DENVER – As the fastest-growing urban school district in the country, Denver Public Schools is faced with the need to hire hundreds of new teachers each year.

Finding enough qualified teachers is a challenge. And relying on traditional teacher prep programs is not enough.

But DPS is meeting the challenge through two unique learning models: the Denver Teacher Residency Program and Denver Teach Today. The programs are attracting business professionals and career-changers—doctors, lawyers, mathematicians—who have a desire to teach, but lack traditional certification through a university or college.

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Shannon Hagerman is the director of Teacher Preparation Pathways for DPS. She joined the program in 2012 after serving as the executive director of Innovation Schools with DPS and as principal of the Montclair School of Academics and Enrichment.

Hagerman explains that six years ago Pathways partnered with the University of Denver to develop the alternative training models. She says people who have had long, successful professional careers enter the programs because they’d like to try a hand at something else. Others want to make a difference and give back to the community.

The Denver Teacher Residency Program (DTR) puts professionals who already have a bachelor’s degree in a classroom for an entire year of residency to earn a master’s degree. They are guaranteed a job with DPS at the end of the year. If they agree to stay four years beyond their residency, their tuition costs are reimbursed.

Hagerman reports that four groups of DTR graduates are now in DPS classrooms and a fifth is halfway through the residency program. There are 150 graduates teaching right now. She says 92 percent of those who have completed the DTR model are still teaching in Denver.

“The most recent data demonstrates that the teachers prepared by DTR outperform the novice teachers prepared by all other pathways across all indicators of our evaluation framework,” Hagerman states.

The Denver Teach Today (DTT) model, developed more recently, is not nearly as intense. It is an accelerated, five-week course designed to quickly prepare professionals for teaching primarily in secondary math (6-12), special education (K-12), and elementary bilingual education in Spanish/ELA-S (K-5).

Participants in DTT do not earn a master’s degree, nor is their tuition reimbursed. Hagerman says those entering the DTT program may not be interested in a master’s degree, or it may not be feasible for them to take an entire year off from work to earn one.

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Lindsey Burke, a policy analyst with the Heritage Foundation and a former French teacher in Virginia, says, “It is, I think, a win-win both for the students and the teachers. Students are gaining access to mid-career professionals who are really, I think, masters in their crafts. They’ve been working in their field of specialty for years and can now enter the classroom.”

Not the union’s preferred method of training

How do these programs sit with union teachers who generally have taken the more traditional track to the teaching profession?

Henry Roman, president of the Denver Classroom Teachers Association, is rather dismissive of the five-week DTT program. He says teaching is a true profession and he has doubts that such a brief program would produce the type of effective, long-term teachers that students need. He says the DTR model is a definite improvement over DTT.

However, he says, “I would highly encourage that the residency program should be more than one year, probably a couple of years at least, two or three years if possible, because it does take awhile to get used to the demands of teaching nowadays.”

Hagerman states that the teachers unions have been supportive of both programs and she is not aware of any pushback.

Heritage’s Burke says teachers unions historically have been opposed to alternative teacher certification programs. That’s because teachers who go through those programs don’t have to go through a university’s department of education in order to get certified, which chips away at the union’s “stranglehold.”

Universities and colleges design their teacher training programs to stress radical left-wing social and political ideals, just like the unions. The colleges are also generally pro-union and work to instill that idea in students.

But Burke says barriers imposed by traditional certification, which often takes years to achieve, can be incredibly expensive and is a deterrent for many mid-career professionals.

“We know from a growing body of literature that traditional certification, alternative certification, and a teacher who chooses to be uncertified — that all of these routes really show no difference in the impact on student performance,” Burke adds.

Burke is hopeful the DPS models will have a ripple effect and that other school districts will consider revamping their own teacher certification policies.

Hagerman says there are residency programs all across the country. She explains the difference with DTR is that few others are district-centered and are not partnered with a university.

“The vast majority of the teacher prep programs sit outside of the district,” Hagerman notes. “So the candidates they prepare are looking to enter into districts whereas for us it’s a strategy that we operate internally to help recruit people to specifically work in DPS.”

The cost of reimbursing graduates for their tuition is a budget issue. Hagerman says they’ve been awarded a significant federal teacher quality project grant which has enabled the reimbursements to continue.

Looking to the future, she says more and more attention will be given to teacher preparation models, so she is constantly looking for additional funding sources.

The good news is the programs have proven to be appealing investments for people that want to put dollars into education.

To learn more, go to Denver Teacher Residency.