An Earn-While-You-Learn Path Into Teaching

As a new academic year begins, teacher shortages remain a challenge for K–12 districts nationwide. Addressing those workforce needs will require long-term strategies, including building new pathways into the profession, researchers say.

A new report from New America’s Center on Education & Labor examines one such pathway: teacher degree apprenticeships. These programs allow aspiring educators to earn a paycheck while completing their degree and teaching certification.

Amaya Garcia, director of Pre-K–12 research and practice at New America, said the earn-while-you-learn model can make the profession more accessible for aspiring teachers who face financial barriers, particularly working adults and other nontraditional students.

“One thing we hear consistently is this idea that people don’t want to become teachers, and I think that statement is a little bit misleading,” Garcia said. “There are people who are in our communities and who are working in schools who do want to become teachers, but they face barriers, and some of these barriers include financial barriers.”

Who apprenticeships reach: Teacher degree apprenticeships have expanded rapidly in recent years. As of summer 2025, New America identified 157 programs across 44 states and Washington, D.C.

According to the most recent data from the U.S. Department of Labor, there are 6,275 active K–12 teacher apprentices nationwide.

The apprentices also look different from both the traditional college student and the existing teacher workforce. Three-quarters are between the ages of 25 and 54, and around two-thirds have not yet earned a bachelor’s degree.

Teacher apprentices are also more racially and ethnically diverse than the K–12 teacher workforce. Some 18 percent of apprentices identify as Black and 19 percent as Latino, compared with 6 percent and 9 percent of K–12 teachers, respectively.

Garcia said the findings suggest teacher degree apprenticeships could help narrow the demographic mismatch between students and teachers while expanding access to the profession for groups historically underrepresented in teaching. The programs can also provide a pathway for paraprofessionals and other school-based staff who already have experience working with students but lack teaching certification.

“Paraprofessionals, oftentimes, their demographics are closely similar to student demographics, so you’re hitting a lot of birds with one stone in a way,” Garcia said.

For working adults and other nontraditional students, Garcia said apprenticeships can also be structured to address barriers outside the classroom that can make completing a degree more difficult.

“People have to take care of their kids, so some of these programs have found ways to provide help towards things like childcare, transportation and other kinds of costs that come up along the way,” Garcia said.

Earn-while-you-learn models: The new analysis builds on earlier New America research examining the broader degree-apprenticeship landscape, which found access to such programs remains limited and uneven.

That study found that about 350 institutions nationwide offered nearly 600 apprenticeship programs integrated with associate, bachelor’s or master’s degrees, preparing students for 91 occupations. About one-third of the programs were in education, with teaching the most common occupation represented.

Garcia said much of the growth in teacher degree apprenticeships occurred during and after the COVID-19 pandemic, aided by temporary federal investments, including State and Local Fiscal Recovery Funds and Department of Labor apprenticeship grants.

But as those funding sources expire, programs are increasingly looking for more long-term ways to cover the costs of earning a degree and teaching credentials.

“They’re sort of shifting that approach because they realize that it’s not sustainable,” Garcia said.

She said some programs are combining funding sources, including Pell Grants for eligible apprentices, to reduce how much students pay out of pocket. Programs can also award credit for prior learning, allowing apprentices to receive academic credit for skills and experience they already have and potentially reducing the time and cost required to complete a degree.

“There’s these different connection points happening to make sure that the costs are coming and are being paid for by more than just the student,” Garcia said. “They are trying to minimize that financial cost as much as they can by being creative about the different ways that they fund things.”

Learning by doing: Garcia said teacher degree apprenticeships ultimately offer colleges and school districts an opportunity to rethink how aspiring teachers are prepared by more closely connecting coursework with their experiences in the classroom.

“Traditional teacher prep gets a lot of flak for being too theoretical,” Garcia said. “So this is an opportunity for them to actually work closely with the district and say, ‘What are the things that your students are experiencing in the classrooms that they’re working in, and how do we align our curriculum?’”

One area that needs more attention and research, Garcia noted, is mentorship for teacher degree apprentices.

“Part of what these programs hinge on is that you’re going to be paired with a mentor teacher who’s going to help you learn skills and competencies that are going to help you become better prepared for the job,” Garcia said. “Being a mentor teacher to an apprentice is very different from being a supervising teacher to a student teacher.”

That distinction makes how programs select mentors and pair them with apprentices particularly important, Garcia said, including whether candidates benefit from mentors who share similar backgrounds or characteristics.

Despite the clear benefits of teacher apprentices, Garcia said colleges and districts need to think more intentionally about how to integrate the model into existing teacher-preparation systems.

“There is a lot of opportunity there, but it’s just not something that we’ve traditionally done in teacher preparation,” Garcia said. “So really thinking about how you take advantage of what apprenticeships have to offer and mapping it onto teacher preparation—I think there’s still some work to be done.”

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