentage were black, and achievement was higher.
To read the brief, visit http://ies.ed.gov/ncee/pubs/20154015/.
