Study Finds UTEP's Miner Teacher Residents Outperform K-12 Teachers Statewide
Graduates of the UTEP program also boost student learning, stay in classrooms longer
EL PASO, Texas (Oct. 1, 2026) – Teachers prepared through The University of Texas at El Paso's Miner Teacher Residency are boosting student learning, outperforming the average Texas teacher and staying in the classroom longer than their peers, according to a new policy brief from Texas Tech University's Center for Innovative Research in Change, Leadership & Education.
The brief's authors, J. Jacob Kirksey, Ph.D., associate professor of education policy at Texas Tech, and Erika Mein, Ph.D., associate dean of academic affairs and strategic initiatives in the UTEP College of Education, compared residency graduates with other teachers in their first five years of teaching at the same campuses. Their analysis of 2021-24 statewide data included 390 campuses and 312,000 students, 35,000 of whom were taught by UTEP-prepared teachers.
"The Miner Teacher Residency isn't a boutique program for a select few. It's how we prepare every future teacher at UTEP," said Clifton Tanabe, Ph.D., dean of the UTEP College of Education. "Our graduates are ready on day one, and they're staying in the classroom. That's what rigorous, yearlong clinical preparation at scale looks like."
Among the new teachers, graduates of the Miner residency program were the only group whose students scored significantly higher in both STAAR math and reading than students taught by graduates of traditional university programs. Miner residents contributed roughly 1.5 to 2 months of additional learning for each student compared with the average Texas teacher.
Miner residents were also about 50 percent more likely to hold a Teacher Incentive Allotment (TIA) designation than comparable teachers with similar experience. TIA offers highly effective teachers a pathway to higher pay, including the potential for a six-figure salary.
In addition, residents left their districts and the profession at lower rates than every comparison group in every year studied. Annually, 94 to 95 percent remained in Texas public school teaching, compared with roughly 90 percent of other new teachers at the same campuses, so residents left teaching at about half the rate of their peers.
Compared with a matched statewide sample of new teachers, residents were about seven to nine percentage points more likely to teach in schools with high concentrations of economically disadvantaged or emergent bilingual students.
In 2025-26, UTEP placed more than 200 Miner Teacher Residents across seven El Paso-area partner districts. Residents in the program spend a full school year co-teaching with a trained host teacher, about twice the supervised classroom time of traditional one-semester student teaching, and receive coaching from full-time, district-based UTEP clinical faculty known as site coordinators. They also earn stipends of $20,000 to $30,000 in paid district roles, now funded primarily through House Bill 2's PREP Allotment.
"Getting paid meant I could treat my residency like the full-time job it was," said Josiah Frayre, a recent graduate of the residency program. "As a Miner Teacher Resident, I had the opportunity to co-teach since the first day of the program, so when I got my own classroom, I did not have to start from scratch."
To learn more about the Miner Teacher Residency, visit the program’s homepage.
Last Updated on October 01, 2026 at 12:00 AM | Originally published October 01, 2026
By MC Staff UTEP Marketing and Communications
