When this ends, we’ll smile sweetly, finally seeing - In testing times, we became the best of beings.

― Amanda Gorman

Awareness leads to action when you ensure engagement for those who are now aware of the high-quality model. This must be done intentionally. Continuing to engage EPP faculty, district partners and external stakeholders, e.g. local policy makers and philanthropic organizations in the process ensures continued commitment. In the US PREP transformed model the governance structures a provider has established serve as the institutionalized mechanism for continued engagement by all stakeholders. 

Be sure to highlight the improved data you’re seeing from candidate growth in the field and improved student growth for those taught by your graduates. Lean into the data to ensure you are meeting the needs of your district partners and the students they serve. Sustaining scale is implementing and frequently referencing the progress monitoring tool that you leveraged in step 7. 

In step 4 you determined how to reallocate funds, personnel, and processes to scale your program. As you sustain, there may be adjustments that need to be made over time. Particularly as you continue to plan, collect, move, analyze, visualize, and use data to inform programmatic adjustments. 

You’ve done the hard work of building capacity, now you have to maintain and build capacity as needed. Additionally, continually improving programming in response to the robust data that is now available will ensure you continue to make the most informed decisions about your program’s approach to candidate development. These new systems (e.g. data collection and visualization) and routine meeting structures need to continue to foster efficiency and productivity. Sustaining scale is memorializing these capacity building structures by updating job descriptions, syllabi, faculty handbooks, and making the transformed model you’ve developed the standard. 

Along with memorializing the structures to sustain talent capacity is ensuring the sustainable funding of your transformed model. Here you want to ensure that your program budgets have been reallocated to enable the implementation of the transformed components. These costs must become a part of the general operating costs. See step 4.

Bank Street’s College of Education “Prepared to Teach” offers additional resources and research on reallocation, reduction, and reinvestment of budgets within educator preparation programs and school districts to support high-quality preparation. 

The US PREP coalition is fueled by the connections made between leaders and faculty across the network of educator preparation programs. Learn more about the coalition and how you can get connected to our work together by visiting our website and our events page.