How a Residency Partnership Increased Applicants by 5000%
In one year, Virginia Commonwealth University’s RTR Teacher Residency increased their applicant pool in one school division (Virginia’s name for districts) by 5000% — from an average of six applicants in previous years to over 300. What made the difference? In 2023, VCU and Prince William County Public Schools (PWCS) advertised a groundbreaking new residency offering: A $43,000 salary, plus comprehensive benefits.
“It’s not that people don’t want to go into education—It’s that they don’t want to go into debt,” Kim McKnight, Ph.D., Director of the Center for Teacher Leadership and Executive Director of RTR at VCU said. “It was really encouraging to see such a big increase in applicants.”
According to the program website, the RTR Teacher Residency program prepares teachers for high-needs school settings in 16 partner school districts across the state of Virginia. Pre-service teachers (called residents) spend the entire school year working alongside a mentor teacher, gradually taking on more teaching responsibility. In exchange for RTR paying for the VCU academic degree, residents agree to teach for three years in a high-needs school after graduation from the program.
For the last 14 years, RTR has provided hundreds of residents with a fantastic residency model that included free tuition. What was great became even better when Shelby Elliott, Human Resources Supervisor for Certification and Compliance at PWCS, approached Kim to expand RTR to Northern Virginia. Shelby knew the power of RTR and had been diligently working with colleagues to find ways to pay residents from standard funding streams in the division. Now, says Shelby, she doesn’t even need to advertise the program: “I get emails and phone calls from paraprofessionals and external candidates weekly asking, ‘How do I get in?’”
Of course, this transformation didn’t happen overnight; it was the result of deep collaboration between VCU and PWCS. The two teams held meetings, shared ideas, and discussed possibilities with one another to ensure that the decisions made were mutually beneficial and ultimately in service of PK-12 students, teacher residents, and mentor teachers. “We’re really thankful to Prepared To Teach, because they have been a big driver for us in how to start these conversations around the idea that residents need to earn while they learn,” said McKnight, one of Prepared To Teach’s first collaborators.
The partnership decided that the division would pay for resident salary and benefits, while a combination of VCU funds and grants would cover resident tuition costs, test preparation, and testing fees. Additionally, mentor teachers receive a $4000 stipend funded by PWCS, and newly graduated residents receive coaching through the division during their first two years as teachers of record.
After learning alongside an accomplished mentor teacher for a year, residency graduates agree to work in a high-needs school in the district for at least three years, providing even more support to schools that need it most. All partners agree that the benefits residents provide schools and students during the residency year and beyond more than justify the costs.
Tags: AACTE partner organizations, program improvement, school-university partnerships
