Colorado Mountain College’s Teacher Apprenticeship, Stage by Stage

Colorado’s first registered teacher degree apprenticeship has state data behind its adult stage; the high-school front door is the least documented link, and the state program that paid for teacher-pathway college courses after 12th grade is being phased out.

Revised October 8, 2026. This article replaces a shorter version published earlier the same day.

On May 1, 2026, Justyne Terry became the first person to complete Colorado’s Teacher Degree Apprenticeship Program. She had been a kindergarten paraprofessional. She then spent her apprenticeship as a paid third-grade teacher apprentice at Wamsley Elementary in Garfield Re-2 while finishing her bachelor’s degree through Colorado Mountain College (CMC). The Post Independent reported in May that she would become a special education teacher at the same school this fall.[1]

Jobs for the Future (JFF) describes the CMC model as starting earlier than that. In a March 2026 report, JFF says the Registered Teacher Apprenticeship “starts in high school.” High school students take part in paid work-based learning through concurrent enrollment, and their credit and credentials “flow directly into the adult” apprenticeship.[2]

The public record on CMC shows something more useful for program developers: a carefully built adult stage with first-year state data, and a high-school stage that is much harder to document. One state mechanism for that stage is being phased out. The stakes are rural. In Colorado’s 2025-26 Educator Shortage Survey, 27.8% of 6,447 open teaching positions statewide were filled through shortage mechanisms such as emergency authorizations or long-term substitutes. In rural districts, the share was more than half.[14][11]

How the adult apprenticeship is built

The legal base. Senate Bill 23-087 created the Teacher Degree Apprenticeship as a route to a first Colorado teaching license. It combines a bachelor’s degree with structured, mentored training on the job. The program is registered with the State Apprenticeship Agency and approved by the Colorado Department of Education (CDE) and the State Board of Education.[4][5]

Three roles. The model splits the work among three partners:

• CareerWise, an apprenticeship intermediary, was the sole sponsor in 2024-25.
• CMC provides the related instruction: the degree coursework.
• School districts are the employers.[5]

CareerWise launched the pilot in January 2024 with a state Opportunity Now grant.[6]

Entry is a job, not an application. An apprentice must be employed as a teacher apprentice by a district, BOCES or charter school. They must be registered in the apprenticeship and enrolled in an affiliated bachelor’s program, and they must not already hold a bachelor’s degree.[4] Chalkbeat reports that candidates are first hired as long-term substitutes or under the apprenticeship credential.[8] CDE issues a teacher apprenticeship authorization valid for four years, renewable twice for two years each. The authorization lapses if the apprentice leaves the program or the degree.[4]

Hours and levels. Programs must log at least 4,500 hours of on-the-job training across five competency levels. Levels 3 and 4 each require at least 1,000 hours, and Level 5 requires at least a year as teacher of record.[4] For comparison, a Department of Labor-funded explainer says it “generally takes 6,000 hours” to reach the teacher competencies. It notes that programs aimed at paraeducators may credit prior experience.[15]

Pay. Programs must set “progressively increasing wages” tied to skills acquired. Districts set the actual scale.[4][8] Neither CDE, CMC nor the press coverage we reviewed publishes the dollar amounts.

The academic side. CMC reconfigured its calendar around the workday. Reported formats include evening classes, eight-week terms, and courses that are fully virtual and partly competency-based.[7][1][8] JFF reports that up to half of coursework hours can be job-embedded. It also reports that a CMC Mentor Teacher Endorsement trains and pays stipends to the district teachers who supervise apprentices.[3]

Cost. Chalkbeat reports no dedicated state funding; the goal is to graduate apprentices debt-free through federal grants and local scholarships.[8]

What the first year shows

CDE’s report on 2024-25 is the only official count we found. It lists 44 registered apprentices in five districts, all enrolled at CMC.[5] All 44 held paraprofessional roles that year: 31 in regular education and 13 in special education. Chalkbeat reports that most apprentices statewide were already in non-teaching school jobs before entering.[8] Their average age was 37, with a range of 20 to 66. Thirty-eight worked in pre-K through grade 5. All 44 began at Level 2, and five reached Level 3 during the year. CDE says retention and performance data are “not yet available.”[5]

Other public counts don’t match, partly because they measure different things at different times:

The first year points to a finding. Colorado’s documented apprenticeship is mainly a para-to-teacher route for adults who already work in schools. It is not yet a documented route from high school.

The high-school link

The public sources we reviewed say little about the high-school stage JFF describes. CDE’s data, CMC’s news releases and JFF’s own December 2025 profile do not report how many high school students take part, what pays them, or which credits carry into the bachelor’s degree.[3][5][7]

One teacher-pathway mechanism is visible. CMC advertises the Teacher Recruitment Education and Preparation program (TREP). It lets students in an educator pathway stay enrolled in their district for up to two years after 12th grade while taking college courses, and it can cover two years of CMC tuition.[9][10] TREP covers tuition but pays students no wages, so it is not the paid work-based learning JFF describes. We could not confirm how CMC’s high school component is organized or funded.

TREP is a useful warning for anyone designing a high-school stage. A December 2025 working group, whose members included CMC’s director of teacher education, reviewed it. The group found that 215 students had enrolled since 2022-23. About 4.5% of the students it tracked had earned a credential, mostly associate degrees and certificates. No student had yet reached a bachelor’s degree or a license.[11] The group recommended funding TREP through 2029-30. It also noted that Colorado lacks a data system linking enrollment, degrees, licensure and employment.[11]

The legislature went the other way. House Bill 26-1357, signed June 4, 2026, cuts TREP’s per-student rate for 2026-27 from $10,721 to $7,104. It bars new participants starting in 2027-28 and repeals the program.[12][13][18] With the program goes the requirement that CDE report TREP’s outcomes by July 1, 2031; the act repeals it along with the rest of the section.[12] Students already enrolled can finish, but no statutory outcomes report is now required for a program whose first possible bachelor’s completers were not expected until May 2026.[11]

Youth apprenticeships are also hard to scale. Chalkbeat reported in May 2026 that about 1,200 students have taken part in CareerWise programs across all industries, against a founding goal of 20,000 in the first decade; employers cited supervising teenagers, insurance and scheduling.[16]

What would show the pathway works

A pathway diagram shows that stages connect, not that people move between them. The evidence is a count at each stage, following the same group:

1. High school students who start the pathway
2. Those whose credit counts toward the bachelor’s degree
3. Those hired and registered as apprentices
4. Level progression each year
5. Degree completion
6. Licensure
7. Still teaching in the district after one year and after three

Most public reporting on CMC covers steps 3, 5 and 6, and the only completion reported in the sources we found is Terry’s, in May 2026. The Post Independent reports that about 35 apprentices are expected to graduate in spring 2027.[1] That cohort will be the first real test. Shortage relief is a separate claim. In our analysis, moving a paraprofessional into a teaching job can open a paraprofessional vacancy, so district staffing data is needed alongside completion counts.

Questions for a college designing its own pathway

This is Wavelength’s proposal, organized around where these pathways tend to break. It is not a validated instrument.

The high school stage

• What instrument funds it: concurrent enrollment, a youth apprenticeship or a fifth-year program? Who pays the student, and what happens if the funding ends?
• Which courses apply to the bachelor’s degree required for licensure, and not just to an associate degree?

Employment and authorization

• Which districts will hire apprentices, and in which roles? How many funded positions exist each year?
• What credential lets the apprentice work while enrolled, and what happens to that credential if they pause their studies?

Hours, wages and mentors

• Who keeps the hours log and signs off on each competency level?
• Is the wage schedule written down before recruitment begins?
• How many trained mentors does each district have, and what are they paid?

Sponsor model

• Will an intermediary sponsor the program, or will districts sponsor their own? Who carries the registration and reporting work?

Evidence

• Can the college track the same students across all seven stages above, including after they leave the college’s records?
• Who reports retention, and when?

CMC’s case shows the adult stage can be built: a sponsor, a degree reworked around the school day, paid positions, and state rules that count classroom hours. The stage usually drawn first, in high school, is the one a college controls least and the public evidence covers least. Build the back end first, and give every stage a count before calling the pathway “from high school.”