The National Council on Teacher Quality recently published a report that explores emerging trends and state policies for increasing diversity in the field of teaching. Researchers found that teacher apprenticeships and residencies are crucial avenues to attract more candidates of color to the teacher pipeline.
The analysis investigates the following state-level approaches to teacher recruitment:
- 46 states have developed high school pipeline or career pathways programs through CTE and dual or concurrent enrollment, 21 with the explicit goal of increasing diversity.
- 26 states have established Grow Your Own programs at the state level, with 20 states explicitly making teacher diversity a goal.
- 23 states have taken steps through state policy to establish teacher apprenticeships since 2022.
- Six states have established post-baccalaureate residencies, three with the goal to explicitly diversify the workforce.
Researchers noted that secondary-level career pathways programs can lead to a more diverse pipeline by improving overall educational outcomes for individuals of color. Yet, these programs are often less available to these students.
In the state of Colorado, leaders are diversifying the teacher workforce by increasing access for low-income individuals and students of color through the Teacher Recruitment Education and Preparation (TREP) program, which gives learners in an education and training career pathway the opportunity to continue their education at a postsecondary institution tuition-free for two years. In another example, legislators in the state of Washington expanded the Recruit Washington Teachers Initiative to include a career pathway that supports students in becoming certified bilingual educators. Illinois, an early pioneer of the Grow Your Own model, invested approximately $2.5 million toward Grow Your Own programming in 2020 to fund initiatives that run across five programs and roughly 200 candidates.
The report also covers recruitment and retention strategies being enacted across the country. Researchers found that the majority of states have funded or established financial incentives or state-level initiatives to support educator retention, but less than half of these initiatives have explicitly focused on supporting or retaining educators of color.
The lack of more expansive policies in this area across the 50 states has translated into a higher national turnover for teachers of color (19%) than for white instructors (15%). Strategies for retention in states like Minnesota, which enacted the Due North Education Plan, primarily focus on peer support, mentorship and affinity groups while financial assistance initiatives have come in the form of incentives through scholarships or loan forgiveness programs.
Researchers made the following recommendations to policymakers to better support the teacher pipeline for underrepresented groups:
- Set explicit goals to diversify the workforce and publish more data to track progress toward goals.
- Engage teachers of color in policymaking.
- Minimize the disproportionate impact of layoffs on teachers of color.
- Invest in improving school climate and school leadership.
- Evaluate initiatives and measure success.
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