Vision Casting: Diversifying our Educator Workforce

One of the roles of a school board and its trustees is to set the vision for the school district and ensure that it’s successfully implemented. If we look at the data for school districts across the country, we will often see a gap between the demographics of the student population and the teachers in that district. The most common gaps are in the areas of race and gender. Countless studies have shown that students with teachers who look like them often have more successful outcomes in their PreK-12 education and are more likely to go on to college. When we look at the teacher preparation system, we know that most teacher preparation programs require at least one semester of full-time internship, often unpaid. This is a critical factor in the lack of students of color and financially disadvantaged students in teacher preparation programs. However, several teacher preparation programs have intentionally worked at recruiting students of color and male students and paying teacher residents to diversify the pipeline to PreK-12 students. The end goal? Increasing student outcomes. This article describes the success of such programs.