price tag of replacement costs for teachers is more than $8,000,000,000 a year. (4) Teaching residency programs, which recruit candidates to work as paid apprentices to skilled expert teachers while completing highly integrated coursework, have been successful in recruiting talented, diverse candidates into high-need fields and local educational agencies. (5) Research on teaching residency programs shows that such programs are effective in bringing more teachers of color into the profession and in preparing such teachers to stay for the long term. In the United States, about 49 percent of individuals in teaching residency programs are students of color, and the same percentage of public school students are people of color, but only 20 percent of teachers are people of color. (6) The teaching residency program model creates long-term benefits for local educational agencies, schools, and for the students served by such agencies and schools. Rigorous studies of teaching residency programs have found significantly higher retention rates for graduates of teaching residency programs, addressing one of the primary contributors to teacher shortages, as well as positive evidence about educator effectiveness. (7) A review of teaching residency program evaluations shows that teachers who completed high-quality teaching residency programs tend to have higher teaching retention rates over time compared to teachers who did not complete such programs, including— (A) in San Francisco, where 80 percent of candidates completing a teaching residency program were still in the classroom after 5 years, compared to 38 percent of candidates who entered the classroom through a different route