New report highlights Michigan’s strategic investment in Grow Your Own teacher programs

A new report from Michigan State University’s Education Policy Innovation Collaborative, or EPIC, examines Michigan’s ambitious investment in Grow Your Own teacher programs, an innovative approach designed to recruit and retain educators from local communities to address chronic teacher shortages across the state.

The report, “Grow Your Own Teacher Initiatives in Michigan at a Glance,” provides an overview of how Michigan has invested more than $275 million since 2021 to fund a portfolio of four key initiatives — Grow Your Own, or GYO, School Staff Grants; Talent Together; EXPLORE; and LAUNCH. These programs target a diverse array of participants, from current school staff and community members to secondary school students exploring careers in education.

GYO programs aim to address teacher shortages by developing teachers from within the communities they serve, increasing both the size and diversity of the state’s teaching workforce. “The research is clear: Educators tend to stay in communities with which they have strong ties,” said Jason Burns, EPIC research specialist and co-author of the report. “These programs are strategically designed to leverage those ties to strengthen local educational outcomes.”

The report highlights that the state’s GYO strategy is multifaceted, with each program addressing different aspects of teacher recruitment and retention:

• GYO School Staff Grants help districts work with existing school employees to gain teaching credentials.
• Talent Together, a registered apprenticeship, offers intensive support for candidates pursuing high-need certifications.
• EXPLORE introduces middle and high school students to teaching as a career path.
• LAUNCH provides high school students with education-related credentials and practical experience.

However, the recent budget proposed by the Michigan House of Representatives would eliminate all funding for GYO programs, which may derail early progress made toward alleviating the state’s teacher shortages.

“Grow Your Own programs work,” said State Superintendent Michael F. Rice, Ph.D. “Nothing is more important to students in the classroom than high-quality teachers. Grow Your Own programs have helped Michigan make progress toward Goal 7 in Michigan’s Top 10 Strategic Education Plan, which is to increase the number of teachers in areas of shortage. The legislature must provide stable funding dedicated specifically to addressing the teacher shortage instead of lumping this funding into block grants and forcing districts to pick and choose which programs to fund or, worse still, eliminating this funding altogether. Local districts would be reluctant to spend their scarce dollars on sending district graduates to teacher preparation institutions when there is no guarantee that they would return home to teach upon college graduation.”

Because earning a teaching credential can take time, EPIC researchers plan to closely examine Michigan’s GYO programs over the next several years to assess their long-term impacts. “These state-sponsored GYO initiatives mark a historically large public investment into different avenues of teacher recruitment and retention, and they hold a lot of potential to address our state’s chronic educator shortages,” said report co-author and EPIC Research Assistant Jennifer Moriarty.