A Virginia Commonwealth University program that trains future teachers and places them in hard-to-staff schools has lost its federal funding, the program’s founder said.

VCU’s teacher residency program, called RTR , has lost most of a $9 million federal grant, said Terry Dozier, who created the program in 2011. Since its inception, RTR has produced nearly 400 teachers who have committed to work in schools that struggle to hire educators.

The impact of the funding cut is unclear. Students currently in the program will be able to graduate this year, but its fate next school year is in question, Dozier said. Though the project receives state and local funding, the federal piece is a significant source of revenue.

“There is great concern,” said Dozier, who retired from her position as director of VCU’s Center for Teacher Leadership .

It is just one of many cuts President Donald Trump’s administration has made to education, DEI and health research initiatives throughout the country. VCU was not given a specific reason why the program would stop receiving funding, Dozier said.

Michael Porter, a spokesperson for VCU, said the program grant has broad support but did not answer questions about its other funding sources.

“We are committed to working with multiple partners to ensure this program continues,” Porter said.

Pictured in 2018, NaQue Walker, left, and then-19-year veteran Sheila Mosby taught a math class at Cool Spring Elementary in Petersburg.

When it started in 2011, it was called the Richmond Teacher Residency program, and it was a partnership between VCU’s school of education and Richmond Public Schools. The concept: place a student teacher, or “resident,” in a middle or high school classroom for an entire year to train under a master-teacher. The residents meet in seminars to discuss what works and what doesn’t. After they graduate, they are supported by career coaches for the first two years of their career.

The residents’ tuition is paid for, and in exchange, they commit to work in a hard-to-staff school for three years. The program’s first federal grant, awarded in 2010, was for $4 million over five years. In its first year, there were 10 residents who earned graduate degrees to teach.

The problem with most student-teaching programs, Dozier said, is that they begin in the middle of the school year, and the student-teacher never sees how the master-teacher sets expectations at the beginning of the year. Teachers who arrive ill-prepared are less likely to stay, costing the school division money when it has to continually recruit new faculty.

Ultimately, the program became a big success. Some residents stayed at their schools for years longer than they were required. Young students learning from RTR teachers performed better than students at comparable schools whose non-RTR teachers had similar levels of experience.

RTR grew to more than 100 residents headed to 23 different school districts, including Petersburg and Henrico County. Prince William County alone funded 100 residents to become teachers there.

Elementary and special education were added to the program, and so were student-teachers earning bachelor’s degrees. Reflecting the expanded mission, the program’s name was abbreviated to RTR. The program dispelled the notion that no one wants to teach in a hard-to-staff school, Dozier said. They just need the right preparation.

In 2014, Sen. Tim Kaine, D-Va., said RTR could be a model for the rest of the nation to emulate.

In 2016, then-U.S. Education Secretary John B. King Jr. spoke with Terry Dozier, director of VCU’s teacher residency program, at Elkhardt-Thompson Middle School.

Last fall, RTR received a federal grant of about $9 million for five years of work. Because the grant cycle just began, RTR stands to lose most of the $9 million, which pays for residents’ tuition and stipends for master-teachers. The university, school districts and the state match the federal funding. In the two-year budget Gov. Glenn Youngkin signed last year, the state earmarked $2.2 million for the VCU teacher residency program.

VCU was notified of the funding cut Feb. 7, Dozier said, the same day cuts were made to other diversity, equity and inclusion-related programs.

Without federal funding, it is unclear if the program can continue next year, Dozier said. The residents currently enrolled will graduate this spring, and VCU was in the process of interviewing applicants for next year’s class.

“It would be incredibly reduced if it can survive,” said Dozier, noting how the cut could exacerbate teacher shortages in Virginia. “We know we’re preparing teachers that are highly effective. That’s why it would be a disaster for our kids to take that away.”

Part of the RTR program also set to lose funding is the VCU x CodeRVA lab school, in which high school students at the CodeRVA magnet school learn coding and other computer science skills taught by master-teachers and VCU residents, The Washington Post reported.

Lab schools were a signature initiative of Gov. Glenn Youngkin, and the state has approved more than a dozen applications from colleges across the state to operate them. The university has 30 days to appeal the cut, the newspaper reported.