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When Cierra Rivera applied to be a school aide at Texas’ Hutto Independent School District in 2024, she was told to consider applying for the district’s new registered teacher apprenticeship program instead.
Hutto ISD’s new program allows aspiring teachers to earn a bachelor’s degree in teaching — at no cost to the apprentice — while also getting paid to work alongside veteran teachers who are mentoring them in the classroom. In return, the apprentice agrees to work for the district for at least three years after completing the program.
As of October, Rivera is working as a special education aide while she takes online classes at Western Governors University to earn a teaching degree through Hutto ISD’s apprenticeship program.
“I probably wouldn’t have even thought about going into teaching and becoming a teacher if I didn’t have this opportunity,” Rivera said, adding that financial barriers to earn a college degree make it difficult to instruct full-time.
Apprenticeships gain momentum
Registered teacher apprenticeships, which receive federal funding through the U.S. Department of Labor, have boomed in school districts nationwide over the last three years and have often been cited as a new model for addressing teacher shortages.
In 2022, only three states had registered teacher apprenticeship programs through DOL. By 2024, 47 states had taken on the workforce model for educators, according to Deans for Impact, a nonprofit focused on improving pathways into teaching. The total number of teacher apprentices also surged from 356 to 3,884 between fiscal years 2022 and 2025, per DOL data.
Registered teacher apprenticeships surge nationwide
In January 2022, the department announced the approval of its first-ever registered teacher apprenticeship program with a partnership between Tennessee’s Clarksville-Montgomery County School System and Austin Peay State University.
Now, there are hundreds of aspiring teachers on the waitlist every year hoping to participate in Austin Peay State University’s registered teacher apprenticeship program, said Lisa Barron, interim dean at APSU’s Eriksson College of Education. The university’s first cohort began with 40 students.
“Perhaps the narrative is wrong,” Barron said. “Maybe it’s not that people don’t want to be teachers. Maybe we have created too many barriers to being a teacher, and I think higher ed has some responsibility in that, as well.”
But as interest in registered teacher apprenticeships grows, leaders advocating for the model are worried that some programs could become financially unsustainable, decline in quality or neglect districts’ voices when developing such initiatives.
Planning for sustainability
When the Washington Education Association first launched its Apprenticeship Residency in Teaching program in 2023a couple of years ago, the state superintendent’s office initially funded the program through emergency federal pandemic recovery dollars, said Jim Meadows, dean and director of WEA's Educator Career Pathways Center.
The program’s goal is to address special educator shortages by helping apprentices, most of whom are paraprofessionals, earn a teaching certificate with an endorsement in special education approved by the state. Candidates are required to already have a bachelor’s degree.
Now, the state primarily relies on a competitive DOL grant awarded through the State Apprenticeship Expansion Formula, Meadows said.
Federal funding plays a key role in sustaining registered teacher apprenticeship programs, he said. “External funds are often essential for incubating innovation, and it takes a while with programs like this to come up with braided funding models, funding streams, etc. that get you to the outcomes you want in terms of barrier removal for talented individuals entering the profession.”
Registered teacher apprenticeship programs have to be “really strategic” when they braid various funding sources from the federal, state and local level, said Valerie Sakimura, executive director at Deans for Impact.
Sakimura cited a recent Deans for Impact study on registered teacher apprenticeship programs in Texas, which found that nearly all of the studied programs were using funds from school districts and higher education partners. Additionally, 41% received funding from local workforce boards, 35% used state grants, and another 35% tapped into federal grants.
“It's really difficult, because education leaders are often unfamiliar with some of the labor-specific funding,” Sakimura said. “They may not have relationships with workforce leaders, and there's just this translation that needs to occur between education speak and labor speak.”
But once there’s a strong relationship built between education and workforce leaders, she said, programs will be able to leverage workforce dollars, which play a key role in sustainability.
Let states, districts take the lead
Where federal funding for registered teacher apprenticeship programs under the Trump administration is going is still unknown.
During President Donald Trump’s first 100 days in office, the U.S. Department of Education announced $600 million in cuts to “divisive” teacher training grants, including the Teacher Quality Partnership Program and the Supporting Effective Educator Development Grant. The cuts appear to have largely avoided impacting registered teacher apprenticeship programs, though it did hurt like-minded grow-your-own educator preparation programs — often spearheaded by nonprofits or higher education institutions.
Ideally, states should be given more opportunities to be lead applicants for federal grants in developing registered teacher apprenticeship programs, “as they have proven their ability to remove financial barriers and ensure a return on investment while being a good steward of taxpayer dollars,” said David Donaldson, founder and managing partner of the National Center for Grow Your Own. The nonprofit offers technical assistance for states and districts to launch their own registered teacher apprenticeship programs.
“The most successful grow your own and registered apprenticeship programs for aspiring teachers are led by states, not an individual university,” Donaldson said in an emailed statement. “This is due to a state's ability to serve more districts and thus candidates, focus on quality control and leverage economies of scale to negotiate with universities on cost.”
Another crucial piece for a successful apprenticeship program is that it ensures school leaders are equal partners, said Barron, of Austin Peay State University. Otherwise, “we see universities kind of miss their chance,” because “they don’t start with the district’s needs.”
