One of the steps President Barack Obama wanted to take in increasing teacher effectiveness was to create residency programs that bring teachers to high-need schools. The administration's Race To The Top and Teacher Quality Partnership programs have provided funds to establish new teacher residency programs in school districts across the country. However, the president specifically promised to "supply 30,000 exceptionally well-prepared recruits to high-need schools,” and we have not found evidence the administration hit that mark.

The Teacher Quality Partnership initiative is more specifically aimed at expanding teacher residency programs than Race To The Top. Over the course of 2009 and 2010, 40 schools across the country received five-year grants. In all, the grants amounted to $142.8 million. According to the Department of Education, 28 of these 40 schools created or built upon teacher residency programs.

In Denver Public Schools, an existing residency program was expanded by an $8.2 million grant. The district is "currently training 40 teachers and looking to expand next year to 70 teachers,” said Teacher Residency Director Thalia Nawi. The program was initially funded by a grant from the Janus Eduation Alliance, but "the bulk of our funding really comes from the Teacher Quality Partnership grant,” Nawi said. "What we received from TQP was the opportunity to sustain and expand the work we're doing.”

In the program, teacher residents work with mentor teachers while taking courses at the University of Denver Morgridge College of Education. Nawi said the residency program is a "more clinically based model” that doesn"t isolate coursework from student teaching but instead looks at the link between the two.

A similar residency program was established in Richmond as the result of a $5.8 million grant the school district there received. At Virginia Commonwealth University, the four-year program brings resident teachers into local classrooms while they also take classes at VCU. Terry Dozier, the director of the Center for Teacher Leadership at VCU, said the goal is to have 80 teacher residents over five years. Currently, the program has nine residents and nine clinical resident coaches in the field.

Dozier said the residency program is "fully funded” by the Teacher Quality Partnership grant. "We would not have been able to do the residency program without the funding,” she said. Dozier said she feels residency programs are a "better way to both recruit and prepare teachers for urban settings.” She also said, as Nawi did, that the programs take into account both coursework and the actual practice of teaching.

In addition to the programs created and expanded by the Teacher Quality Partnership grants, Race To The Top has also helped to fund some teacher residency programs, including programs in Washington, D.C., Syracuse, Delaware and Nashville.  

President Obama has continued to support teacher residency programs through a variety of initiatives and grants. However, it is unlikely that these programs have brought "30,000 exceptionally well-prepared recruits to high-need schools.” We asked the Department of Education for information about the number of recruits, but the department provided no numbers. Obama has undoubtedly created more residency programs but without any evidence that the administration reached its goal of 30,000 recruits, we're rating this a Compromise.