University Partnerships
Every new teacher, regardless of their pathway into teaching, is adequately prepared to meet the needs of their students on day one.
Effective teachers need rigorous, practice-based training with extensive clinical experience to succeed from their first day in the classroom and beyond. This training must provide pre-service teachers with ample opportunities to practice in a real classroom setting with support and coaching by an effective teacher educator, gain a deep knowledge of their content areas, and understand how to support the diverse student populations they will serve.
The importance of ensuring new teachers are classroom-ready is underscored by TEA research that shows students from historically underserved communities are most likely to have a new teacher. This fact means that quality preparation for these new teachers is of the utmost importance.
Quality teacher training takes time, support, and experience. We believe Texas universities are uniquely equipped to provide the quality preparation needed to ensure new teachers are effective on day one and have the skills and commitment to remain in the profession over time. Research shows that university-prepared teachers have higher retention rates, leading to greater gains in student achievement. That is why we partner with 24 university educator preparation programs across the state to catalyze continuous improvement.
In collaboration with our university partners, we seek to create a culture of continuous improvement within university-based educator preparation programs. Our goal is to increase the quality of teacher preparation statewide, ensuring every new teacher is prepared to be effective on day one and to increase teacher retention rates statewide. To achieve this goal we employ two approaches:
In 2018, EPPIC began with 11 university teams selected to offer the Charles Butt Scholarship for Aspiring Teachers and participate in a multi-year continuous improvement initiative. Today, the program supports 24 universities across Texas. These institutions represent diverse geographic regions, private and public universities, undergraduate and graduate degrees, and multiple certification areas and specializations. This diversity enriches the learning community, where participants collaborate across programs rather than compete.
Faculty and staff from these programs work together to address key challenges in teacher preparation. As a learning community, they have identified the following areas for focused improvement:
Participation in this learning community includes monthly virtual coaching support from the Charles Butt Foundation team on the implementation of each team’s continuous improvement plans, and bi-annual group convenings focused on change management principles, team facilitation, peer networking, feedback cycles, and renewed motivation. Participants have been able to scale the shared learnings and insights through their own research, presentations, and publications.
This multi-year teacher preparation improvement project aimed at systemic transformation at 18 universities, including every university within the Texas A&M System. As part of this program, the universities had the opportunity to apply to become members of the EPPIC and receive the Charles Butt Scholarship. The majority of these emerging partners have since been selected to make that transition based on their programmatic improvements.
In 2019, this five-year continuous improvement project launched with a formative evaluation of every program conducted by TPI-US, and a causal system analysis process facilitated by the Charles Butt Foundation. This work served as the underpinning for annual continuous improvement plans that were developed by each university team.
To support transformation efforts, each university received: financial support ranging from $50,000 to $150,000 annually, monthly improvement coaching support from the Charles Butt Foundation, training and coaching support from TeachingWorks to support the implementation of practice-based teacher pedagogy, and training and coaching support from WestEd to enhance the universities’ use of data to drive continuous improvement.
The Emerging Partners Program will conclude at the end of the 2024-2025 school year.
All of our improvement efforts are aligned with our 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.
Impact
university-based teacher preparation programs across the state supported through Raising Texas Teachers
of new teachers certified through university undergraduate programs are trained by these universities
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Program Director of Partner Universities
Other statewide programs