In 2016, with the support of the Joyce Foundation, Education First released Ensuring High-Quality Teacher Talent, which made the case for strong, bold district-teacher preparation partnerships and provided ten recommendations for building them. The report was favorably received, and was shared and used widely by districts, teacher preparation programs, states and foundations, among others.
Since the report’s release, we’ve seen partnerships flourish nationwide. States have begun to require and incentivize partnership work. Districts and teacher preparation programs—several of which we have been working closely with—are implementing the recommendations and considering how they can prepare more candidates of color for K-12 classrooms. And funders are investing in partnership models. As these partnerships have progressed, partners have shared that they want to learn from one another in new ways. This toolkit seeks to do just that. Through a series of conversations, we identified steps partners could take to implement the original ten recommendations with a focus on a diverse teacher pipeline, and through the generosity of our interviewees, collected over 50 tools from the field. This toolkit is the result of that work.
The toolkit is designed primarily for districts and teacher preparation programs who want to launch new partnerships or partner more effectively with one another, but we encourage use by states, funders, technical assistance providers and others looking to strengthen teacher preparation pipelines.
