Findings

Our analysis yields six main findings about the reach and scope of GYO policies and programs across the nation.

1. States and districts define GYO in different ways to address common problems.

New America defines Grow Your Own as partnerships between educator preparation programs, school districts, and community organizations that recruit and prepare local community members to enter the teaching profession and teach in their communities. However, we did not impose this definition on the states and localities that were included in this scan. We observed a range of definitions, and some states used but did not define the term GYO. For example, Missouri’s guidance on GYO states that programs “provide a culture of collaboration between school districts, higher education and communities, serve as a workforce development initiative, and instill community pride when students return to teach.“¹ Texas frames GYO as a way to help local education agencies (LEAs) “[…] build strong, stable, and diverse teacher pipelines from within their own communities” and to address shortages, increase diversity, and boost high school students’ interest in teaching.² Delaware frames GYO as part of the larger goal to strengthen the state’s educator workforce pipeline, stating that these “programs offer support and guidance to candidates who are on a career path towards becoming future educators, starting as early as middle school, or through nontraditional routes, and continuing through their postsecondary education and training and culminating in their being hired, as an educator, by the district or charter school.”³ Across LEAs and states, GYO is framed as a way to develop a strong and stable teacher workforce.

The definitions we found included varying levels of focus on community, as these three state examples illustrate. Yet, at its core, GYO is about building stronger communities. These programs recognize the assets of community members and the role they can play in supporting students and families. They provide a pathway to economic mobility for school staff such as paraprofessionals, bus drivers, and cafeteria workers.

2. All states and the District of Columbia have at least one GYO program, but policies vary.

Every state and the District of Columbia has at least one GYO program.⁴ We found programs for high school students, paraeducators, community members, noncertified school staff, substitute teachers, or some combination. An estimated 900 school districts are engaged in GYO according to a 2023 working paper by teacher education researchers Danielle Edwards and Matthew Kraft.⁵

A total of 28 states and the District of Columbia have a GYO focused policy, which we define as a statute, bill, or executive order. These policies do not all name GYO but have a focus on recruiting and preparing community-based teachers. These policies include scholarship programs designed to help local high school graduates and paraeducators cover the cost of an educator preparation program, approval of alternative route programs for paraeducators, listing GYO as one potential approach in larger grant programs designed to diversify the educator workforce, and competitive grants to support GYO program development and implementation.

3. The number of states funding GYO programs has increased, but funding is not stable.

While the number of states with a GYO-focused policy has remained largely unchanged since 2020, there has been a significant increase in the number of states that provide funding for GYO program development and implementation, from 18 to 35 plus DC.⁶ Tennessee is the only state that funds a statewide center focused on developing resources, facilitating partnerships, and offering technical assistance. Fourteen states plus DC offer a competitive grant program designed to incentivize school district and educator preparation partnerships to develop and implement GYO programs. A handful of states have a significant number of GYO programs and a high level of investment. For example, Michigan has awarded $128 million in GYO funding to 139 individual school districts and consortia,⁷ while Texas funded over 350 districts using state GYO and Elementary and Secondary School Emergency Relief (ESSER) funds in 2022 alone.⁸

At least nine states used federal pandemic aid, such as ESSER, to implement GYO initiatives to help meet their teacher workforce needs. For example:

• Georgia provided $2.4 million in grant funds to support paraprofessional-to-teacher pipelines in 75 rural school districts. Eligible paraprofessionals enrolled in a teacher preparation program received up to $6,000 to help cover tuition, fees, and exam costs.
• Maryland created a noncompetitive grant, Maryland LEADS, that provides funding to all LEAs in the state for a variety of activities, including GYO educator programs. All but one LEA chose to pursue GYO with the funds, around $48 million.
• Mississippi used ESSER funds to launch a new round of competitive grant funding for its state teacher residency program.
• Missouri leveraged $50 million in ESSER funds to offer every school district funding for GYO program development or expansion. Districts were eligible to receive $10,000.
• Tennessee invested $6.5 million to launch a competitive grant for GYO program development with a focus on building partnerships between educator preparation programs and school districts.

Funding staffing needs through emergency relief funds was a choice that many warned against but seemed inevitable, given concerns about teacher shortages in nearly every state.⁹ With ESSER funds expiring in September 2024 and looming budget cuts, the future of these programs is, unsurprisingly, now at risk. Among the program leaders that responded to our survey, 20 percent of them said that the largest source of federal funding comes from ESSER.

Surprisingly, only 1 to 2 percent of respondents reported using federal funds such as Title I, Title II, and Title III of the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA) to support their efforts. A slightly higher percentage (between 6-8 percent) use funds from federal education sources like the Individuals with Disabilities Act (IDEA) and the Carl D. Perkins Career and Technical Education Act and federal workforce sources like the Workforce Innovation Opportunity Act. A small percentage (3 percent) have a Teacher Quality Partnership (TQP) grant that provides funding to institutes of higher education to design and implement a teacher residency program. Under the Biden administration, TQP has included invitational priorities for GYO, but it also has requirements (e.g., the need for matching funds) that many programs cannot meet.

State grants are an essential but fickle funding source for GYO programs. Budgets change and appropriations are not consistent from cycle to cycle. Consider: State legislatures that operate on a yearly cycle mean that some programs may only know their funding on a year-to-year basis. And for those on a biennial cycle, funding is only secure for two years at a time. As a result, program leaders cannot know if they will have the funding to take on additional students and to support them for the full amount of time it takes to earn their degree and become certified. For our survey respondents, local and state funds made up the largest share of funding sources.

About one-fourth of survey respondents (28 percent) reported using philanthropic funds to support their GYO efforts. National and local philanthropy has a key role to play in supporting community and economic development. Yet, this funding is not always sustainable, because of shifting priorities and investments.

4. Tremendous variety exists in program design and strategy.

The local nature of GYO programs is a key feature of their success, but it leads to substantial variation in program design. Some programs provide comprehensive wraparound supports to teacher candidates while others only offer scholarships to help cover some of the cost of earning a degree. And yet other programs provide funding to support robust clinical training or offer high school students the opportunity to gain exposure to a career in teaching through on-the-job learning experiences.

For example, the Bilingual Educators and Accelerated Community to Teaching Program (BE/ACTT) at Boston Public Schools is a 12-month training program for community-based candidates with bachelor’s degrees. Candidates receive unpaid training at night and on Saturdays, work with a mentor to build a competency portfolio, and participate in a practicum experience. They then earn a provisional certification and apply for a teaching position in the district. Candidates can go on to earn graduate credit and apply for the district’s bilingual inclusive education residency that is funded by a federal Teacher Quality partnership grant.¹⁰ While in Colorado, the Rural Teaching Fellowship is a year-long clinical experience in a rural school or district for teacher candidates in the final year of their preparation programs. Fellows receive a $10,000 stipend, the cost of which is shared by the state department of higher education and the college or university.¹¹ They must also commit to teaching in the rural school/district for two years upon completion of their preparation program and receipt of a teaching license. These programs are co-designed by rural schools, districts, charters schools and/or educational service agencies in partnership with educator preparation programs.

Indeed, partnership is a central component of high-quality GYO programs, and our survey results highlight the variety of partners that can be involved. While the most common program partners are four-year colleges and universities and school districts, survey respondents also indicated a moderate level of engagement with community colleges (43 percent) and state education agencies (41 percent). Teachers’ unions appear to play less of a partnership role in those we surveyed, with 21 percent of respondents listing them as a partner, which could be indicative of the fact that they have varying degrees of influence within individual states. Some of the “other” partners mentioned included education service districts, state-level teacher standards boards, Head Start, and state workforce entities.

Each partner plays a unique role and provides additional layers of support to program candidates. This support can promote persistence and completion of the program. Nearly three-fourths of survey respondents reported offering academic advising, a cohort structure, mentorship, and scholarships/grants to program candidates. Just over 50 percent offer paid job-embedded learning, which can be an important incentive for candidates and help ensure they receive robust clinical training. Fewer than half offer test preparation, which is a surprising finding, given research on how teacher certification exams can serve as a barrier to becoming fully licensed, particularly for candidates of color.¹²

GYO programs use a variety of preparation approaches. Increasingly, GYO is being paired with preparation approaches like teacher residency and teacher Registered Apprenticeship.¹³ Both of these approaches offer aligned coursework and clinical training under the guidance of a mentor teacher, but apprenticeship also offers progressive wages. For example, Virginia’s Grow Your Own-Registered Teacher Apprenticeship Program provides grants to local education agencies and educator preparation programs to create and implement teacher apprenticeship programs.¹⁴ The grant stipulates that funds can be used for apprentice wages and tuition, mentor training and incentives, support staff positions, assessment fees, and other expected expenses. The aim of the program is to address financial barriers to entering and persisting in a teacher preparation program. However, it is not completely clear how the program integrates GYO, as state guidance does not offer any parameters regarding the recruitment of community-based candidates, for example.

The diversity of approaches is evident in our program survey data, with nearly equal representation among alternative routes (16 percent), teacher residency (16 percent), teacher apprenticeship (15 percent), and 2+2 programs (15 percent). Over one-third of survey respondents indicated that their program uses a traditional undergraduate model, meaning that participants are enrolled in an undergraduate-level educator preparation program. For high school programs, dual enrollment is the most common model, followed by education and training courses and Educators Rising. Some of the other models that respondents reported include Teacher Cadets, scholarships, community college baccalaureates, and early childhood education certificate programs.

Some states offer multiple GYO pathways for different types of candidates. For example, Minnesota offers two pathways, one for adult school employees or community members connected to the district, which provides tuition support and stipends to help them enroll and persist in a teacher preparation program and the other for high school students, particularly students of color and American Indian students, so they can gain exposure to a teaching career.¹⁵ Oregon offers three types of programs: pre-collegiate programs for high school students, school-community programs led by school districts to support employees and community members who want to become teachers, and co-designed university-district partnerships that prepare candidates to teach in certain communities.¹⁶ The state also has a program for the nine federally recognized tribes of Oregon to develop GYO programs for American Indian and Alaska Native educators.¹⁷

Some school districts also offer multiple GYO programs and pathways. Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD) and Tucson Unified School District are two such examples. LAUSD has two career ladder programs for school employees who want to become teachers; the programs offer scholarships, courses, and materials to help candidates pass credentialing exams. LAUSD also has a program for high school students to help them gain employment in the district after graduation.¹⁸ Tucson has partnerships with multiple universities and community colleges that offer alternative routes into the teaching profession for district employees. It also offers a program called Make the Move that offers tuition reimbursement, professional development, and hiring and retention bonuses. School district employees with a bachelor's degree, including current teachers, can pursue certification in special education or an endorsement in bilingual education or English as a second language (ESL).¹⁹

Notably, 41 percent of the programs we surveyed offer endorsements in special education, which has historically been the highest teacher shortage area. About 26 percent offer an endorsement in ESL and 14 percent offer a bilingual/dual language endorsement. These findings point to the ways that GYO programs seek to address shortage areas and to respond to districts’ hiring needs.

5. Pathways for high school students are the most common type of GYO program.

A total of 48 states plus DC offer at least one type of program to expose high school students to careers in education. These programs are primarily offered through career and technical education (CTE), which provides students with career-related academic and technical skills.²⁰ Dual enrollment is also widely available, to provide students college credit while still enrolled in high school.²¹ Teacher Cadets (TC), a program that began in South Carolina and has since expanded nationally, is another common offering.²² TC is designed as a college-level course for high-achieving students, to help them consider careers in teaching. Educators Rising, a national organization that exposes middle and high school students to careers in education, is also common, with students participating in a variety of ways.²³ Some of its programs serve as interest clubs for students, while others utilize the Educators Rising curriculum that can be integrated into CTE courses and opportunities for students to earn micro-credentials²⁴ to demonstrate their growing skills and competencies.

Several states, such as Massachusetts and Ohio, have scholarship programs to support high school students who want to become teachers. Ohio’s GYO Teacher Scholarship Program provides scholarships up to $7,500 per year over four years, for example. These scholarships come with some strings attached: Recipients must agree to teach in the state for a specified number of years and may risk having to pay the money back if they do not fulfill their service requirements. Localities also offer scholarship programs. For example, the Palm Beach Future Educators Scholarship in Florida provides recipients with $1,000 each fall and spring semester for up to five years.

West Virginia’s GYO program, which is focused exclusively on high school students, provides a full pathway to earning a teaching degree. Starting in their first year, students begin taking introductory courses in education and other courses such as English and chemistry for dual credit.²⁵ The goal is for students to graduate from high school having earned at least one year of college credit, enroll in college and in an educator preparation program, complete a one-year teacher residency, and graduate with a bachelor’s degree in education. Some of the programs in West Virginia have incorporated Registered Apprenticeship in the program to facilitate paid work experience and alleviate some of the financial burden for students.

Apprenticeship models have also been implemented at the local level in states like California, Colorado, and Indiana. For example, Ball State University in Indiana operates a teacher apprenticeship program in partnership with six school districts in a largely rural county. Students begin taking dual-credit courses in their junior year while working as a paid classroom assistant. Upon graduation, they matriculate into Ball State, where they continue taking courses and working in schools. Their final year is a paid residency working at a school in their home district. Students are paired with a mentor teacher during each of their work experiences.²⁶

High school students are seen as an attractive pool of potential teachers who will be invested in returning to teach in their home communities. Some studies suggest that early recruitment of middle and high school students is a more effective strategy than pulling from adult populations, yet there is limited data on the outcomes of precollegiate GYO programs.²⁷ A 2024 study of the Teacher Academy of Maryland, a CTE program that provides high school students with exposure to a career in teaching through coursework and an internship, found a small but significant increase in the likelihood of becoming a teacher among program participants. Effects were strongest for white females (the dominant demographic among teachers), but increases were also noted among Black females.²⁸ The authors note that these increases are not enough to close the teacher diversity gap but provide evidence of the value in targeting GYO programs to racially diverse students.

6. Paraeducators are a popular recruitment pool, but the support they receive varies.

Paraeducator pathways are offered in 38 states and DC, and many are supported by state funding. Paraeducators are often tapped by their building administrator to enroll in a GYO program because of their significant instructional experience, knowledge of the district, and potential interest in becoming a licensed teacher. Paraeducators are more likely to match the racial and linguistic diversity of the K–12 student population.²⁹ These essential educators are particularly suited to GYO programs geared toward developing bilingual teachers and special education teachers because paraeducators often support English learners and students with disabilities in the classroom. Yet, they can face multiple barriers in accessing, enrolling in, and paying for an educator preparation program and so stand to greatly benefit from participating in a comprehensive GYO program.

Comprehensive programs offer wraparound supports such as financial assistance, academic advising, test preparation, and job-embedded learning. Providing one-on-one assistance is high-touch work that requires significant staff time and capacity, which limits the number of individuals who can be served. These programs rely on partnerships between educator preparation programs, school districts, and, in some cases, community-based organizations. Through our research, we have found that the number of paraeducators enrolled in comprehensive GYO programs is kept small, usually around 20.

Most programs are designed to serve paraeducators who either already hold a bachelor’s degree or have an associate degree or 60 hours of college credit. These programs are designed to offer a structured pathway that allows participants to complete them in a specified time frame. For example, the Bilingual Teaching Fellows program at Highline Public Schools, offered in partnership with Western Washington University, is a two-year program where fellows work in a school while fulfilling requirements for a bachelor’s degree and teaching certification to work in a dual language school. Fellows receive tuition support, mentorship, a paid paraeducator position, and advising and they participate in a cohort.³⁰ But not all GYO programs for paraeducators are designed with this level of support.

Scholarship programs are widely used and are sometimes seen as a more efficient strategy for helping paraeducators become teachers. California’s Classified School Employee Teacher Credentialing Program, which provides up to $4,000 per year over five years to help paraeducators and other school staff earn an undergraduate degree and teaching credential, is an example of this strategy. Launched in 2016, the competitive grant program has issued two rounds of funding to LEAs and served thousands of classified employees. However, by the end of the five-year grant period in 2022, only 16 percent of participants had earned a teaching credential and were working as a teacher, according to a program report.³¹ Some of the challenges reported by grantees include participants working multiple jobs; having a difficult time balancing work, school, and family responsibilities, and struggling to pass required certification exams. As one grantee is highlighted as explaining in the program report, classified employees “[…] need extra support to be successful as receiving money is not always enough. They need emotional support as well as guidance while on this journey to become a credentialed teacher.”³²

The research base on GYO programs for paraeducators remains limited. Most of the studies on GYO are from 10 to 20 years ago and are focused on the design elements that make the strategy impactful for participants. Only a few have examined key outcomes such as retention in the teaching profession, but they suggest strong rates of retention overall.³³ Beatriz Chu Clewell and Ana María Villegas conducted an evaluation of the Pathways to Teaching Careers program for the Urban Institute in 2001 and found that paraeducators had the highest three-year retention rates in teaching compared to other candidates.³⁴ Given the rapid acceleration and adoption of GYO, research will soon begin to catch up, and with it will come a greater understanding of the impacts of GYO on program graduates, their students, and their school communities.