Clinical Practice Action Guide

Providing state support for building partnerships

While partnerships to build strong clinical practice experiences primarily bring together prep programs and districts, many states have found success offering funding, providing guidelines, or convening support to help establish and sustain these partnerships. In some cases, states have empowered nonprofit groups to help lead this work, often with the support of philanthropy.

Arkansas

Through the work of the nonprofit Forward Arkansas, Arkansas seeks to transform traditional teacher prep across the state. The organization partners with prep programs and connects them with other organizations to support their transformation. The work began through a two-phase competitive grant opportunity (the EPP [educator preparation program] Design Collaborative) to revamp teacher prep (including clinical practice), and 16 of the 19 prep programs in the state applied. Part of the grant included a comprehensive review by TPI-US, technical assistance from US PREP, and change management assistance from 2 Revolutions. The Collaborative selected eight programs to go through the first phase, with two programs ultimately selected for Phase II: Southern Arkansas University and the University of Arkansas at Little Rock. These two institutions worked closely with US PREP to help implement the institution’s local vision alongside research-backed quality components of educator preparation.

The following year, Forward Arkansas, in partnership with the Arkansas Department of Education, began to include all 19 prep programs in their Design Collaborative, which included quarterly convenings focused on addressing a problem of practice (on topics such as building strong district partnerships, mentor selection, and establishing observation cycles and using data to improve student teachers’ performance).

ForwardArkansas and teacher prep program leaders collaborate

Concurrent to this work, the state passed the LEARNS act, which includes a requirement for teacher candidates to complete a yearlong residency (which all prep programs must establish by 2027). This put greater onus on prep programs to focus on clinical practice and prompted Forward Arkansas to define best practices for residency programs with a focus on building strong partnerships (e.g., attention to mentor selection, establishing memoranda of understanding with strong district partners, establishing co-selection and placement of student teachers, collecting data and using it to drive improvement).

Forward Arkansas already sees the early benefits from this work.

A primary benefit is evidence of “true district partnerships, where EPPs and school districts are creating shared governance structures, engaging in deep collaboration around what the experience for candidates should look like, how candidates are placed with mentors, whether candidates are meeting the needs of schools and districts,” whereas previously these relationships had been more “transactional.”Ben Kutylo, Executive Director

Malachi Nichols, director of data and strategy at Forward Arkansas, and Ben Kutylo, executive director, offer several points of advice:

  • The optional but competitive grant model encouraged many prep programs to engage in this work and to help Forward Arkansas identify those programs that would be willing and eager to engage in an honest exploration of their strengths and gaps.
  • The process benefited greatly from having several organizational partners: TPI-US to provide a comprehensive and unbiased analysis of programs, US PREP to provide technical assistance, and 2 Revolutions to facilitate change management, all coordinated by Forward Arkansas.
  • The EPP Design Collaborative showed the value and potential of bringing the state department of education, philanthropy, and an independent education nonprofit together for a coordinated effort around a strategic challenge with the potential for system-wide impact.

Iowa

Iowa offers a sample Memorandum of Understanding template for their registered apprenticeships as a way to clearly communicate expectations and make it easier for programs to get up and running.

Massachusetts

Massachusetts built partnership requirements into its prep program approval guidelines. The state expects that prep programs have “intentional and collaborative PK–12 partnerships that benefit candidates/completers and schools/districts,” with explicit guidelines about meeting the needs of all candidates with a focus on those from systematically marginalized groups and backgrounds, addressing district needs, and gathering input from district partners to identify strengths and areas for improvement in the prep program.

Michigan 

Michigan emphasizes partnerships through several means. The state:

  • requires that prep programs and school districts build partnerships through their clinical experience requirements, detailing specific ways in which these groups must work together
  • uses Council for the Accreditation of Educator Preparation (CAEP) accreditation visits to conduct its own investigation of program quality, including joining interviews with district partners to ensure that programs are meeting the state’s expectations for building strong partnerships. This includes looking at criteria for cooperating teachers, the training provided to cooperating teachers, and how the program is working with partners more broadly
  • factors information about the quality of partnerships between prep programs and districts into Educator Preparation Institution Performance Scores, based on surveys to program supervisors and cooperating teachers

New Mexico 

New Mexico also uses its program approval process to look for evidence of collaboration between prep programs and districts, including whether partners meet regularly to discuss goals and whether the prep programs regularly evaluate the quality of the partnerships and make strategic improvements.

For its residency programs, in which the legislature heavily invests, New Mexico convenes communities of practice, comprising preparation programs and districts, that build a shared understanding and commitment around what high-quality clinical practice should look like. For example, the New Mexico Teacher Residencies community of practice co-created a document to guide decisions about teacher residency funding.

Tennessee

Tennessee not only requires prep programs to have a partnership with any local education agency (LEA) or charter management organization (CMO) where they place candidates for clinical experiences, they also require at least one “primary partnership,” which includes deeper collaboration on topics including:

  • Establishing a process for identifying and responding to LEA-identified areas of need.
  • Developing candidate selection criteria.
  • Designing and implementing clinical experiences.
  • Establishing the role of prep program faculty and LEA staff.

To facilitate these partnerships, Tennessee also offers a framework that details the three phases of partnerships and offers guiding questions and process considerations (e.g., how to share data, how to focus on continuous improvement). Each phase of the Tennessee framework is also accompanied by a set of tools and resources.