Recruiting Teachers of Color

Grow Your Own Programs and Career Technical Education

A recruitment strategy that has proven effective in districts throughout the country is what many call “grow your own” programs. In some of these programs, local educational agencies begin recruiting students to become teachers while they are still attending high school. This is often accomplished by developing Career Technical Education programs of study, or academies, for students who are interested in pursuing a career in education.

Other “grow your own” programs focus on recruiting classified staff who currently serve as paraprofessionals or afterschool program staff. This strategy has proven especially successful in filling two high-need teaching areas in California: special education and bilingual education.

Resources

The California Center on Teaching Careers
The California Center on Teaching Careers was developed with funding from the California Classified School Employee Teacher Credentialing Grant Program. The program provided funds to school districts, county offices of education, and charter schools to support classified school employees in completing an undergraduate degree and a teacher preparation program so that they can become teachers. The program awarded up to 1,000 grants of $4,000 per participant per year.

California Partnership Academies
The California Partnership Academy (CPA) model is a three-year program (grades ten through twelve) structured as a school-within-a-school. Academies incorporate integrated academic and career technical education, business partnerships, mentoring, and internships. Some CPAs focus on the industry sector Education, Child Development and Family Services preparing students for careers in these areas.

Promoting Asset-Based Pedagogies

Ensuring equity for an increasingly diverse student population relies on today’s educators to view student differences as assets and not deficits. Asset-based pedagogies view the diversity that students bring to the classroom, including culture, language, disabilities, socio-economic status, immigration status, and sexuality as characteristics that add value and strength to classrooms and communities.

Over the past two decades, many well-respected educational leaders have written about asset-based pedagogies and given the term many other names, including: funds of knowledge (Moll and Gonzalez), culturally relevant pedagogy (Ladson-Billings), culturally responsive teaching (Gay and Hammond) and most recently culturally sustaining pedagogies (Paris and Alim).

Increasing the racial diversity of the teacher workforce must be accompanied by deliberate attention to build current as well as future teachers’ capacity to enact pedagogies and practices that recognize and embrace students’ cultures as assets in the classroom. Schools that support culturally sustaining pedagogies and teacher autonomy in the classroom are more likely to attract and retain teacher candidates of color.

Resources

Asset-Based Pedagogies

Articles

Django Paris, “On Educating Culturally Sustaining Teachers” (PDF), University of Michigan (2016), accessed December 2019.

Ananya Garg, “How Schools Can Sustain Students’ Cultures” , Yes!, accessed December 2019.

Gloria Ladson-Billings, “Culturally Relevant Pedagogy 2.0: a.k.a. the Remix” , Harvard Educational Review (Volume 84, Number 1, p.74-84, Spring 2014), , accessed October 2019.

Jenny Muñiz, “Culturally Responsive Teaching A 50-State Survey of Teaching Standards” (PDF), New America (2019), accessed October 2019.

Bilingual Pipeline Projects

Teacher pipeline programs tailored to bilingual teachers may also increase teacher diversity. Methods for increasing the number of bilingual teachers include recruiting and providing financial assistance for current paraprofessionals working in districts, the aforementioned “grow your own” programs, as well as exchange programs with other countries.

Resources

California Mini-Corps
The California Mini-Corps began in 1967 and were modeled after the Peace Corps Program. There are 23 Mini-Corps programs throughout California. Today, the two major goals of the program are to provide tutorial services to increase migrant student academic achievement and to develop a cadre of future bilingual-bicultural, credentialed teacher that will be better equipped to work with migrant students.

Bilingual Teacher Professional Development Program
The purpose of California’s Bilingual Teacher Professional Development Program is to provide professional learning opportunities to teams of eligible teachers, principals, and paraprofessionals for the purpose of increasing the number of teachers who obtain a bilingual authorization as a result of participation in the program and increase the number of teachers with a bilingual authorization who return to teaching in a bilingual or multilingual setting.

Exchange Visitor Program for Teachers
The U.S. Department of State has designated the California Department of Education (CDE) Exchange Visitor Program to sponsor exchange teachers. The CDE currently holds Memoranda of Understanding with Spain and Mexico to sponsor teachers to come to California to teach.

2018–2021 Report to the Legislature: Teacher Credentialing: Teacher Preparation Outside of the United States and H-1B Work Visas (DOCX)
This report summarizes the H-1B work visa data collected from school districts, county offices of education, and charter schools for 2018–2021. This data includes the number of teacher visa applications for persons excluded from the term “immigrant”, for purposes of the federal Immigration and Nationality Act (Section 1101 of Title 8 of the United States Code), pursuant to Section 1101(a)(15)(H)(i)(b) of Title 8 of the United States Code.

2021−22 Report to the Legislature: Teacher Credentialing: Teacher Preparation Outside of the United States and H-1B Work Visas
This report summarizes the H-1B work visa data collected from school districts, county offices of education, and charter schools for 2021−22. This data includes the number of teacher visa applications for persons excluded from the term “immigrant”, for purposes of the federal Immigration and Nationality Act (Section 1101 of Title 8 of the United States Code), pursuant to Section 1101(a)(15)(H)(i)(b) of Title 8 of the United States Code.

2022−23 Report to the Legislature: Teacher Credentialing: Teacher Preparation Outside of the United States and H-1B Work Visas
This report summarizes the H-1B work visa data collected from school districts, county offices of education, and charter schools for 2022−23. This data includes the number of teacher visa applications for persons excluded from the term “immigrant”, for purposes of the federal Immigration and Nationality Act (Section 1101 of Title 8 of the United States Code), pursuant to Section 1101(a)(15)(H)(i)(b) of Title 8 of the United States Code.

Articles

Michael Burke, “San Diego State University Program Latest to Take Aim at Preparing More Diverse, Bilingual Teachers” , EdSource (2019), accessed December 2019.

Alternative Pathways to Credentialing

Residency Programs

Teachers of color are more likely to enter the profession through alternative pathways including residency programs. Many districts in California have formed partnerships with teacher preparation programs where teachers can be compensated for their student teaching. This allows the district to gain access to new teachers entering the profession and hire them straight out of their teacher preparation programs. In turn, teacher residents gain extensive classroom experience under the mentorship of an effective veteran teacher.

Resources

Los Angeles Urban Teacher Residency
The Los Angeles Urban Teacher Residency Program recruits talented people from diverse backgrounds who are committed to becoming transformative teachers to work in high-need, reform-minded schools.

Internship Programs

Teachers of color are more likely to enter the profession through alternative pathways, including internship programs. Internship programs allow students who are completing student teaching to work as a contracted (paid) teacher under an internship credential. Candidates begin their teaching careers as university interns and are employed and paid by a local school district while serving as the “teacher of record” for an elementary, middle, or high school classroom.

Resources

Bay Area School of Enterprise (REACH Institute)
The REACH Intern Teacher Credential Program supports candidates to obtain an intern teaching credential and develop their teaching practice while working to fulfill requirements for a California kindergarten through grade twelve (K–12) Preliminary Teaching Credential.

Los Angeles County Office of Education (LACOE) District Intern Program
The Los Angeles County Office of Education (LACOE) is a California Commission on Teacher Credentialing (CTC) accredited alternative route leading to a teaching credential. The LACOE program is designed for people who want to be employed as an intern teacher and earn a teaching credential while they attend classes in Downey.

Course Articulation Agreements with Community Colleges

Teacher preparation programs can increase recruitment efforts by partnering with community colleges to develop degree articulation agreements. Many of these degrees simultaneously prepare candidates for employment as a paraprofessional and for transfer to a four year education program. Community colleges often serve larger numbers of students of color and this strategy can be useful for diversifying the teacher workforce.

Since 2006, the California Community Colleges have established a Teacher Preparation Pipeline to offer future teachers preparation in various high-demand Career Technical Education areas; science, technology, engineering, and mathematics, K–12 education; early childhood education and other areas of teaching in California public schools. Participating community colleges allow students to complete lower-division, pre-requisites courses and transfer them to the baccalaureate institution of their choice that offers a CTC-approved teacher preparation program for the credential the student wants to pursue.

Resources

Cerritos College Teacher Training Academy (Teacher TRAC)
Cerritos College’s Teacher TRAC is a national award winning teacher preparation program that serves students interested in teaching early childhood, elementary, secondary or career technical education (CTE).

Teacher Education Assistance for College and Higher Education (TEACH) El Camino Program
The TEACH El Camino Teacher Education Program was created in response to California’s projected need for teachers over the next decade. Through partnerships with local universities, TEACH offers courses and fieldwork for those planning to teach at all grade levels as well as for students interested in other careers within the field of education, including school administration, school counseling, school psychology, school social work, school librarian, school nurse, and speech/language pathology

City College of San Francisco Teacher Prep Center
The Teacher Prep Center at the City College of San Francisco offers advising, pathway and transfer support, resources and information on related activities including, mentoring, Future Teachers Club, field experience opportunities and specific course offerings for future teachers.

Partnerships with Minority Serving Institutions

Districts can partner with local teacher preparation programs to coordinate student teaching placements and vet candidates for hire before they graduate. They can also focus on working with institutions that serve larger populations of students of color, also known as Minority Serving Institutions (MSIs). MSIs include: Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs), Tribal Colleges and Universities (TCUs), Hispanic Serving Institutions (HSIs), and Asian American, Native American and Pacific Islander Serving Institutions (AANAPISIs). Local educational agencies can focus their efforts on actively recruiting talented teachers of color from MSIs. Districts may also consider forming interstate partnerships to recruit teachers from outside the state in order to diversify their workforce.

Resources

2018 List of Minority Serving Institutions (PDF)
This list includes all of the MSIs in the United States. Many MSIs are located in California.

Articles

Desiree Carver-Thomas, “Diversifying the Teaching Profession: How to Recruit and Retain Teachers of Color” (PDF), Learning Policy Institute (2018), accessed December 2019.

Saroja R. Warner and Eric Duncan, “A Vision and Guidance for a Diverse and Learner-Ready Teacher Workforce” (PDF), The Council of Chief State School Officers (2019), accessed December 2019.