To establish these requirements, the Michigan Department of Education conducted a thorough review of research on clinical practice, reviewed examples of different approaches to clinical practice, and engaged with stakeholders including K–12 administrators, superintendents, and prep program leaders.
Accountability
In addition to using the Council for the Accreditation of Educator Preparation (CAEP) accreditation site visits (which occur every seven years) as a vehicle to conduct their own review of clinical practice approaches, the Michigan Department of Education also factors measures of clinical experience into prep programs’ performance score. The measure considers the diversity of student teaching placement schools, opportunities to work with diverse student populations, strength of the partnership between prep programs and school districts, and participation rates for the surveys that inform these scores.
Stipend for student teachers
Michigan now provides teacher candidates $9,600 per semester of student teaching (based on how many semesters their program requires). Anyone enrolled in a teacher prep program who is working toward teacher certification, is engaged in full-time student teaching, and meets a few other requirements (detailed here) is eligible (although candidates do not have to commit to working in a Michigan school). Two years into offering stipends, the state has established clear steps for implementation.
- Candidates use a student portal for the application: The state has been able to largely digitize this process. After candidates apply, the Michigan Department of Lifelong Education, Advancement, and Potential (MiLEAP) reviews their application and determines whether they are eligible.
- Institutions confirm enrollment and student teaching placements: The first year of the program, processes were slower and more burdensome for both the candidate and the district: student teachers had to print out a form to verify their student teaching placement, have their district sign off on it, and mail it back. Now the stipend program relies on teacher prep programs for this information. While the state is not currently tracking placement information, it could build out its data system in the future to do so.
- Stipends bypass student aid: Whereas some funds paid to college students result in a reduction in other loans or grants they’re receiving, this stipend is treated as entirely separate and has no effect on other financial aid the candidate receives. The state received guidance directly from the U.S. Department of Education affirming this practice, which it cites on page 29 of this procedures manual.
- Engage in a research partnership to evaluate results: The state is partnering with Michigan State University’s Education Policy Innovation Collaborative to examine questions including who is getting funding, whether those candidates earned teaching certifications, and how long they stayed in the classroom.
Advice
Advice on creating statewide requirements for clinical practice
The state shared several lessons it learned while developing and implementing these requirements.
- Offer flexibility: District administrators advocated for flexibility in how teacher candidates use clinical experience time. Teacher candidates must have a total of 600 hours of clinical experience, including an exploratory phase in which candidates can experience different grade levels and content areas; 100 hours for the apprenticeship, which should align with the candidate’s intended grade ranges and disciplines; and 300 hours for the internship, which serves as the traditional full-time student teaching experience. Candidates have another 200 “flex hours,” which they can allocate based on their needs or those of their district or institution. This could include time outside of the typical school day (e.g., working at summer camps, tutoring, parent engagement) and work with “materials of practice” such as analysis of classroom videos and student data.
- Emphasize strong district–prep program partnerships: The requirements detail multiple ways that prep programs and districts must work together, including co-constructing expectations for cooperating teachers and student teachers.
- Use accreditation process to examine clinical practice quality: Michigan programs undergo CAEP accreditation every seven years. Leaders from the state education agency attend these site visits and layer their own expectations and requirements on top of what the accreditors look for. The state listens to interviews with partners and reviews program materials such as training resources for cooperating teachers without burdening prep programs with a separate review process.
- Provide data to prep programs: To support programs’ ability to identify instructionally effective cooperating teachers, the state provides data back to prep programs about their alumni’s effectiveness in the classroom. This data is limited to early career teachers and includes overall evaluation ratings but not underlying data (e.g., a prep program does not have access to a teacher’s value-added scores or observation ratings). Because prep programs often seek cooperating teachers who come from and are familiar with their own programs, having this data about their own alumni’s effectiveness can help programs identify effective cooperating teachers. The state is able to give this data to prep programs because it feeds into its educator preparation institution performance score.
Advice on implementing student teacher stipends
- Streamline the student teaching verification process: The state simplified the process to reduce burden and focus on efficiency.
- Allow student teachers to substitute teach: Prior to offering stipends, many student teachers left teacher prep to become substitutes so that they could earn an income. Now the state explicitly allows teacher candidates to substitute teach as long as they separately complete their required hours of clinical practice. Many candidates who left to become substitutes or work under an emergency certification have returned to teacher prep since they can earn more money via the stipend.
- When basing a program on legislation, get clarification on its intent: As the state received questions from institutions, it found it helpful to get further clarification on the intent behind the legislation to ensure its implementation was in keeping with the spirit of the law.