By: Amber Lynn Diaz
Photography by: Anne Bannister & Brian Diggs
At the Charles Butt Foundation, we believe every student across Texas deserves a high-quality teacher who is well-prepared to engage, inspire, and expertly guide students from day one. That conviction fueled the launch of the Emerging Partners Program in 2019 – a bold quality initiative in partnership with university-based teacher preparation programs across the state. For five years, we worked hand-in-hand with 16 institutions, including every teacher preparation program in the Texas A&M University system. This partnership didn’t just elevate university teacher preparation programs; it directly shaped the experiences of the thousands of students who would one day sit in classrooms led by these better-prepared, better-supported teachers.
The University of Houston’s 2024 Teacher Workforce Report (Figure 3.16) indicates that retention rates of traditional public school teachers have been decreasing over the past decade, with the steepest drop between year 1 and year 2. This research also shows that teacher retention stabilizes significantly once educators gain more experience.
At the Charles Butt Foundation, we viewed these longitudinal trends as a call to action. We know that every year a student spends with an underprepared teacher can have lasting effects on their academic growth and confidence. That’s why our Emerging Partners Program focused on ensuring that new teachers are not just certified, but truly day-one ready – entering classrooms with the skills, experience, and support systems they need to succeed immediately and enjoy long, rewarding careers in the profession.
By improving the teacher preparation pathway at its foundation, we aimed to break the cycle of early teacher attrition and give every PK-12 student in Texas a better chance at a strong educational experience.
Quality educator preparation requires time, intentional support, and sustained investment in people and systems. The Texas universities participating in the Emerging Partners Program were uniquely positioned to meet this challenge. Together, we strengthened teacher preparation programs to develop graduates deeply committed to the profession and equipped with strong pedagogical content knowledge, performance-based assessment, and extensive clinical experiences to succeed in diverse classrooms.
All of our improvement efforts were aligned with four pillars of effective teacher preparation:
A process is in place to periodically gather and analyze appropriate data and use results to drive programmatic improvement.
Teacher preparation programs work closely with local school districts, including understanding district shortage areas and areas of emphasis (e.g. district-wide initiatives) to ensure graduates fulfill district needs.
Prospective teachers have ample opportunities to practice teaching in classroom settings and receive quality feedback and coaching from teacher educators.
A system of practice-based formative assessments is in place to ensure prospective teachers can demonstrate the knowledge and skills needed to be excellent teachers before they graduate.
Through financial support, personalized coaching, and program evaluations, the Emerging Partners Program helped institutions adopt practice-based, data-driven approaches to transform educator preparation.
Each university received between $50,000-$150,000 annually in grant funding to build out more robust data systems, develop curriculum, train clinical faculty and mentors, and host convenings to align PK-12 and teacher preparation coalitions for planning and program governance. They also received coaching and resources from the Charles Butt Foundation, Teaching Works, and WestEd – partners known for their high-impact instructional frameworks.
At the start of the program, each university underwent an inspection through TPI-US to identify its program’s strengths and opportunities for targeted improvements. The TPI-US inspection is a rigorous 360-degree program evaluation, including observing coursework; examining program data; and meeting with a wide range of stakeholders, such as faculty, graduates, candidates, school leaders, district officials, and mentor teachers. The inspection teams also observed teacher candidates teach.
The resulting report identified bright spots, areas for improvement, and action items for a 3-year continuous improvement plan. Universities utilized findings to co-construct a theory of action and a continuous improvement plan that addressed identified areas for transformation. These plans served as the roadmap for technical assistance and professional learning across the four pillars. For example, universities received training from TeachingWorks on high-leverage practices (HLPs). HLPs are fundamental teaching actions and tasks that are used constantly across subject areas, grade levels, and contexts, and are critical to helping students learn important content. Universities also received coaching and support from WestEd on understanding the importance of data, data analysis, and making data-informed decisions. A large effort was made on coaching provided by the Foundation on aligning curriculum and practice-based assessments.
We’re making the greatest contribution that you could make on improving higher education by focusing on the teacher preparation pathway. Dr. Shonda Gibson, senior associate vice chancellor and chief transformational officer for the Texas A&M System
We’re making the greatest contribution that you could make on improving higher education by focusing on the teacher preparation pathway.
Across five years, 16 universities engaged in continuous improvement work, impacting hundreds of faculty members and thousands of teacher candidates. Emerging Partner faculty described a fundamental culture shift: moving from compliance-focused evaluation to a dynamic, self-sustaining model of continuous improvement. As one faculty member reflected, “Continuous improvement isn’t a side project anymore – it’s just how we do our work.”
Participating universities were evaluated on and saw gains in the following domains:
Beyond technical improvements, Emerging Partners embraced a culture of continuous learning – embedding data-driven decision-making, reflection, and collaborative problem-solving into their daily operations. “We’re making the greatest contribution that you could make on improving higher education by focusing on the teacher preparation pathway,” says Dr. Shonda Gibson, senior associate vice chancellor and chief transformational officer for the Texas A&M System.
We asked participating faculty to reflect on developments in their systems and practices that came out of this work. These were some of their responses:
We historically had a reputation for doing a good job. It took a conscious effort to say, ‘We want constructive, critical feedback about what we can do to better.’ The TPI inspection was probably the most thorough examination of our program, the most in-depth investigation into what we do and why we do it that we’ve ever had. Stacey Edmonson, Dean of the College of Education, Sam Houston State University
We historically had a reputation for doing a good job. It took a conscious effort to say, ‘We want constructive, critical feedback about what we can do to better.’ The TPI inspection was probably the most thorough examination of our program, the most in-depth investigation into what we do and why we do it that we’ve ever had.
For me, it’s been about intentionality in the way that we go about preparing our teachers. Looking at how we do rehearsals and enactments and really giving our students the tools to feel comfortable once they are in the classroom, to go out and enact all of those wonderful things that we teach. Dr. Kate York, Master Teacher, Science/Math Education, University of Texas at Dallas
For me, it’s been about intentionality in the way that we go about preparing our teachers. Looking at how we do rehearsals and enactments and really giving our students the tools to feel comfortable once they are in the classroom, to go out and enact all of those wonderful things that we teach.
I am so grateful for the opportunity to make connections with our other campuses, within our system, with others outside of our system, and learn and take it all in. We don’t take the time to do this in our day-to-day offices, right? When you come together, and you can just be fully engaged, magic happens. Dr. Rodrick Lucero, Professor & Executive Director for Education Preparation, Texas A&M University
I am so grateful for the opportunity to make connections with our other campuses, within our system, with others outside of our system, and learn and take it all in. We don’t take the time to do this in our day-to-day offices, right? When you come together, and you can just be fully engaged, magic happens.
In 2024, the majority of Emerging Partners joined the Foundation’s Educator Preparation Program Improvement Communities (EPPIC), where they collaborate with a larger network of Texas universities committed to sustaining evidence-based teacher preparation reforms. By investing in both technical practice and faculty mindsets, the Emerging Partners initiative has helped to reimagine teacher preparation across Texas – ensuring that new educators are not only certified, but truly day-one ready to inspire, engage, and succeed. We’re reshaping education – one classroom, one future educator at a time.
Learn more at RaisingTexasTeachers.org.
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