Institutional Service: Augustus F. Hawkins Centers of Excellence (Hawkins) Program

Overview

The Hawkins Program is critical in enabling the Department to meet its goal of supporting a diverse teacher workforce to improve student opportunities, achievement, and outcomes, and address the educator shortage, by providing expanded access to comprehensive, high-quality, and affordable educator preparation programs.

There is significant inequity in students’ access to well-prepared, experienced, and effective teachers, particularly for students from low-income backgrounds, students of color, children or students with disabilities, and English learners (ELs). Providing all students with consistent access to well-prepared, effective, and diverse educators who provide high-quality instruction and support is essential to closing opportunity and achievement gaps. Teachers who entered the profession through the least comprehensive teacher preparation pathway are two to three times more likely to leave their school or the profession compared to those who entered through a comprehensive pathway. Research demonstrates that high rates of turnover harm student achievement, and that the quality of a school’s leadership is among the most important predictors of teacher turnover, with more effective principals being more likely to retain their best teachers. 

Through the priorities in this competition, the Department seeks to encourage HBCUs, TCUs, and MSIs to propose projects that are designed to increase and retain the number of well-prepared teachers from diverse backgrounds; increase evidence-based, comprehensive pre-service clinical experiences through teacher preparation programs; and increase the number of bilingual and/or multilingual teachers with full certification. 

This notice contains two absolute priorities and two competitive preference priorities. 

Absolute Priority 1: Projects that are Designed to Increase and Retain the Number of Well-Prepared Teachers from Diverse Backgrounds. To meet this priority, an eligible applicant must propose projects that are designed to increase the number of well-prepared teachers and the diversity of the teacher workforce with a focus on increasing and retaining a diverse teacher workforce, and improving the preparation, recruitment, retention, and placement of such teachers. 

Applicants addressing this priority must describe: 
(a) How their project will integrate multiple services or initiatives across academic and student affairs, such as academic advising, counseling, stipends, child-care, structured/guided pathways from teacher candidates’ first year in the preparation program through successful employment placement, career services, or student financial aid, such as scholarships, with the goal of increasing program completion and credential attainment; 
(b) Their plan for identifying and supporting teacher candidates from backgrounds that are underrepresented in the profession, including teacher candidates of color. This plan must span the beginning of the preparation program through graduation, and include a plan to improve program entry rates, as applicable, graduation rates, passage rates for certification and licensure exams, and rates of successful employment placement between teacher candidate subgroups and an institution’s overall teacher candidate population; and 
(c) Their proposed initiatives to promote the retention of teachers from backgrounds that are underrepresented in the profession, including teachers of color, prepared through the program, which may include induction programs, such as teacher or school leader induction programs, or mentorship programs that provide school and district leaders with the support they need to persist in their professions. 

Absolute Priority 2: Increase Evidence-Based, Comprehensive Preservice Clinical Experiences Through Teacher Preparation Programs. 

To meet this priority, an eligible applicant must propose projects that are evidence-based   comprehensive teacher preparation programs that provide extensive clinical experience. Applicants with existing programs must describe their record in graduating highly skilled, well-prepared, and diverse teachers and describe how the proposed project will refine or enhance existing programs. Applicants proposing new programs must describe how their new program is evidence-based and designed to achieve the intended outcomes of the Hawkins Program. 

Competitive Preference Priority 1: Increasing the Number of Bilingual and/ or Multilingual Teachers with Full Certification.

Competitive Preference Priority 2: Applications From New Potential Grantees