When Leonellys Rodriguez posed for pictures to celebrate her graduation from University High School in Newark, N.J., last month, her smile deserved to be extra wide.
Along with her high school diploma, 18-year-old Rodriguez received a conditional employment agreement from her district promising a full-time teaching job and a starting salary of $74,000—contingent upon her completing a bachelor’s degree and earning a New Jersey state teacher certification.
Rodriguez and the 30-some classmates of hers who received these conditional contracts are further along than many high school graduates toward completing a college degree, thanks to their participation in the Red Hawks Rising Teacher Academy—a grow-your-own, dual-enrollment partnership between Newark Public Schools, Montclair State University, and the American Federation of Teachers that aims to recruit and prepare students to become teachers and begin their careers in the district where they were students.
They also have the added incentive of knowing a teaching job with a solid starting salary awaits them if and when they complete their degree and certification requirements. Students were told the good news during their graduation ceremonies, although some of the students, including Rodriguez, had heard the news beforehand.
“It was still really exciting, because it’s a contract and, like, I have a job,” she said. “I can come back and teach in Newark.”
Roger León, superintendent of Newark Public Schools, sees the arrangement as a win-win.
“If we have students that become teachers, and then we hire them back as teachers, then that creates a self-sustaining community,” said León.
The district has struggled in recent years to keep up with teaching vacancies. In the fall of 2023, the Newark Board of Education reported a 78% increase in the number of multilingual students entering the district compared to the prior two years, leaving the district struggling to fill bilingual teaching positions and other hard-to-fill spots.
Creating an internal pipeline of teachers with high-achieving graduates from the district makes sense, but it runs counter to what young people from low socioeconomic backgrounds with high ambitions, like many students in Newark’s Red Hawks Rising Academy, tend to hear. Twenty-eight of this year’s 32 Red Hawks Rising graduates come from economically disadvantaged backgrounds.
“We’re told the only way to success is to leave your communities behind,” said Mayida Zaal, director and founder of the Red Hawks Rising Teacher Academy and an associate professor of teaching and learning at Montclair State.
In developing the academy, its founders sought to change that narrative.
“We asked ourselves: How do we find people younger, earlier on, who could imagine themselves returning to their communities to give back?” Zaal said.
A redesigned, more robust teacher pipeline program
The answer, Zaal and Newark district leaders hope, will come as a result of the robust grow-your-own program and tangible promise of a solid career and starting salary in one’s childhood community.
The current program stands in stark contrast to its former iteration from the early 2000s, which functioned as an after-school club that introduced students to requirements associated with becoming a teacher but offered few concrete steps toward reaching that goal.
The Red Hawks Rising program, which launched in the spring of 2022, requires a commitment that extends well beyond joining an after-school club. It’s offered to students at two Newark high schools: East Side High School and University High School. Teachers play a big role in nudging students to apply to the program, said León.
“All of these students have had an adult, a teacher, make a direct connection with them, which is extremely powerful,” he said.
Students apply in 10th grade and enroll as juniors, when they begin taking relevant education-related dual-enrollment courses, some on the campus of Montclair State. Enrolled students also shadow elementary teachers and other school personnel and, eventually, work in classrooms with students before they graduate from high school.
Building confidence for students to become college-bound
The program, which demands a level of maturity typically associated with college, offers specific supports to ease the transition.
Built-in tutoring helps the students adjust to the college-level course material, said Zaal, who added that she’s noticed how, over time, the students enrolled in the program become increasingly confident in their academic capacity.
Staying close to home and being able to commute to Montclair State for classes provides a level of comfort for many of the students, too, Zaal noted. To date, the program has graduated four cohorts of 95 students, over 90% of whom made post-secondary plans immediately after graduation.
When Rodriguez begins her freshman year as a full-time student at Montclair State this fall, she likely won’t experience those first-day jitters that many new college students face, because she’ll already be familiar with the campus, and with college-level work.
“In the beginning, it was a little hard to adjust from regular high school classes to college classes. But now I know that if you have a question, or you’re stuck on an assignment, you can always go to your professor for extra help,” said Rodriguez, who plans to major in journalism and English and possibly teach at the middle or high school level.
For Rodriguez and many of her classmates, the money saved by earning college credits paid for by the district provided another layer of confidence.
“Our parents don’t have to pay out of pocket for some of our courses, because we already have the credit,” Rodriguez said. “And I feel like that builds a lot of confidence, knowing they’re saving money on college credits.”
Dual enrollment known to increase college attainment, especially for students of color
Research shows that students who earn dual-enrollment credits in high school are more likely to complete a bachelor’s degree within four years, said Tatiana Velasco, a senior research associate at the Community College Research Center, or CCRC. Velasco led a 2024 study using national data to track, for four years, the higher education trajectory of students who took dual-credit courses in high school compared to students who enrolled in college after high school without any dual credits.
Differences are even stronger among Black and Hispanic students, according to the study results. The CCRC study found that, among students entering college immediately after high school, 29% of Black students with dual-enrollment credits in high school earned a bachelor’s degree within four years, compared to 18% of their same-race peers who hadn’t taken dual-enrollment courses in high school. A quarter of dual enrolled Hispanic students graduated college within four years, compared to 19% of their same-race peers who hadn’t completed dual-enrollment courses in high school.
These statistics aren’t lost on officials at Newark Public Schools, where 58% of students are Hispanic and 34% are Black. Among the district’s teachers, 35% are white, 35% are Black, and 25% are Hispanic.
Beyond the goal of recruiting teachers who look like the district’s students, Superintendent León stresses the importance of recruiting teachers who understand the lived experience of growing up in Newark—like Rodriguez and others who complete the Red Hawks Rising program.
“I do want to come back and teach in Newark. I’ve been living here for years,” Rodriguez said. “And I feel like me coming back here as a teacher will help the community.”