December 18, 2025
Colorado Mountain College’s Registered Teacher Apprenticeship shows how earn-and-learn pathways can address teacher shortages, reduce student debt, and diversify the educator workforce—while helping working adults complete their degrees faster.
Like many working students with families, Alaine Reiter has a lot on her plate. The second-year student at Colorado Mountain College works full-time as a full-time special education paraprofessional at an elementary school, has two children, and makes time for class work in the mornings and evenings.
“We still only have 24 hours in a day,” she jokes. “I keep asking for more, and they just won’t give it to me.”
But as a CMC student, Reiter is part of one of the nation’s first Registered Teacher Apprenticeship programs, which means her time spent teaching in the classroom is paid and counts toward her degree progress. Recruited into the program to help address regional teacher shortages, Reiter is on track to get her degree on an accelerated schedule and at a lower cost than a traditional bachelor’s degree program. When she completes her degree in May 2026, she’ll continue working in one of the state’s designated shortage areas, where teacher and special service provider vacancies have increased over the past year.
“Another route would have cost a lot more, taken a lot more time, and then I still would have had to take my education courses,” she says. “With this, I get to take my courses and apply it practically while I’m working. I couldn’t ask for better.”
The Registered Teacher Apprenticeship program puts CMC and Colorado at the forefront of a nationwide trend in education: opening new, earn-and-learn pathways to certification and employment. Aspiring teachers facing financial stressors can get their degree, certification, mentorship, and classroom experience without amassing more student loan debt. School districts are finding that apprenticeships can stem teacher shortages and draw a broader range of applicants to the field.
Since the state passed a 2023 bill establishing standards and implementation guides for apprenticeship, more than 80 students have enrolled in the program offered at CMC and sponsored by CareerWise Colorado, a nonprofit that facilitates apprenticeship connections between students and employers.
While the first cohort is still a few months away from completing their degrees, the early results from participants are in: the program is “a game-changer,” according to program director Liz Qualman.
The traditional path to a K-12 teaching license involves a bachelor’s degree, followed by student teaching on the path to certification. For full-time students, that can mean four years of study—and tuition payments—before they have the chance to begin earning a living. For part-time students who are balancing work and family, like Reiter, it can take even longer.
It’s an expensive model that has put careers in education out of reach for many learners, and Colorado’s numbers reflect that. The state has an ongoing teacher shortage, with more than 600 positions left unfilled in the 2023-2024 school year.
Apprenticeship programs can meet this moment in K-12 education, says Eric Dunker, chief growth officer of the National Center for Apprenticeship Degrees, because they recognize a simple truth: “There are millions of Americans that need to work first.”
Dunker and NCAD believe that apprenticeship degree programs should be a standard component of education pathways, and are working nationally to help scale programs like the one at CMC. “For some Americans, traditional higher education is serving its purpose,” he says. “But for the millions of Americans who have not been well served by the traditional higher education market, we believe the apprenticeship degree….should be the new normal for the working adult in this country.”
An apprenticeship degree doesn’t just help minimize student loan debt, Dunker says—although most students in the CMC program fully fund their studies through a combination of grants and scholarships. By combining work and training, the apprenticeship can free up more of the scarce hours each day that students balancing work, education, and family need. With up to half of the coursework hours classified as “job-embedded”—meaning half the time spent working in schools counts toward the degree requirements—students don’t have to fit in a full load of academics on top of a full-time job.
The success and growth of programs like CMC’s is going to push higher education toward a “tipping point,” Dunker says. By 2035, NCAD hopes to have 30 million active Registered Apprenticeship degrees across a range of sectors in place across the country.
The CMC vision of broadening access and affordability doesn’t just shift opportunities for the students in the teaching apprenticeship; it’s already shifting perspectives for Colorado’s K-12 students.
For years, the state’s pool of licensed teachers has not always reflected the demographics of the communities they serve. An eight-year assessment by the National Council on Teacher Quality found that while 45% of Colorado’s students identified as people of color, only 14% of teachers did.
It’s a systemic imbalance, one that drew Sergio de la Rosa to teaching in the first place. He’s getting a certification in culturally and linguistically diverse elementary education, and hopes that the apprenticeship program will bring other teachers like him into the field.
“I hope more people are able to find their way into a program like this,” he says. “People who are in a situation like mine, where you are trying to help the community, where you see the benefit in trying to develop the young minds around you.”
With the Registered Teaching Apprenticeships in place, however, CMC’s Qualman sees the opportunity to “diversify the teaching workforce in real time.” In the first cohort, 41% of apprentices identified as Latinx, compared to 10% of teachers statewide, and a survey of data from 17 of the state’s teacher training programs showed CMC with the highest percentage of program completers who identified as people of color.
“We are a very diverse school community—we have over 20 languages spoken,” says Jen Kral, director of alternative licensure for Colorado’s Morgan County School District, one of the first 11 partnering with the apprenticeship program. “So it’s really important for us to have educators that match our student populations.”
The mentorship component is also key to building that workforce. CMC was an early adopter of the state’s Mentor Teacher Endorsement program, which gives experienced educators formal training and stipends to serve as mentors for apprentices and other students in CMC’s education programs. The one-to-one support is critical for “getting apprentices to the finish line,” says Qualman, especially for student populations who’ve faced barriers to completing the traditional model.
Building on the momentum of the past few years, Colorado Mountain College and its partners are focused on growing a teaching workforce that recognizes and meets community needs. Priorities include expanding opportunities for women and women of color in apprenticeship pathways, which traditionally draw more male participants, and recruiting more male elementary-education teachers through the earn-and-learn model, which allows students who identify as the head of household—like de la Rosa—to continue providing family support while they obtain certification.
The program’s goals also align with NCAD’s vision of apprenticeship growth across the country; CMC hopes to raise its apprenticeship completion rates from 75% to 80%, beating national averages that hover in the 30-40% range.
Within the college itself, other academic departments are looking to the teaching program as a model for other opportunities in apprenticeship and the earn-and-learn model. It’s a goal that matches many of the apprentices’ hopes that more students like them will embrace this program and its possibilities.
“I absolutely believe that this is the future for postsecondary education,” says Reiter. “I hope this program continues for a long time, because it’s made so many of our futures wonderful.”
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