In school buildings across Texas, teachers are entering classrooms with varying levels of preparation. Some have completed traditional educator preparation programs at four-year institutions, while many others have completed alternative certification programs of varying levels of quality. Most alarmingly, as of 2024, 34% of newly hired teachers were uncertified—a new peak for the state. With more and more teachers entering the classroom underprepared with limited experience, the state started to experience higher attrition rates, and students paid the price.

Texas Tech University (TTU) redesigned the preparation experience to include a yearlong teacher residency, giving aspiring teachers new roles and deepening partnerships with districts. Previously, TTU offered more classroom preparation than many alternative certification programs, requiring candidates to participate in a conventional 6–12 week student teaching experience; yet program staff realized this was insufficient. Additionally, they acknowledged missing opportunities to create alignment in clinical experiences between school needs and candidates’ strengths or cooperating teacher capacity and experience.

So TTU took the lead and transformed how it trains and supports candidates and the districts they serve.

Driven by a need to produce more effective educators and increase the number of candidates who secure teaching jobs, the university launched Tech Teach and Tech Teach Across Texas, clinically intensive programs (housed at their flagship Lubbock campus and statewide, respectively) that prepare teachers for the profession and incorporate a yearlong, paid teacher residency in their final year. Through either a traditionally structured four-year program or a condensed three-year program, all candidates go through a yearlong residency that includes participating in all district- and school-level professional development, co-planning and co-teaching, and taking on additional responsibility as the year progresses.

TTU partners directly with school districts to establish “shared governance” structures. In these partnerships, university-based site coordinators work alongside district leaders to identify how TTU can best leverage its candidates to support the needs of the school. For example, they might decide which subject areas candidates are interested in specializing in or where districts may be experiencing shortages. These candidates, with the support and guidance of an experienced site coordinator and mentor, then have opportunities to lead classrooms and develop critical experience before graduating from their program. Not only does this strengthen the aspiring teacher, but it also increases the district’s capacity to deliver high-quality instruction to its students.

Having developed a model that works, TTU is now also home to US PREP (the University School Partnerships for the Renewal of Educator Preparation), which leverages the Tech Teach model and provides other teacher prep programs across the country with technical assistance and consultation to help them fundamentally transform their approach to clinical practice and preparation more broadly, to both improve quality and financial sustainability. As part of this work, US PREP helps prep programs establish partnership agreements with districts with clear roles and responsibilities and structures for frequent check-ins that are grounded in data and focused on candidate performance.

Clinical practice experiences under the Tech Teach model are tailored to individual school and candidate needs, meaning they can look different from school to school. Tech Teach, and by extension US PREP, offers several models for effectively leveraging candidates, such as using them as long-term substitutes, tutors, or even increasing class sizes and having candidates teach alongside their mentor teacher. In practice, this may look like leading a classroom one day per week as a substitute teacher, while spending the other days student-teaching under a mentor teacher.

Site coordinators, typically TTU faculty members, are crucial to this work. Most site coordinators are funded by the university (roughly a dozen are funded by districts themselves); live in the partner district; and coach teacher candidates, support mentor teachers, and manage the relationship between the university and the district. The university maintains a memorandum of understanding (MOU) with each partner district to ensure that all parties have clear expectations of partner responsibilities. The MOUs also facilitate more effective sharing of data so that all parties can track whether candidates are meeting district needs and expectations.

A 2022 TTU analysis found that students prepared by Tech Teach educators demonstrated stronger math performance than students taught by teachers who went through either a university-based traditional or alternative certification program, were from out-of-state, went through a non-university alternative certification program, or were certified through other means. Students taught by Tech Teach Across Texas educators achieved higher reading scores compared to their peers. Additionally, educators from both programs accelerated their students’ achievement, becoming more effective teachers sooner than those from other pathways. Notably, students of color, those from low-income backgrounds, students with disabilities, and English language learners all showed greater math improvement under Tech Teach educators compared to similar students taught by other teachers.¹