What is Education Specialist

The rural teacher residency (RTR) program at California State University – Chico was a program funded by a Teacher Quality Partnership (TQP) grant from 2010-2015. The RTR program prepared teachers through partnerships with four school districts in the rural region of northern California. This residency program was designed to provide targeted training and experience in co-teaching, action research, professional learning communities, and collaboration. In addition, RTR faculty hoped to impact the retention of teachers for hard-to-staff schools such as those with underserved students and/or in rural settings. The purpose of the chapter is to briefly overview the design features of the RTR program and to describe the qualitative data analysis of an evaluation of the program (i.e., focus groups, survey, observations/interviews) at the conclusion of the grant funding cycle.