The University-School Partnerships for the Renewal of Educator Preparation (US PREP) National Center is a comprehensive, multi-organizational collaborative with the mission of attracting, training and retaining high quality, racially diverse teachers for underserved communities across the country. The ultimate goal of the coalition is to positively impact K-12 students by building teacher candidate content knowledge and competency to meet ALL students where they are and advance their learning by giving them what they need —especially focusing on historically underserved students; such as Black, Latinx, Native American, and/or economically disadvantaged students.

In US PREP, coalition members share common teacher preparation program goals. Members are committed to: 

A TOOL FOR COLLECTIVE LEARNING

In order to accomplish its mission, coalition members came together to collectively develop the US PREP Developmental Framework, a tool that will allow programs to monitor their development towards achieving the goals listed above. According to Sarah Beal, US PREP Executive Director, members recognized the need to create a tool that would allow them to monitor how programs were progressing towards the key goals. It was very important to have representatives from each of the universities serve on the development team as they not only had first-hand experience with improving their programming, but they also understood the importance of scaffolding changes over time.

The development process was very collaborative. Participants met virtually several times each month over a six month period and had ample opportunities to generate content for the framework and give feedback. “The process was very transparent, professional, and inclusive. It strengthened my ability to understand other colleagues' perspectives across academic cultures and orientations. Having an extensive background in evaluation and assessment, I can assert that the framework is precise and serves as a roadmap for any institution to use to move from one level to another,” said Dr. Jennifer Wallace, Jackson State University.

The Framework will allow providers to monitor their progress towards sustainable, transformed programming, and will allow the coalition to learn from one another. US PREP’s technical assistance is differentiated based on each members’ developmental level in accordance with the Framework, which helps each university to reach their goals.