Mississippi Teacher Residency: Enhancing Teacher Preparation

In addition to widespread teacher shortages, a lack of teacher diversity is a core concern in Mississippi. Tackling this problem is a critical part of the state’s efforts to improve the learning experiences of students of color, who represent almost half of the students enrolled in public schools.¹ Indeed, a recent state report contends that teachers of color could help address disparities in graduation rates, attendance, and advanced-level course participation, among other areas.² Mississippi’s goal is to increase the number of teachers of color from 27 percent to 32 percent by 2025. And leaders intend to focus efforts on recruiting male teachers of color, who currently make up only 6 percent of all teachers in the state.³

To help meet these ambitious goals, state leaders have turned to residency programs. In 2018, the Mississippi Department of Education secured $4.1 million in philanthropic support to expand and diversify their teacher pipeline. These funds helped to jumpstart the Mississippi Teacher Residency (MTR), a pilot program that aims to recruit, train, and place over 100 new teachers through the residency model over three years.⁴

In Mississippi, teacher residencies are a pathway to certification that blends two years of coursework, mentorship, and in-classroom experience.⁵ While most residency programs help candidates earn a master’s degree, the MTR program is an undergraduate program open to prospective teachers with an associate degree or roughly two years of credit toward a degree program. During the two years of the program, MTR residents divide their time between bachelor’s level coursework and at least 15 hours per week of on-the-job training where they gradually take on more responsibilities in a classroom under the supervision of a mentor teacher. Upon completing the program, residents must commit to teach for at least three years in their residency district.

A hallmark of the residency model is an active partnership between a school district and a university. In Mississippi, each of three universities—spanning urban and rural areas—received a three-year grant from MDE to deploy this model in concert with a district. Pilot partners include William Carey University, working with Ocean Springs and Gulfport public school districts; Mississippi State University-Meridian, working with Jackson Public School District; and Delta State University, working with the Sunflower County Consolidated School District.⁶ Beginning in the fall of 2019, each university partners will enroll three consecutive cohorts of 12 residents each, or 36 candidates total.

While small, the MTR pilot is selective and in demand. Program applicants must answer application questions, submit a resume and Praxis scores, and undergo panel interviews with district leaders, teachers, university professors, and MDE staff. Still, the first pool of applicants exceeded 300.⁷ A range of generous financial and academic supports contribute to the program’s appeal: residents receive full tuition scholarships, one-on-one teacher mentors, ongoing professional development, licensure examination preparation support, and testing vouchers to cover the cost of exams.

The first MTR cohort already shows promise for helping to diversity Mississippi’s teaching workforce. Seventy-six percent of residents in this cohort identify as people of color, compared to 27 percent of the state’s teaching workforce today.⁸ Residency programs have a track record of bringing greater racial diversity into the workforce: nationally, they enrolled 45 percent candidates of color in 2015–16, compared to the 19 percent national average of teachers of color entering the profession.⁹

Evidence also backs the residency model as a strategy for producing high-quality teachers who stay in the profession. One recent nationwide analysis by the Learning Policy Institute found that 82 percent of residents were still teaching four years after completing their program, a rate 10 percent higher than their non-residency counterparts.¹⁰ Other research shows that school leaders believe residents are more effective than other new teachers.¹¹ And, while fewer studies have gauged the impact of residencies on student achievement, early evidence shows that former residents have a positive impact on students’ scores on statewide assessments.¹²

Partly, these outcomes have been credited to the careful combination of high-quality coursework and guided clinical experience that the residency model requires. Traditional preparation pathways have been criticized for offering limited field experiences that are disconnected from coursework, while alternative pathways have been critiqued for offering field experiences that are not only sporadic and disconnected but also unsupervised.¹³ In contrast, beginning in their first year, the MTR program requires candidates to complete a minimum of 15 hours clinical experience each week, where they have opportunities to practice and demonstrate what they are learning under the close supervision of experienced mentors who have been identified by their districts as effective and high-quality.

To be sure, achieving this balance of clinical experience, coursework, and mentorship can be logistically challenging. Residents at MSU-Meridian work as full-time teaching assistants at Jackson Public Schools so they easily exceed the program’s 15 hours per week in-service requirement. Still, Leffler said the program had to arrange for residents to participate in five hours of observation, five hours of mentoring, and five hours of small group instruction each week. Additionally, the program had to ensure that the course load was feasible in light of mentoring requirements and a 40-hour-per-week work arrangement. Residents complete less coursework in year two but get more responsibilities in the classroom, as they gradually transition from providing small group instruction to co-teaching with their mentor teacher.¹⁴

Program leaders have also had to ensure that coursework and mentoring was integrated into the field experience. “Anything we're teaching and modeling in the classroom—they should have a practical application of it in the field experience component, because ultimately engaging as a teacher is what's going to make them ready when they finish the program,” said Leffler.

The National Center for Teacher Residencies (NCTR), which has been providing support to teacher residency programs since 2007, has been a major player in launching the MTR pilot program. To that end, NCTR is providing MDE and participating universities with guidance and support to refine their residency models to meet their needs and context.¹⁵ Through a series of multi-day retreats, call check-ins, and site visits (which allow partners to visit exemplary residency sites), NCTR has helped MTR partners strengthen their understanding of essential elements of high-quality residencies in the areas of financial sustainability, candidate recruitment and selection, partnerships, high-quality curriculum, and more.¹⁶

Residency programs are usually developed at the local level,¹⁷ occasionally with state-level financial support.¹⁸ As a result, states often feature a patchwork of independent programs. MTR programs, on the other hand, resemble more of a network. Keilani Goggins, an associate director at NCTR who provides technical assistance to Mississippi, said that the unique state-lead nature of MTR has offered residency programs a rare opportunity to “come together and talk across the table.” Programs have in-person check-ins where, among other things, they help each other solve problems of practice. Participating universities also know who to reach out to at MDE or NCTR for support. “Having a centralized hub in order to disseminate information can be valuable,” Goggins said.

To make the state-led initiative run smoothly, residents, universities, districts, and MDE have agreed to fulfill a clear set of commitments.¹⁹ Crucially, MDE has committed to support candidate selection, provide costs for professional development, tuition, books, and testing, and support residents in the credentialing process. It has also served as the connective tissue between the programs and NCTR.

Additionally, state leaders are collecting data to evaluate and refine their residency model. The state hopes the pilot will help to clarify “the connection between a high-quality residency and future teacher effectiveness,” said Courtney Van Cleve, Director of Innovative Programs at the MDE. Van Cleve says Mississippi also aims to refine its residency model so that it is ready to scale key insights across the state, provided their evaluation finds that teacher residency is an effective pathway into the profession. Their goal is that more district and university partnerships across the state have opportunities to run their own residencies.

Before the grant ends, developing a model for funding will be critical to expanding the MTR pilot. If evaluation shows positive results, MDE can push for legislative funding. Another strategy is to promote cost-sharing. According to Tabitha Grossman, director of development and partnerships at NCTR, putting thoughtful effort into sharing costs has long helped stakeholders forge lasting, mutually beneficial partnerships. “One of the hallmarks of a really strong residency is when the district and the IHE are sharing financial responsibility,” said Grossman. “When you’re willing to share costs, it sends a really strong message in a partnership that you are committed.”

MTR offers a useful lesson for others seeking to adopt the residency model: it takes investments and commitments from all players—from state to district to university—to create sustainable, high-quality programs that help prepare a high-quality and representative teaching workforce.