Built Like an Apprenticeship | The Rise Report | Issue 28

A 9News feature this week followed Mary Hoynacki — a former attorney who traded the courtroom for the classroom to teach English at Aurora Central High School — and the improbable path that led her there. Hoynacki was named Resident of the Year by the Public Education & Business Coalition (PEBC), and her story puts a human face on a model that's quietly changing how Colorado staffs its hardest-to-fill classrooms.

The idea is simple: put aspiring teachers in real classrooms alongside mentors, and take cost off the table so the people who'd be great at the job aren't priced out of training for it. PEBC's residency is tuition-free, and its first-in-the-nation Pay for Success financing flips who carries the risk — investors fund the upfront training, and districts repay only when residents complete the program, earn their license, and stay in the district for three years. Philanthropy helps close the rest of the gap: the residency also draws on the Boundless Opportunity Scholarship, administered by the FutureRise Fund, which put a $70,000 award toward direct scholarships for residents last year — part of a $1 million round backing nontraditional students across four states: Colorado, New Mexico, Utah and Wyoming. The early signs hold up: PEBC's residency reports a completion rate over 90%, and it's built to recruit and retain diverse teachers for the rural and high-need schools that struggle most to staff their classrooms.

It's teacher preparation built like an apprenticeship — learn on the job, with the financial barriers engineered out — and that same logic runs through the rest of this week's issue.

Now a registered apprenticeship. On Colorado's Western Slope, Colorado Mountain College and CareerWise Colorado launched the state's first registered teacher degree apprenticeship — a formal earn-and-learn pathway where learners work in their own school districts alongside mentors while completing a bachelor’s degree and licensure, no unpaid student-teaching semester required. The program drew roughly 60 apprentices in its first year — well past its target of 40 — across nine districts in CMC's mountain region, and earned an Apprenticeship Colorado Partner award last fall. A similar bet as PEBC's residency, this time structured as a registered apprenticeship.

And the country is watching. Our friends at New America are out with a pair of pieces arguing that earn-while-you-learn degree apprenticeships can ease two of the nation's most stubborn workforce shortages — and both echo the Colorado models above:

A remedy for the health care talent crisis — pairing paid clinical work with coursework to widen the nursing and allied-health pipeline for students who can't afford unpaid clinicals or full-time study.

Living up to its promise — on teacher degree apprenticeships, and what it takes (strong sponsorship, sustainable funding, real support) for them to deliver on affordability and a more diverse teacher workforce.

Schools are writing AI rules before they know the destination. In his most recent op-ed, Scott Laband, president of Colorado Succeeds and senior advisor to FutureRise argues that school districts have raced to regulate AI – 34 now have school guidance, with 70-plus bills introduced this year – without answering the prior question: what do students actually need to learn to succeed over a lifetime? His answer leans on employers: rather than asking schools to guess what the labor market wants, employers should help define the destination – the durable human skills like judgment, problem framing, and critical thinking that outlast any single tool – and let that standard drive the rules. Otherwise, as he puts it, “policymakers will continue writing rules without first agreeing on the destination.”

Look for misfit, not fit. The standard advice to find your college "fit" asks 17-year-olds to name what they want — which most can't. My Future U. co-host and friend Michael B. Horn suggests flipping it: hunt for deal breakers instead. People short on experience are bad at describing what they want but sharp at spotting what they don't — and with nearly 40% of students not finishing a four-year degree within six years, ruling out the wrong environments is no small thing. He's built a free College Feature Selector that helps students pinpoint which features — geography, size, academics, campus life, purpose — repel or attract them, finding where you don't belong as the path to where you can.

Colleges on the hook for dropouts? The Heritage Foundation released a model bill this week for state lawmakers pursuing higher-education reform, designed to codify the Administration's higher-ed compact at the state level. Its most novel provision is a "risk-sharing" mechanism: a public college would have to repay part of a student's federal loan debt if that student — one flagged at admission as unlikely to graduate, based on test scores and grades — still hasn't finished within eight years, with states setting the thresholds and percentages. The bill reaches well beyond financing by proposing bans on DEI offices and race-based scholarships, institutional-neutrality mandates, and a lower foreign-gift reporting threshold.

The Rise Report welcomes updates from our colleagues across Colorado. Think of this as your one-stop-shop for conference updates, new research + reports, job postings, and career moves.

MACRO × Common Sense Media will host a free event on August 18 exploring how to better align K-12 and postsecondary CTE programs around digital literacy and student well-being. The event will be held at the IBEW Local 68 Lodge in Denver from 8 a.m.–1 p.m. — with breakout sessions, legislative updates, and a tour of the DJEATC training center. Register for free.

Southern Colorado Startup Week. From August 24-28, join founders, entrepreneurs, investors, innovators, students and community leaders as Southern Colorado comes together to celebrate innovation, build meaningful connections and launch the next generation of great companies. Events will be held in Colorado Springs, Florence, and Penrose. Register here.

Application Deadline Extended for New America Future of Work Reporting Fellowship that supports place-based journalism on how public and private investment is reshaping economic opportunity. The application deadline is now September 4.

Reaching Gen Z, a webinar with Apprenticeships for America and Skills Jam will explore how to use social media to recruit young people into skilled-trade apprenticeships. In fact, recent campaigns drove 466,000 Gen Zers to explore careers and generated 3,600+ apprenticeship interest forms. The webinar will be held on September 9 at 10am MT. Register.

Scaling Apprenticeships in the Public Sector will explore a new report from Apprenticeships for America on public-sector apprenticeship. The presentation and roundtable conversation with leaders running successful programs will be held on September 23 at 10am MT. Register.

The Career-Connected L/Earning Conference will be held from October 29–30 at The Antlers Hotel in Colorado Springs, with over 60 breakout sessions and panels bringing state and national leaders together around the future of career-connected learning: touching on the future of work, how to design quality career advising and navigation, building talent pipelines for advanced industries, and community colleges as critical connectors. Learn more and register.

Who has the time? It’s the question just about everyone reshaping our higher education and workforce systems keeps asking. Colorado’s own Sarah Ancel has an answer — a new book with co-author Dr. Vanessa Keadle, Who Has the Time?: Overcoming the Capacity Constraints That Stand Between You and Your Goals — a short, pragmatic guide to what’s really behind our capacity constraints and the tools for working through them.

On August 27, 4:00–6:00 p.m., Katie Zaback and Melinda Karp are hosting an informal celebration with Sarah at Bonacquisti Wine Company in Denver. Come for a glass of wine, celebrate Sarah, and spend time with friends and colleagues from across Colorado’s higher education community. RSVP here if you can join.

Until next week,

Alison