Reports and Briefs

This report shares findings from the Utah Education Policy Center's 2025–2026 evaluation of Volunteer for Good, a four-year pilot program (2024–2028) developed by the Utah Commission on Service and Volunteerism (UServeUtah). The program promotes volunteerism and seeks to strengthen high school students' well-being, civic engagement, and academic and social success. Operating in five Local Education Agencies (Garfield County, Granite, Nebo, and Sevier School Districts, and Mountain Heights Academy), the Year 2 evaluation summarizes key implementation metrics; highlights facilitators and barriers to implementation; describes how students, educators, and families experienced the program; and examines how participation relates to students' academic, social, mental well-being, and civic outcomes.

This study, which was conducted as part of a research practice partnership with the USBE, compares the retention and end-of-year standardized assessment results of newly licensed teachers from the Alternate Pathway to Professional Educator License - Special Education (APPEL-SpEd) pathway to those of newly licensed teachers from traditional university special education programs. Our results indicate no evidence of differences between teachers coming from these two pathways.

This study examined the quality of two special education teacher preparation pathways in Utah: the Alternate Pathway to Professional Educator License – Special Education (APPEL-SpEd) and traditional university programs. Surveys of 68 newly licensed teachers (20 from APPEL-SpEd, 48 from traditional programs) and their supervisors found virtually no differences between pathways in terms of preparation quality, mentoring experiences, or supervisor assessments of teaching effectiveness. The single significant difference was that APPEL-SpEd teachers reported significantly stronger agreement that “being a teacher is an important part of my identity.” These findings align with previous research showing minimal differences between alternative and traditional teacher preparation routes.