Do widen your human capital pipeline.
Great schools, whether traditional, charter, micro-, or otherwise, need great teachers. If schools want to do something different, the teachers must deliver it. Most teacher education programs today gear their curriculum toward traditional public schools, with the vast majority of graduates taking jobs in that sector. Nothing nefarious is going on there; traditional public schools constitute the biggest sector of the American education system by far, and teacher training programs want to place graduates in jobs. Tailoring their preparation to the largest employment source makes sense.
In fall 2023, I published a paper titled “Surfing the Pipeline” that looked at the state of teacher preparation for alternative education models. When polled, 87 percent of teachers felt prepared to teach in a traditional public school, while 74 percent felt prepared to teach in a private school and 67 percent felt prepared to teach in a charter school. Only 34 percent felt prepared to teach in a microschool.
In that paper I also looked at traditional teacher- and leader-preparation programs in four choice-rich states: Arizona, Florida, Vermont, and Wisconsin. I found zero degrees, programs, or courses related to microschooling at any university in Florida, Vermont, or Wisconsin. In Arizona I identified one degree-granting program, two non-degree-granting programs, and two courses related to microschooling.
Leaders in the charter school sector realized that if they wanted to do something different, they would need different teachers, or at least teachers with different preparation. To address this challenge, the sector created new institutions of teacher preparation geared toward the needs of charter schooling.
KIPP, Achievement First, and Uncommon Schools collaborated to found Teacher U at Hunter College in New York City. In 2011, Teacher U spun off into a standalone school, the Relay Graduate School of Education. Founders of both Teacher U and Relay wanted to prepare teachers for the real world of teaching in a way that they believed traditional preparation programs did not. Current students now number more than 4,000 teachers and 1,200 school leaders.
Other training programs have emerged in various locations. The Aspire charter school network in California created a residency-model teacher-preparation program that now, through a partnership with Alder Graduate School of Education, grants master’s degrees to prospective teachers. Match Charter Schools in Massachusetts created the Match Associate Teacher Program, a one-year apprenticeship for new teachers. And the YES Prep schools in Texas offer the Teaching Excellence in-house program for alternative certification.
Charter schooling also leaned heavily on Teach for America for staffing. TFA’s founding ethos was disruption of the status quo, a philosophy it shared with the charter movement. Wendy Kopp and TFA’s other early leaders believed that existing preparation pathways were not fit for purpose and that a more streamlined, focused approach could deliver teachers of equal or better quality. Many TFA corps members served in charter schools. Microschooling could follow in charter schooling’s footsteps and create teacher- and leader-preparation programs specifically tailored to microschools. It could also work with the few existing pathways that align philosophically with the microschooling approach, such as the Prep Microschool Entrepreneur Fellowship at Arizona State University, which helps prospective microschool leaders launch new schools.
