City Teaching Alliance

City Teaching Alliance (formerly Urban Teachers) reimagines teacher preparation and development to improve educational and life outcomes for children in urban schools, building a pipeline of culturally responsive, effective career educators who accelerate academic achievement and disrupt systems of racial and socioeconomic inequity. The Alliance has placed more than 2,500 diverse aspiring teachers into residencies across four cities as of the 2023-2024 school year, and their educator network has served over 400,000 public school students.

The Problem
Teachers are the most important school-based factor in education, and their diversity, preparation, development, and support directly impact short-term and long-term student outcomes. For example, a highly effective teacher can raise a child’s cumulative lifetime income by $80,000 per year on average, and educators of color positively impact near-term and future educational and social-emotional outcomes for all students. However, urban public schools have long struggled to consistently recruit, support, and retain diverse, well-prepared teachers, yielding starkly inequitable opportunities and results for our kids.

Pre-pandemic, underserved schools lost 20% of faculty annually, and novice teachers with little preparation tended to leave teaching at two to three times the rates of their peers (with 72% of novice teachers reporting that their programs did not prepare them to work in city classrooms, per one Temple University study). Additionally, the workforce share of Black educators declined in many major U.S. cities following the turn of the century, while Latinx educator share has lagged far behind student enrollment. Since COVID, the sector has navigated amplified academic and social-emotional needs alongside a widened teacher workforce gap – from even fewer candidates entering through quality preparation pathways, to current teachers weighing whether to stay or go in a profession now ranked #1 for burnout in U.S. Gallup polls. Responsive pipeline investments are essential to foster and scale educational equity.

The Solution
City Teaching Alliance is working to prove that deep, prolonged teacher support and community-specific preparation will result in increasing numbers of effective, inclusive, empowering career educators – and, this deep investment is sustainable for the sector. In 2010, they launched a uniquely comprehensive new teacher development model that bridges the divide between preparation and the classroom, paired with a financial model that grows earned revenue and reduces philanthropic reliance with program scale. Following strategic recruitment accelerated by their landmark Black Educators Initiative, Alliance teacher candidates engage in a rigorous, multi-year teaching pathway designed for urban schools and communities, including 1) a yearlong residency co-teaching alongside certified host teachers, with a three-year post-residency service commitment; 2) two years of practice-driven master’s degree coursework in partnership with American University; 3) three years of side-by-side coaching; 4) four years of wraparound support (from finances to mental health); and 5) full dual (content and special education) licensure only after multiple years of demonstrated classroom success. The Alliance model has produced promising teacher diversity, well-being, and preparation results – and with new adaptive recruitment, admissions, and access and affordability innovations in COVID’s wake, their enrollment is rising.