For districts, community colleges, teacher prep programs & state education agencies

The next teacher is already in your building.

Craft is the infrastructure under registered teacher apprenticeships and grow-your-own programs: braided funding, competency and clinical-hour tracking, and the reporting your state and accreditor accept. Bring your own academic partner or use WGU's School of Education. Built for districts, community colleges, teacher preparation programs, and the state agencies that fund them.

Start the Conversation See How the Offer Works

$0–low

Cost to your program when funding stacks line up

Federal funding streams braided into one program

National academic partner available on day one, or bring your own

Craft pathway dashboard mock showing a Paraprofessional-to-Teacher apprentice with clinical hours progress, WGU competencies, mentor check-ins, audit-ready status, cohort outcomes, and a braided funding stacked bar.

The retention problem

Recruiting teachers from somewhere else doesn't fix a shortage. It just delays it.

Out-of-town hires leave faster. Vacancies in SPED, STEM, elementary, bilingual, and CTE compound year over year. Long-term subs eat budget and instructional capacity. The retention math is brutal in any district, and it compounds fastest where the pipeline is thinnest.

The candidates are already there — paraprofessionals, classified staff, community members who know the kids by name, and students already enrolled in a prep program. What's missing is the infrastructure to credential them locally, fund the pathway, document competencies, and report on outcomes the state, your accreditor, and your funders need.

50%

Of US counties produce no new teachers, so if the pipeline is not built locally, it does not exist.

85%

Of teachers teach within 40 miles of where they grew up. Grow-your-own is how the teacher workforce already works.

Federal funding streams — CTE, WIOA, SAEF, and Title II — that you already qualify for, but rarely braid together.

The offer

Apprenticeship in a box.

A no- or low-cost grow-your-own offer for any district, college, or prep program that can't recruit its way out of the shortage. Built once, run anywhere. Four pieces, packaged together — the academic and credentialing side is solved on day one, with your partner or ours.

Braided funding

CTE, WIOA, SAEF, and Title II, layered with state GYO dollars and philanthropic funds where they exist. The dollars stay braided — and the next grant cycle is easier than the last one.

Turnkey pathway

Bring your own academic partner, or start with WGU's School of Education. Either way, roles, coursework, clinical structure, and competencies are defined on day one, paired with a pre-built implementation kit.

Mentor & competency tracking

Apprenticeship documentation that meets registered-apprenticeship standards. Candidate progress, clinical hours, mentor check-ins, milestones, and measurable skill gains — without your HR team operating the back office.

Grow-your-own reporting

State, federal, and intermediary reporting in one place. MSG exports, completion rollups, and partner-ready dashboards that hold up under audit and renewal — and make the next legislative cycle a layup.

Built once, run in any district, college, or prep program. Lower lift for HR. Easier to fund. Easier to renew.

Request the Implementation Kit →

Academic partner: yours, or ours

Have your own prep program or RTI provider? Craft runs the operational back office under it. Need a partner? We can help there too.

Most teacher preparation programs already have the coursework, the clinical model, and the accreditation. What they lack is the apprenticeship layer: braided funding, on-the-job hour tracking, mentor sign-offs, and the reporting the state and CAEP accept. Craft supplies that layer under your program, and apprenticeship strengthens your case on CAEP R1, R2, R3, and R5 rather than complicating it. For districts without a prep partner, WGU brings a nationally scaled, competency-based university with the largest US teacher preparation footprint. Either way, it is one conversation, not five.

Pathways available through WGU when you need a partner:

Para‑to‑Teacher (Elementary)Degree · WGU

Special Education (K–8)Degree · WGU

STEM Teacher ApprenticeshipDegree · WGU

Early Childhood EducationDegree · WGU

What Craft does

Five things we do — so a superintendent, dean, or workforce VP doesn't have to build a teacher pipeline from scratch.

Build from local talent.

Create pathways for people already rooted in the community — paraprofessionals, classified staff, instructional aides, career changers, and candidates already enrolled in your program who want to teach where they live.

Make the pathway fundable.

Districts, colleges, and prep programs all have access to funding streams, but the dollars are hard to braid and sustain. We align workforce, education, apprenticeship, and grant reporting so programs are easier to fund and easier to renew.

Reduce the operational lift.

We package the program structure, documentation, reporting workflows, and partner coordination needed to launch and manage pathways — without your HR team or your faculty building it all in-house.

Track what matters.

Data infrastructure for candidate progress, clinical experience, competencies, milestones, completions, and retention outcomes — in one place, ready for state, federal, and intermediary reporting.

Prove the impact.

Boards, legislators, and communities need to see what changed. We turn program activity into clear evidence: who entered, who progressed, who certified, who placed — and who stayed.

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A repeatable model, not a custom build.

Every new pathway should land on a kit, not a one-off lift for your HR director or department chair. That's the bar we hold ourselves to.

Talk to Our Team

Educator pathways

The licensure areas you can build pathways for.

Start where your vacancy hurt is worst — usually SPED, secondary STEM, or elementary. Most programs begin with one or two licensure areas and expand as the retention story compounds.

Elementary Education

Special Education

Secondary Math

Secondary Science

Secondary English

Early Childhood

Bilingual / ESL

CTE Educator

Agricultural Education

School Counselor

Reading Specialist

Para → Teacher

Diagram showing four federal funding streams — SAEF, Title II, WIOA, and CTE Perkins — braiding together into one program for your teacher pathway, audit-ready.

Braided funding

Four federal streams. One funded program. Zero spreadsheet archaeology.

A superintendent or dean could, in theory, braid SAEF, Title II, WIOA, and CTE on their own. In practice, they cannot. We align the streams, document the use of funds, and produce the reporting each one demands — so the dollars you braid this year stay braided next year. Where the pathway runs through a Title IV institution, Workforce Pell joins the stack.

SAEF — apprenticeship expansion funds for sponsor infrastructure and registered teacher apprenticeships.
Title II — educator preparation and recruitment funds for high-need districts.
WIOA — workforce dollars for participant tuition, supportive services, and wraparound costs.
CTE / Perkins — career and technical education funds for CTE-licensed and dual-role educators.

Get the Braided Funding 101 Brief

Why this matters now

Districts and prep programs don't need another short-term grant. They need durable local pipelines.

“We have a shortage.”

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“We have a pipeline.”

“We need to recruit from somewhere else.”

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“We can grow our own.”

“We have a GYO grant, but no infrastructure.”

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“We have a repeatable model we can manage, report on, and scale.”

Get started

Let's build a teacher pipeline in your district, college, or program.

Tell us about your hardest-to-fill licensure area and the candidates you already have — paras and classified staff on payroll, or students already in your program. We'll come back with a draft pathway, a funding map, and what the first 90 days look like.

Most discovery calls take 30 minutes. You'll talk to someone who has stood up teacher apprenticeships before — not a generalist.

Discovery call

Start the conversation.

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