Think before you place: How clinical practice shapes career paths

It’s no secret (at least not to NCTQ readers) that clinical practice is a powerful lever for boosting teacher quality. It just makes sense: Practicing alongside a strong mentor sets novice teachers up for success. But new research shows that student teaching placements do more than build skills—they shape where teachers work and what students they work with.

A recent CALDER working paper by Dan Goldhaber, Matt Ronfeldt, and colleagues (2025) investigates two potential tweaks to student teaching—strategic placements and structured feedback—and how they influence teacher candidates’ employment outcomes. While neither intervention increased whether teachers were hired, both shifted where candidates landed in the field.

The first intervention—the “Placement Initiative”—matched candidates to higher-performing schools and mentors. Notably, these schools also tended to be more affluent and less racially diverse. The result? Those candidates were more likely to take jobs in wealthier, less diverse schools, even when they weren’t hired at their placement site. Survey data suggests the placement experience changed candidates’ workplace preferences, with candidates trained in affluent schools less likely to express interest in teaching students from low-income backgrounds. That’s a troubling sign: If it’s not a priority to place candidates in schools serving diverse populations of students, high-need schools may lose out on future hires. (Past research has found that student teaching in high-poverty schools makes student teachers more interested in taking jobs in those settings.)

The second intervention—the “Feedback Initiative”—gave candidates, mentors, and supervisors clear, comparative feedback during student teaching. Researchers emailed auto-generated reports to candidates, mentors, and supervisors after each evaluation cycle featuring tailored feedback drawn from observation rubric ratings, including average scores by domain, comparison to their candidate cohort, and areas of strength and concern. Mentor teachers and field supervisors were also asked to conduct at least one joint observation and debrief to reconcile rating discrepancies. In contrast, the business-as-usual feedback was less formal and not automatically shared with all stakeholders.

While the feedback didn’t shift overall hiring rates, it did boost the odds of student teachers being hired at their placement schools. Schools likely had better information and used it. Survey responses showed no change in where candidates wanted to work, indicating the shift was driven by employer decisions not candidate preferences. This suggests that structured feedback reports help schools make better informed hiring choices, making them a promising tool for districts to improve hiring outcomes.

The takeaway is clear: Student teaching isn’t just about preparation—it’s a pipeline. Placements shape teacher preferences, hiring patterns, and ultimately who gets taught by whom. Policymakers and programs need to think strategically about where candidates complete their student teaching placements, who mentors them, and how feedback is used—not just to grow talent but to ensure that teachers land where they’re needed most.