Table of Contents
Introduction
When we first published this report in 2020, Grow Your Own (GYO) educator programs were an emerging solution for addressing subject-area teacher shortages and increasing the racial and linguistic diversity of the teacher workforce.1 Since then, GYO programs have expanded quickly: Between 2020 to 2024, the number of states providing funding for GYO grew from 18 to 35 plus the District of Columbia (DC). This growth may have been related to the COVID-19 pandemic, which amplified teacher shortages2 and led to an infusion of $190 billion of federal aid to K–12 schools.3
GYO programs are attractive because they recruit community members and prepare them to become teachers in local schools. Many of these programs use partnerships between school districts, institutions of higher education, and community-based organizations to provide comprehensive support to candidates. These partnerships also foster alignment between school districts and teacher preparation programs to ensure that teacher candidates are engaged in coursework and clinical experiences that prepare them to work in local schools.
Despite evidence of a declining interest in teaching,4 there are many individuals who want to become teachers but do not see a clear pathway to achieving their goal. By centering the needs of candidates and providing advising, financial support, paid work experience, and mentoring, GYO programs remove barriers that have kept some individuals from being able to access and persist in teacher preparation programs.5 And research suggests homegrown teachers have higher rates of retention, which ultimately benefits schools and students.6
In 2005, Illinois became the first state to fund and implement a competitive GYO grant program designed to forge partnerships between community organizations and institutes of higher education that would prepare educators from the community for work in the community. As GYO researcher Elizabeth Skinner describes, the state program was born out of an effort in Chicago’s Logan Square neighborhood to help parents and community members become bilingual teachers in their local schools.7
From its grassroots origins, GYO has garnered national attention as a strategy for strengthening and diversifying the teaching profession. GYO educator programs were included in the Biden administration’s Build Back Better initiative and have been prioritized in multiple federal grants, such as the Teacher Quality Partnership and National Professional Development Program. In today's teacher preparation landscape, GYO is commonly paired with preparation approaches like teacher residency and teacher Registered Apprenticeship.
Given the expanding interest and reach of GYO, we set out to learn more about these programs across the country. We conducted a 50-state scan to identify GYO programs—including target candidates, types of programs, and their design—and to investigate state policies that support GYO program development, implementation, and sustainability. We updated the scan in 2022 and are doing so again now to capture growth and emerging trends. This report is the culmination of our research over the past five years. In it, we present six key findings about how GYO is defined, where the strategy is being adopted, how programs are designed and funded, and who programs are serving.
Citations
- Conra Gist, Margarita Bianco, and Marvin Lynn, “Examining Grow Your Own Programs Across the Teacher Development Continuum: Mining Research on Teachers of Color and Nontraditional Educator Pipelines,” Journal of Teacher Education 70, no. 1 (2019): 13–25, source; and Ana María Villegas and Beatriz Chu Clewell, “Increasing Teacher Diversity by Tapping the Paraprofessional Pool,” Theory into Practice 37, no. 2 (Spring 1998): 121–130, source.
- John Schmitt and Katherine deCourcy, The Pandemic has Exacerbated a Long-Standing National Shortage of Teachers (Washington DC: Economic Policy Institute, December 6, 2022), source.
- Associated Press, “Look Up How Much COVID Relief Aid Your School District Is Getting,” Education Week, September 10, 2021, source.
- Matthew A. Kraft and Melissa Arnold Lyon, The Rise and Fall of the Teaching Profession: Prestige, Interest, Preparation, and Satisfaction over the Last Half Century, EdWorkingPaper 22-679 (Providence, RI: Annenberg Institute at Brown University, April 2024), source.
- Gist, Bianco, and Lynn, “Examining Grow Your Own Programs”; Kam Fui Lau, Evelyn B. Dandy, and Lorrie Hoffman, “The Pathways Program: A Model for Increasing the Number of Teachers of Color,” Teacher Education Quarterly 34, no. 3 (Fall 2007): 27–40; and Beatriz Chu Clewell and Ana María Villegas, Ahead of the Class: A Handbook for Preparing New Teachers from New Sources (Washington, DC: Urban Institute, 2001), source.
- Gist, Bianco, and Lynn, “Examining Grow Your Own Programs”; and Villegas and Chu Clewell, “Increasing Teacher Diversity by Tapping the Paraprofessional Pool.”.
- Elizabeth A. Skinner, “Project Nueva Generación and Grow Your Own Teachers: Transforming Schools and Teacher Education from the Inside Out,” Teacher Education Quarterly (Summer 2010): 155–167, source.