College of Education Grant Initiative Empowers Future Educators for State Licensure Success

This year, new and emerging educators in Massachusetts will be better prepared for their licensure exams due to statewide partnership efforts led by faculty in the UMass Amherst College of Education and supported through a Diversifying Educator Workforce grant awarded by Gov. Maura Healey’s office and the Department of Elementary and Secondary Education.

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The $354,000 grant, awarded last July, provided needed support to future educators in Springfield, Holyoke and Lawrence public schools and teacher candidates at UMass Amherst and UMass Lowell in preparing for the Massachusetts Test for Educator Licensure (MTEL). The grant also supported the first cohort of the Teacher Quality Partnership Early Childhood Education paraprofessional licensure program, and the College of Education’s continuing efforts to collaborate with district partners and share resources with other educator preparation programs.

College of Education’s Beverley Bell, assistant dean of the educator preparation program, and Sandra Sarucia, educator preparation project coordinator, spearheaded the licensure preparation program that took place late last summer through early fall. Their goal aimed at combatting teacher shortages and enable more prospective educators of color for growing diverse student populations.

According to the Massachusetts Education-to-Career Research and Data Hub, the rate of diversity in the state’s student population grew three times faster than the rate of diversity in its teachers in a 12-year span. From 2011 to 2023, students of color rose from 32.9% to 45.7%, a 12.8 percentage point increase, while teachers of color increased only 3.6 percentage points, from 7.0% to 10.6%.

“The mission was to tackle the question, ‘How can we harness our experts in the field to support our future educators?’” says Bell, the grant’s principal investigator. “Our original intent was to bring together a community of educators to support new and emerging educators with a range of supports all geared to the taking of MTELs which are the final hurdle to becoming licensed.”

Sarucia, grant program manager, collaborated with public school-based and university faculty to identify, develop and facilitate multiple MTEL training workshops. Those collaborators included professor Stacy Szczesiul of UMass Lowell, Lynne-Ellen Garcia of Lawrence Public Schools, Valerie Williams and Roberto Ortiz of Springfield Public Schools, Christie Elman of Holyoke Public Schools, and colleagues at Westfield State University, Springfield College, Western New England University and Smith College.

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“The instructors of our courses were a combination of UMass Amherst professors, school district instructional coaches/teachers,” Bell adds. “The supports were provided mostly to teachers on emergency licenses, which expire soon, paraeducators trying to become teachers and teacher candidates at UMass Lowell and UMass Amherst.”

More than 150 participants in total engaged in support workshops for specific MTELs that partner districts identified as the most challenging for their educators with emergency licenses and those working on a waiver. Those tests included communication and literacy, early childhood education, foundations of reading and elementary curriculum math.

In-person synchronous workshops were held every Saturday in September in Springfield and Lawrence for educators in the partner districts of Springfield, Holyoke and Lawrence public schools. By the end of the fall semester, course instructors developed asynchronous webinar versions of the workshops for any Massachusetts teacher candidate to access on the MTEL & Resources webpages on the Educator Preparation Office (EdPrep) UMass Amherst website. 

All participants received vouchers to cover exam fees, which cost between $94 and $139 per test. Additionally, more than 100 current UMass Amherst students who are on a pathway to their license will be provided vouchers as well. Voucher recipients will have until September 2025 to register and take the test within one year of that registration.

The grant program also supplemented the $2.2 million Teacher Quality Partnership (TQP) Early Childhood Education five-year licensure program awarded by the U.S. Department of Education to the College of Education in 2023.

Grant funds provided summer and fall tuition, test vouchers and workshop training for the 11 candidates of the first cohort who are paraeducators in Springfield and Holyoke public school districts taking courses through the College of Education and University Without Walls Interdisciplinary Studies (UWW IS) to complete their bachelor’s degree and receive initial teacher licensure in early childhood education.

“This scholarship has helped me immensely in finally taking the step to get my degree. Although times are still tough, there is no way that I could have financially been able to even think about enrolling in UWW/Early Childhood program,” notes UWW IS student April Canuel, who is in the TQP program. “I also am extremely appreciative of the tutoring sessions for passing my MTELs and those sessions are really helping me to see how the test is set up and better strategies for taking it.”

Furthermore, the grant provided resources for partnership with Danielle Phillips, program coordinator at Paradigm Shift, a local education-based coalition that supports Black and Latinx paraeducators and teachers on a waiver to become licensed. The organization provided one-on-one mentor support for approximately 20 educators.

Culminating the grant initiative last fall, the College of Education Educator Preparation program hosted a daylong in-depth workshop for professionals on Culturally and Linguistically Sustaining Teaching (CLST) led by Raphael Rogers of Clark University. UMass Amherst faculty, program supervisors, staff and partnering licensure program coordinators from Westfield State University and Western New England University engaged in learning approaches to change programs and delivery models to ensure more culturally responsive and inclusive of diverse identities. 

“The value of having university faculty working with district teachers to prepare MTEL workshops goes beyond the three-month grant, and has developed relationships that impact our other work, as we look to more closely partner with our districts,” Sarucia says.