Texas’ largest teacher preparation program failed to show enough improvements on probation, so the state is moving toward revoking its accreditation, according to documents obtained by The Dallas Morning News.
Now the fate of Texas Teachers of Tomorrow is in limbo as it likely faces a lengthy trial to determine whether it can continue to certify would-be educators.
Any action taken against the company could trigger huge reverberations across Texas schools when the educator workforce is already stretched thin.
State officials gave the company several months to show it improved long-standing issues with how it prepares teachers for the classroom. But despite additional scrutiny over the past year, Texas Teachers of Tomorrow continued to deal with customer complaints, and the monitor tasked with overseeing its work determined the company failed to correct all problems.
Associate commissioner Emily Garcia informed company leaders on Nov. 18 that the Texas Education Agency found they didn’t meet the terms of their agreement to improve, according to a letter obtained by The News. The agency is issuing a recommendation to revoke its accreditation, she wrote.
The State Board for Educator Certification is set to hear an update on the company during their Friday meeting. The board members will have the ultimate say on what happens to the program.
Before that happens, the Texas Education Agency and Texas Teachers of Tomorrow are expected to present arguments before a judge in the State Office of Administrative Hearings. Such cases can stretch for months or years.
Teachers of Tomorrow CEO Trent Beekman said in a statement that the company believes it is in compliance with the law and its agreement with the Texas Education Agency. New leadership has dedicated additional resources to improving its operations, company officials said.
“Teachers of Tomorrow has worked diligently to completely update our process and procedures to demonstrate compliance with both the letter and the spirit of TEA’s standards,” Beekman said. “We will demonstrate that there were fundamental errors in the analysis of the compliance review data.”
Because of the process for contesting the agency’s findings, he declined to comment further.
“While discussions with SBEC progress, we remain committed to doing our part to alleviate the teaching shortage by training, preparing, and certifying future educators in Texas,” he said.
Should the company’s accreditation eventually be revoked, the program wouldn’t be able to produce state-certified teachers. Business can continue as usual in the meantime.
Of the state’s nearly 132,000 candidates in teacher prep programs in 2021, more than half were enrolled through Texas Teachers of Tomorrow.
The educator preparation company came under fire for misleading potential teachers with its advertising, not supporting candidates with required mentors and failing to demonstrate that its training was based in research, according to a 2021 state audit.
It was also the subject of an excessive number of complaints from teacher candidates, some of whom left the profession in frustration after receiving poor advice from company officials.
The News reported last spring on Texas Teachers of Tomorrow’s long standing issues that disrupted many would-be educators’ journey to the classroom.
Documents obtained through public records requests revealed that the Texas Education Agency in 2021 found the company — also known as A+ Texas Teachers — out of compliance in key state standards including admission, curriculum and governance.
And it wasn’t the company’s first troubling audit. In a 2016 review, TEA regulators found Texas Teachers of Tomorrow out of compliance in five of eight broad categories. The agency released a compliance plan at the time, and the company continued operating.
But this time, the State Board for Educator Certification decided to place Texas Teachers of Tomorrow on probation in July. They appointed a monitor to analyze operations and ensure the company hit certain benchmarks by the fall.
Teachers of Tomorrow operates across several states. The for-profit program recruits many people in search of a second career and trains them on how to be an educator through primarily online coursework.
Texas Teachers of Tomorrow enrollment neared 70,000 last year. Fewer than 6,000 people completed the program and fewer than 5,500 gained their full teaching certification, according to self-reported data.
Too big to fail?
Texas Teachers of Tomorrow has hired new leadership, and officials pledged to tackle the problems head-on. When the educator certification board voted to place the company on probation over the summer, its former interim CEO Ignacio “Nacho” Giraldo told members: “We’ve been working very diligently since we found out about the audit.”
But the monitor found Texas Teachers of Tomorrow fell short in several categories, according to documents obtained by The News.
For example, TEA staff identified 350 candidates going through the program and sought evidence that they had sufficient field-based experience. But the company only “provided sufficient evidence” for 79% of the sampled candidates. It needed to hit a 90% threshold, according to the agreement between the state and company.
TEA staff also noted that the company did not prove that all candidates spent enough hours observing classroom settings as part of their training.
And while TEA determined that the company provided evidence that the vast majority of sampled candidates were assigned a mentor, Texas Teachers of Tomorrow could not prove that enough of those mentors were trained or qualified for that role.
“TEA staff determined that [the company] provided evidence that the mentor reported the candidates’ progress to the field supervisor for only 15% of the sampled candidates,” according to the report.
Depending on the outcome of the expected administrative court hearing, the State Board for Educator Certification could eventually vote to revoke the company’s accreditation or give them another chance to correct their problems.
Until such a vote, the company will remain on probation and teacher candidates can continue working toward the classroom.
If a program’s accreditation is revoked, it means that it can not continue producing certified teachers.
Lingering problems
The company had 19 formal complaints with TEA last school year, more than all other educator prep programs, according to documents posted ahead of Friday’s meeting. The complaints were related to processing issues, non-responsiveness and lack of support.
Over the summer, SBEC members also learned that 18 candidates weren’t able to earn full teaching certifications because they completed their “internship year” entirely online last school year.
Teacher candidates are not allowed to do virtual internships or virtual observations.
“That was a confusion on our part and our interns’ part,” Giraldo said at the time, adding the company was working with impacted candidates.
Jodie Zeyer was one of them.
She started working with Texas Teachers of Tomorrow in 2020, plodding through coursework and tests — without a mentor, she said. She was eventually hired for a virtual position in Leander, teaching social studies to middle schoolers.
Zeyer expected to earn her full certification in the summer of 2022, the culmination of a grueling year-and-a-half of work that she juggled alongside caring for her own children.
Instead, she was stunned to learn that she would not become a certified teacher after all.
“For Texas Teachers to apologize and say oops with a mild reprimand seems more than unfair,” she wrote in a letter to state education officials, explaining her situation.
She now substitute teaches occasionally but plans to move on from the profession. She is still waiting for accountability, she said.
“I lost 18 months of my life,” Zeyer said.
The DMN Education Lab deepens the coverage and conversation about urgent education issues critical to the future of North Texas.
The DMN Education Lab is a community-funded journalism initiative, with support from The Beck Group, Bobby and Lottye Lyle, Communities Foundation of Texas, The Dallas Foundation, Dallas Regional Chamber, Deedie Rose, Garrett and Cecilia Boone, The Meadows Foundation, The Murrell Foundation, Solutions Journalism Network, Southern Methodist University, Sydney Smith Hicks, Todd A. Williams Family Foundation and the University of Texas at Dallas. The Dallas Morning News retains full editorial control of the Education Lab’s journalism.
