 Payzant aimed to resolve specific teaching issues within BPS by increasing teacher diversity, addressing teacher shortages in specific subject areas like science and math, and retaining teachers beyond three years in the classroom, as teacher turnover rates are typically high after this time span, especially in high-poverty schools.Lack of diversity, subject-teacher shortage, and teacher attrition remain the most important problems the UTR model seeks to address.Eventually, early residency programs in Boston, Denver, and Chicago joined forces with Urban Teacher Residency United (UTRU), a non-profit organization established in 2007 to support a network of residency programs across the United States.