NCTR NEWS

This week, several NCTR team members attended The Data Playbook: Data Practices for Purpose-Driven Work, presented by Markets for Good and the Charles and Lynn Schusterman Family Foundation. This webinar serves as a thoughtful introduction on how to use data and access the Data Playbook resource to help organizations think about how to measure and communicate outcomes, make smarter decisions, and boost overall capacity and impact. Check out the podcast and highlights here.

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The U.S. Department of Education, in conjunction with the National Board for Professional Teaching Standards and ASCD, hosted a Teach to Lead Summit focusing on inclusion, equity, and opportunity in Chicago last week. Approximately 27 school teams from across the United States attended the Summit to work on equity and inclusion projects identified through a proposal process. NCTR Program Director Kathlene Holmes and Program Manager Erica Hines served as critical friends for two of the teams, to support and challenge them as they worked to create a logic model to further define their project's goals and potential outcomes. Participants were also able to practice pitching their project, offer constructive feedback to other school teams, and network with one another at the Summit.

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This week, NCTR's New Site Development team is in Kansas City, MO with the Kansas City Teacher Residency and in Saint Paul, MN with the Saint Paul Urban Teacher Residency for Institute 1 of the Year 2 New Site Development Program. The NCTR team is visiting residency classrooms to observe both programs in action, and helping the programs to prepare their graduate hiring strategy and timeline so as to maximize graduates' impact in their local schools.

A new report released by the San Francisco Teacher Residency (SFTR), “Beyond Brochures: Practicing Soul Care in the Recruitment of Teachers of Color", draws from case studies with NCTR Network Partners Seattle Teacher Residency and Boston Teacher Residency to identify barriers to entry for teachers of color. The gap between students and teachers of color is widening, with more than half of public school students identifying as youth of color as compared to only 18% of teachers. In addition to identifying causes for this gap, SFTR also proposes recommendations to remove barriers to the profession for potential teachers of color, including increasing the number of district-university partnerships, such as teacher residency programs, and providing financial incentives to teacher preparation programs to diversify their candidates.

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Partnerships to Uplift Communities (PUC) Schools - The Alumni Teach Project was featured both in The Hechinger Report and The Atlantic for its success in recruiting teachers of color to take teaching positions in the schools they attended while growing up. Upon graduating from high school, students receive a letter signed by the co-founder of PUC Schools, Ref Rodriguez, which reads, “We need people who look like we do, who come from our neighborhoods and who understand what it is like to be the first, to become role models for future young people."

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The Dallas Teacher Residency's partnership with Texas A&M University-Commerce was highlighted in a recent Learning Policy Institute report, The Teacher Residency: An Innovative Model for Preparing Teachers. The report notes, "Although some states have offered financial support for residencies, very few have legislation specifically targeting the development and implementation of residency programs. One exception is Texas, whose state legislature offered a competitive $1.29 million grant to Texas A&M University-Commerce in 2013 to implement a teacher residency program, from which the first cohort matriculates in 2016."

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Xavier University officially announced their partnership with New Schools for New Orleans to create the Norman C. Francis Teacher Residency, a program designed to address several challenges facing the teacher pipeline in New Orleans, including increasing teacher diversity, quality, and retention. The program has two goals: transforming teacher preparation and developing a local pool of talented teachers that are more reflective of the students attending New Orleans public schools. The announcement was covered in several news outlets, including The New Orleans Advocate, WDSU News, and WWNO. The Norman C. Francis Teacher Residency is in its first year of New Site Development with NCTR.