Accessibility: Support Structure Flexibility

Teacher degree apprentices have the potential to increase access into the profession for individuals who face barriers to entry. One way that programs are facilitating access is by providing flexibility in traditional higher education structures, including how students earn college credit and take classes. This flexibility allows apprentices to leverage their skills and competencies to show mastery, engage with courses at times that are convenient for them, and earn a degree more efficiently. At the same time, programs are providing wraparound supports that attend to apprentices’ needs beyond their work site and college classroom. This section explores the opportunities and challenges in creating more flexible structures for teacher apprentices.

In Mapping the Landscape of Degree Apprenticeship, we identified flexibility and efficiency as hallmarks of a high-quality degree apprenticeship program.⁴¹ Apprentices, we wrote, should not “have to spend time in the classroom to get credit for skills they have already mastered on the job.”

One way to do this is to provide academic credit for prior learning (CPL) or for on-the-job learning (OJL). According to the American Council on Education and the Council for Adult and Experiential Learning, CPL refers to a “wide range of strategies and methods used to…award college credit for skills and knowledge…acquired outside of a formal college setting,” including at work.⁴² Credit for on-the-job learning is a type of CPL that apprentices earn during their apprenticeship. Methods for awarding this credit vary, but include exams, portfolio assessments, defenses of learning, and on-the-job demonstrations.⁴³ 

Research suggests that CPL yields particular benefits for low-income students, students of color, and adult students. Awarding CPL saves students both time and money⁴⁴ and improves college completion rates.⁴⁵ It is also associated with positive postgraduation outcomes, like higher earnings.⁴⁶ And in teacher degree apprenticeship, strong CPL and credit for OJL components are a sign that school districts and higher education partners have collaborated closely to ensure aligned learning on the job and in the classroom. 

Among our interviewees’ programs, CPL was uneven. Concerns about or a lack of interest from higher education partners often stymied CPL implementation. Higher ed administrators worry that CPL will reduce revenue, since students typically pay a nominal assessment fee for CPL rather than tuition. Faculty do not want to forfeit influence over students’ training and its quality. There are less existential concerns, too. Colleges rarely have access to financial support to design CPL policies in a way that works for their bottom line and strategic support to build CPL assessments that are valid and reliable. And then there’s inertia—some colleges haven’t ever had a robust CPL policy and are not interested in developing one.  

For example, in both Kansas and Georgia, where the state department of education is the sponsor, CPL is underused because it is not a priority for the educator preparation programs that apprentices enroll in. One interviewee said that the institution of higher education (IHE) partner has not even tried to develop a CPL policy for the teacher apprenticeship program due to administrator and faculty resistance. The Georgia Department of Education wants its IHE partners to offer more CPL for apprentices and is working with educator preparation programs to implement stronger CPL policies.

In other programs, robust CPL or credit for OJL policies are already in place. Reach University, for example, is the field leader in awarding credit for OJL. Reach apprentices earn up to half of their bachelor’s degree credits through on-the-job learning aligned with academic and occupational competencies.⁴⁷ Reach collaborates with school districts to ensure learning at work and at school is “inherently integrated, not operating in parallel,” Holly Smith, executive director of the National Center for the Apprenticeship Degree at Reach, previously told New America.⁴⁸

Other colleges have adopted their own approaches to CPL, like providing it through exams (Dakota State University), designating some lower-level courses eligible for articulated credit if apprentices can demonstrate mastery on the job (Western Kentucky University), or allowing certain district-provided professional development trainings to articulate to CPL credit (Missouri State University).

The state of Colorado requires that OJL count for at least 25 percent of the degree in its teacher degree apprenticeship policy.⁴⁹ To serve as a higher education partner in a teacher degree apprenticeship, most colleges would need to adapt their traditional educator preparation programs to build in credit for OJL while still meeting their own institutional accreditation requirements. This requires employers to provide a detailed description of the on-the-job training and faculty to review it—a potentially time-intensive process for which faculty need to be compensated.⁵⁰ Yet, the legislation did not come with funding to help programs make these changes, which may be limiting IHE ability to participate in the teacher apprenticeship program. To date, only two IHEs in Colorado are participating in a teacher degree apprenticeship program as defined by this legislation.⁵¹ 

In addition to more funding, colleges need guidance on how to implement high-quality CPL and credit for OJL. What does quality look like? How can colleges ensure their assessments are valid and reliable? State agencies, along with intermediaries or technical assistance providers, can help develop standards and guidance so that each program does not need to develop its own CPL approach. “This is something we need to get better at,” said Erin Mote, CEO and founder of InnovateEDU. “We’re asking folks to build their own [CPL assessments and policies]. Everybody is doing something different. It doesn’t feel consistent or well articulated.”

Programs have made substantial efforts to make attending classes and engaging in courses more accessible, sometimes at the insistence of program sponsors. Jack Elsey, founder and CEO of the Michigan Educator Workforce Initiative, which supported Talent Together during its start-up phase, said that from the apprenticeship program’s launch, partner universities have been expected to offer all required coursework online. “For some, they already had that, or had started to go in that direction,” he said, but others “had to hurry up the timeline to get there, to serve everyone statewide.” Requiring online courses allowed apprentices across the state to attend the educator preparation program that best met their needs, regardless of where they lived. 

This philosophy of flexibility and accessibility plays out at the institutional level too. University of Nevada, Las Vegas (UNLV), for example, allows apprentices who live in Clark County, where UNLV is located, to attend classes in person while those outside of the county can attend fully online. Colorado Mountain College (CMC) similarly offers all coursework for its teacher degree apprenticeship remotely to ensure that apprentices who live far from a CMC campus can still participate. “The fact that I don’t have to drive forever-and-a-half to go to school is a huge plus,” said De La Rosa.

Shifting courses entirely online can be a big change for universities accustomed to the traditional, in-person model. Teacher preparation programs may have effective coursework for face-to-face instruction, but these practices might not translate well into online learning, explained Erin Crisp, assistant vice president for learner success and workforce pathways at the University of Tennessee. This challenge can be exacerbated by a lack of investment in high-quality online curricula, she said. 

Transitioning to a fully online model also requires IHEs to collaborate with school district employers in ways that may be new to them. When partnering with Nelson County Schools to design an apprenticeship for high school students, for example, faculty at Western Kentucky University (WKU) had to learn how to deliver a curriculum asynchronously. “We had to learn how to wrap that curriculum around a student in Nelson County, an hour and a half away, who may never come to Bowling Green. It has to [have] complete flexibility…and [requires] much closer coordination with the school districts. So that really challenged us,” said Dennis George, director of Special Projects/Workforce Solutions. When done successfully, however, this collaboration can yield benefits. Through its collaboration with the school district, WKU was able to ensure that class assignments and work products were aligned with students’ clinical experiences. This type of alignment helps prospective teachers apply what they are learning to their work in the classroom.⁵²

Other programs offer in-person courses in locations that are easier for apprentices to get to. For example, in North Carolina, one university offers classes on-site in the school district, which means apprentices learn with their cohort and avoid having to spend all evening on a computer after working all day. A 2012 study by the Center for the Study of Childcare Employment points out a key benefit of the cohort model: it can help teacher candidates persist and build a professional network with which to share best practices and address workplace challenges.⁵³ 

Educator preparation programs have also made changes to the structure of their coursework. Leaders from Dakota State University and CMC described shortening courses to accommodate the needs of working students. Both institutions have instituted eight-week courses in place of the traditional 15–16 weeks. This structure can promote greater persistence, as David De Jong from Dakota State told us. The abbreviated schedule also allows apprentice teachers to take more courses per academic year. “Our students are taking more courses in a semester than they ever have,” said Liz Qualman at CMC, “and we should see a speed up in completion.” Boosting persistence and completion rates is a win for apprentices, employers, and educator preparation programs. 

Teacher degree apprenticeship programs are rigorous. Apprentices work 30 to 40 hours a week and take courses while balancing family and personal obligations. Research on Grow Your Own (GYO), a locally driven teacher recruitment and preparation strategy that is increasingly paired with apprenticeship, finds that individuals benefit from comprehensive supports that help them navigate higher education, reduce financial barriers, prepare for licensure tests, and address challenges along the way.⁵⁴ Offering comprehensive student support is not a standard practice in higher education—as several interviewees noted—but is often embedded in workforce development programs. 

As Adamson at Missouri State University told us, “Workforce development has been able to help us think about… pieces that are important to these individuals.” She said, “Maybe it’s credit counseling, maybe it’s gas cards, maybe it’s transportation, maybe it’s child care—some of those pieces that we don’t always address and can support in higher education.” We heard similar sentiments from others, who view partnering with workforce development as a value-add that helps higher education consider and see the needs of the whole person.

Support also extends to navigating complex higher education systems. At UNLV, participants were clear about the features necessary to keep them in the program. One request was that they did not want to expend energy or time learning how the different offices at the university worked or dealing with burdensome tasks, like figuring out how to pay their bills. There is a whole team in UNLV’s program that handles those issues, which allows apprentices to concentrate on being students. Other services that participants asked for included financial aid, online classes, professional learning opportunities, and three years of post-program support. Varner argues that when programs provide these services, it reduces stress and makes the program doable for nontraditional learners. And UNLV has the results to prove it, with a 92 percent completion rate and over 90 percent retention rate in the first three years of teaching (based on licensing data), according to Varner.