Program Benefits

Print this PageSend to a Friend

UTC’s Value-Add to Districts

Urban Teacher Center (UTC) recruits outstanding candidates, equips them with state-of-art training, and links their certification to demonstration of effective teaching practices and real student academic performance.

UTC helps to improve student performance in your schools through:

• Effective human capital resources. UTC teachers do more than fill vacancies. All UTC teachers are:
  • Trained to support student performance in schools in need of improvement
  • Trained to use data to inform teaching practice
  • Dually certified in general and special education
• Teaching and learning supports for schools. Schools hosting UTC residents during the training year will receive teaching and learning supports and structures, such as:
  • Small group reading intervention support
  • Access to the public practice of teaching
  • A readily available substitute pool that knows the school, faculty and students
  • Nominal stipend for host classroom teachers

• Cadres of accountable, effective teachers. A team of four to six teachers who:
  • Have successfully passed the highest bar in the nation to earn full certification
  • Are deeply trained in content and pedagogy
  • Are dually certified in general and special education
  • Have demonstrated ability to improve student academic performance
  • Are willing to stake their success on the success of their students
  • Open their classrooms as lead learners to publicly demonstrate teaching practice to colleagues in the building or colleagues from across the district for professional collaboration and development.
     

UTC as a Long-Term District Partner for Human Capital Support

Our goal is to expand the number of effective teachers in high-need schools across districts. Over time, UTC teachers will be among the most expert and results-oriented in the district, assuming leadership roles and making the public case for better teacher preparation and accountability.

UTC sustains and extends effective teaching across the school and district by:

• Tracking effectiveness. UTC tracks various impact metrics over time, including student achievement and clinical practice performance targets, principal satisfaction, leadership roles of UTC teachers in schools and the district, and retention of teachers through five years.
   
• Helping create a new model for instructional leadership and data based diagnosis and decision making for high-need schools. By improving teaching practice and promoting results-oriented models, UTC links accountability to school-based professional development tailored to the needs of individual teachers.
   
• Helping create new models for promotion and evaluation for school districts. As UTC graduates move into leadership positions and promote results-oriented models, districts can solve broader human capital needs. UTC accountability processes and systems are linked to professional development, curricular and instructional decisions, diagnostic assessments and knowing what to do with data collected, as well as hiring, promotion retention and tenure decisions. Ultimately, this can lead to district adoption of a results-oriented strategy for building a pipeline of effective new teachers and assessing the effectiveness of existing teachers.