President Obama made a campaign promise to "create Teacher Residency Programs to send teachers to high-need schools." In 2012, we rated this a Compromise, because no specific numbers were available.

Four years later, the numbers are still muddled.

The Teacher Quality Partnership (TQP) is a grant program that "will create model teacher preparation programs to grow the pool of quality new teachers." It has two main tracks: the Teacher Residency Program (TRP) and the Pre-Baccalaureate program. Between the two, there have been 15,000 graduates, according to the U.S. Education Department.

In the Teacher Residency Program, an experienced teacher mentors a novice teacher in a classroom setting. In addition, the novice teacher also takes courses toward a master's degree.

Both the Teacher Residency Program and the Pre-Baccalaureate programs are nontraditional pathways to becoming a teacher, but the Pre-Baccalaureate program is not a residency program. Therefore it is hard to say exactly how many are in the residency program versus the Pre-Baccalaureate program.

As we said in the last update of this Obameter promise, 40 schools across the country received five-year grants over the course of 2009 and 2010. Out of those 40 schools, 28 of them created or built upon teacher residency programs.

But only two of the 2016 Teacher Quality Partnership grantees were teacher residency programs, pledging to train 90 candidates total.

Race to the Top also contributed to the number of recruits in residency programs, but less so than TQP.

States involved in Race to the Top experienced mixed success in ensuring that high-poverty and high-minority schools had excellent teachers and leaders. Three District of Columbia residency programs received grant awards that graduated 161 teachers into 15 public schools and charter schools, according to the Education Department.

However, many Race to the Top states supported other alternative certification programs that "placed hundreds of teachers in high-needs schools and subjects, such as special education, mathematics, and science."

The Education Department also said that 22,000 teachers were provided with training and/or professional development from the Supporting Effective Educator Development (SEED) federal grant.

However, of the programs given SEED grants in 2015, only the National Center for Teacher Residencies specifically outlines in their program abstract anything about residency programs, saying they'll train 450 new teachers.

Obama promised to "create Teacher Residency Programs to send teachers to high-need schools." His administration did create residency programs, but the number of recruits is still unclear. We continue to rate this Compromise.