The Marshall Teacher Residency produces high-quality teachers who represent the communities they serve. For six years, we’ve partnered with schools across California to build sustainable pipelines of diverse, ready-on-day-one teachers. With each new school year, our impact grows.
We cannot address the challenges facing American schools without improving teacher preparation. These challenges, including America’s persistent teacher shortage, are intimately bound to the ways in which we prepare teachers for the profession.
Powerful teacher preparation blends theory, practice, and mentorship to produce teachers who are prepared on the first day they teach and every day thereafter; who represent the communities they serve; and who persist in the profession to lead classrooms that are student-centered, data-driven, anti-racist, and supportive of the whole child.
What We’re Doing
Case Study: Strengthening Teacher Retention
Finances are one of the biggest barriers for aspiring teachers. Our residency is an affordable and supportive pathway to a professional career for teachers who would not otherwise be able to enter the profession.
Marshall Residents who persist into their first year of teaching assume zero cost for our program, ensuring that finances are never a barrier for those who dream of becoming teachers.
We also remove other barriers that limit access to quality teacher training. For example, we don’t use college GPA as part of the admissions process. An applicant’s mindsets about students and education are better indicators that they possess the attributes of a powerful teacher: a belief that all students can be successful, a commitment to learning and growing as anti-racist educators, and a growth mindset.
But these aren’t just any teachers entering the workforce for the first time. These teachers are knowledgeable and well-prepared for the realities of the classroom. They are more likely to represent the communities they serve and to stay in the profession.
Nationally, about 45% of teachers leave within their first five years in the classroom, and only 50% of new teachers in high needs schools continue teaching beyond three years. Because a teacher’s effectiveness improves with experience and professional development each year, when a teacher leaves, students and their learning suffer. This trend is especially pronounced in high needs schools — such as those we primarily serve — and hard-to-staff subjects, where teacher turnover is higher than average.
Of our 2022–23 residents, 65% identify as people of color, 26% identify as male, and 16% identify as non-binary. Nationwide, only 21% of teachers identify as people of color.
Recent data available from the National Center for Education Statistics indicates that though more than half of the public school student population is composed of students of color, a full 79 percent of the teacher population is White.
Students who have teachers and school leaders who reflect their identities experience increased academic outcomes in both the short and long term. Improved academic outcomes are associated with enhanced life outcomes, affecting earnings, economic mobility, employment, and civic engagement.
Others are taking notice of our commitment to diversity, equity, and inclusion, as well as to innovation, measurement, and continuous improvement. The National Center for Teacher Residencies awarded the Marshall Teacher Residency its prestigious Black Educators Initiative grant, honoring the work of the Residency to recruit, develop, and retain Black educators. The California Department of Education and UC Berkeley selected the Marshall Teacher Residency as one of only eight California teacher education programs to join an equity-focused cohort of program leaders. Through action research, participating programs collaborated to improve the experiences of residents of color across the state by employing and generating research-based practices.
We are committed to ensuring our residents are representative of their school communities. The commitment is reciprocal: Our residency allows school partners to intentionally develop a homegrown pipeline of excellent teachers. For example, Alliance College-Ready Public Schools is a nationally-ranked public charter school network of middle and high schools serving families in Los Angeles, California. To strengthen their schools, Alliance is growing their own pipeline of high-quality Math, English, and Science teachers. For 2023–24, Alliance has partnered with Marshall Teacher Residency to host 10 Marshall Residents, recruited entirely from the Alliance community, including instructional assistants, parents, and alumni. Alliance chose to partner with Marshall Teacher Residency for its high-quality, established residency model coupled with its flexibility in adapting to a partner’s school context.
We’ve gained accreditation for two of the most highly needed teaching areas in CA — Special Education (Education Specialist) and Elementary Education (Multiple Subject). In 2023–24, we are launching our first Multiple Subject residency cohort to strong demand: one-third of total applicants are applying to the new programs. We are also piloting a first-of-its-kind Education Specialist residency at Summit Public Schools and Green Dot Public Schools focused exclusively on inclusive classrooms. The program will expand to more partner schools the following year.
The demand for our program isn’t coming just from new teachers. Our partner schools share our core values and appreciate the clinical experience and mentoring the residency provides.
We built our comprehensive residency for aspiring teachers with the Stanford Center for Assessment, Learning and Equity (SCALE). Our program places hands-on practice, data-driven learning, collaboration, and mentorship at the heart of the year-long experience.
Unlike traditional teacher preparation programs, our residents are immersed in the classroom with constant and intentional opportunities to learn, do, reflect, and grow with support from their cooperating teacher and program mentor. Residents are in the classroom six to eight hours per day, for four full days per week throughout the one-year residency, working with their cooperating teacher to co-plan, co-teach, and hone their craft. This preparation amounts to well over 1,000 clinical hours, far above the California Commission for Teacher Credentialing (CTC) requirement of 600 clinical hours.
Outside of the classroom, residents work with faculty to master credentialing coursework and apply it directly to their experience in the classroom. All coursework is designed to be integrated into the clinical experience, leveraging performance tasks like case studies, cycles of inquiry, and portfolios. Mentors and faculty support coherence between the coursework and clinical experience.
“I strongly believe in the “learn by doing” philosophy, so I think spending the day in a classroom and picking up gradual responsibility is essential for helping me develop as a teacher. I also like engaging in other teacher responsibilities at my site, such as faculty meetings and collaboration groups, as it helps me feel more integrated with the community.” — Marshall Resident at Capuchino High School in San Mateo Union High School District, 2022–23
“I strongly believe in the “learn by doing” philosophy, so I think spending the day in a classroom and picking up gradual responsibility is essential for helping me develop as a teacher. I also like engaging in other teacher responsibilities at my site, such as faculty meetings and collaboration groups, as it helps me feel more integrated with the community.”
— Marshall Resident at Capuchino High School in San Mateo Union High School District, 2022–23
Why is this important? Numerous studies show that poor teacher preparation leads to teacher attrition within the first several years of teaching. Teacher preparation that is focused only on theory and disconnected from real school contexts doesn’t adequately prepare teachers for the reality of the classroom. Conversely, strong mentorship and intentional, substantial experience in the classroom — experience that’s directly connected to residents’ training — lead to greater retention.
of Marshall residents pass the edTPA, signaling their readiness to teach. The national pass rate for the edTPA is only 72%.
CTC staff who examined our program touted Marshall Teacher Residency’s commitment to diversity and unwavering standards of excellence.
Marshall residents earn their teaching credential by achieving two measures of quality: the Marshall Teacher Residency performance bar and the edTPA, a national performance assessment. The external assessment of the edTPA validates our internal assessment of resident performance.
School leaders who host our residents are also enthusiastic about the quality of preparation. They all believe that residents stand out among their peers, serving as teacher leaders at their school sites. Additionally, after completing the program, residents themselves feel prepared and ready to teach on day one.
Residents train in an environment reflecting shared values, including that schools be anti-racist: engaging in deep self-reflection, practicing culturally responsive teaching methods, and investigating inequities in the educational system. Aspiring teachers experience these methods and approaches as residents, before applying them in their own classrooms.
“I feel like I, as a student, am prioritized and valued within the coursework experiences. The Marshall Teacher Residency staff practice equitable engagement strategies to foster an anti-racist environment where everyone’s contributions are valued, and high expectations are held for all. Data from [formative assessments] and student work are used to inform instruction, and we regularly refresh on topics of confusion for students.” — Marshall Resident at Summit Denali in Sunnyvale, California, 2022–23
“I feel like I, as a student, am prioritized and valued within the coursework experiences. The Marshall Teacher Residency staff practice equitable engagement strategies to foster an anti-racist environment where everyone’s contributions are valued, and high expectations are held for all. Data from [formative assessments] and student work are used to inform instruction, and we regularly refresh on topics of confusion for students.”
— Marshall Resident at Summit Denali in Sunnyvale, California, 2022–23
Hosting Marshall Residents enhances partner schools’ ability to fulfill staffing needs and improves teacher retention over time — for example, Summit Tahoma, whose faculty consists of 18 general education teachers. In just a few years, the teaching faculty at Tahoma changed from low retention to high retention. From 2017–2023, seven out of eight hires from the Marshall Teacher Residency have stayed and have had a direct impact on overall faculty retention.
“Over the years, Marshall Residents significantly increased the diversity of our faculty. They are well prepared to teach in the Summit system, and embrace the required commitments.” — Jonathan Stewart, Summit Tahoma School Leader
“Over the years, Marshall Residents significantly increased the diversity of our faculty. They are well prepared to teach in the Summit system, and embrace the required commitments.”
— Jonathan Stewart, Summit Tahoma School Leader
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