Dive Brief:
- School districts are incorrectly and often broadly using the term “grow-your-own” to describe a wide range of teacher pipeline programs, according to a working paper by the Annenberg Institute at Brown University. Researchers analyzed 94 initiatives in over 900 school districts nationwide.
- Despite research and initiatives calling for a more diverse pool of teachers, researchers found only half of grow-your-own initiatives explicitly stated intentions to diversify the teacher workforce. Additionally, more than half provide scholarships for teacher candidates to earn a degree or certification, although few cover all costs.
- Moving forward, the report’s authors recommend tightening what defines grow-your-own programs to explicitly refer to recruitment efforts targeted at individuals who work, live in or attend school in the community, rather than programs encouraging new teachers to work in communities they are not from.
Dive Insight:
The analysis found grow-your-own programs existed in at least 40 states and the District of Columbia as of spring 2022, demonstrating how widespread this relatively new way to address teacher shortages has become.
Given that these programs are likely in the earlier stages of development, there’s little comprehensive research measuring or tracking the success of grow-your-own efforts. The Annenberg study begins to provide a glimpse into what a larger-scale analysis of these programs may look like.
According to the analysis, the only common thread across grow-your-own initiatives is a commitment to increase the teacher supply. With less than half of those programs intentionally eyeing diversity, only 23% were found to target recruitment efforts toward underrepresented populations, and only 21% specifically look for people of color. However, the analysis noted that 76% of the programs focused on recruiting paraprofessionals — of whom 40% nationally are people of color — to become teachers.
Most high school grow-your-own programs typically provide a teaching experience like a course or an extracurricular. The analysis found that almost a third of those initiatives attempt to increase interest in the teaching profession through high school teaching opportunities — but they don't provide financial support to obtain a teaching degree or certification after high school graduation.
Programs targeted toward adults rather than high schoolers appear to be more aligned with practices that help increase teacher supply, according to the working paper.
As such, researchers wrote that grow-your-own programs overall “may need to shift their focus from increasing interest in the profession to removing barriers to entry if they are going to increase the teacher supply.”
As grow-your-own programs continue to manifest in various ways, one model quickly gaining steam — and potentially aligning more closely with the researchers’ recommendations — is registered teacher apprenticeship programs.
This model invests in high school students, community members or paraprofessionals to help them attain a teaching certification where they are compensated during on-the-job training in the classroom as they simultaneously earn a teaching degree and license. More than half of states nationwide now have registered apprenticeship programs with the U.S. Department of Labor, and that model is slowly expanding into the principal pipeline, too.
Dive Awards
