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The diversity of California's teaching force continues to lag behind its student population. While students of Color make up 78% of the state's K-12 population, Teachers of Color and Indigenous Teachers (TOCIT) comprise just 34% of the teaching workforce (California Department of Education, 2018), a statistic that has dominated the teacher shortage narrative. Although there is promise in the fact that teacher education program (TEP) enrollment is more diverse than the state's current educator workforce, it's still 27% less diverse than the state's K-12 students. As demand for greater representation increases, so have the initiatives to recruit and retain more racially diverse teachers. In the past few years, California has spent billions in an effort to diversify its teacher workforce, including Assembly Bill 520, which allocated $15 million to be distributed to school districts to develop and implement programs that diversify teaching staffs, and Assembly Bill 130, which appropriated $350 million over the next five years to create or expand Teacher Residency Programs, a pathway that has been shown to recruit and retain higher numbers of TOCIT (California Legislative Information, 2023). This study sets out to (1) explore how current policies, structures, practices, attitudes, and ideologies across the pipeline and profession impede the recruitment and retention of TOCIT, and (2) better understand the racialized experiences and perspectives of pre-service and in-service Teachers of Color and Indigenous Teachers. The following paper is based on a mix of qualitative and quantitative data collected from system leaders in teacher preparation, pre-service teachers, in-service teachers, and former teachers over the course of approximately one year: spring 2021 to summer 2022.

CADRE interviewed researchers to learn about their most effective strategies for recruiting and retaining participants for STEM education research. While there are no shortcuts to successful recruitment, a sustained commitment to understanding and addressing the needs of a district and its teachers is key to long-term success. In this new brief, CADRE share practices that have proven successful for experienced researchers.

Local teacher recruitment through "grow-your-own" programs is a prominent strategy to address workforce shortages and ensure that incoming teachers resemble, understand, and have strong connections to their communities. We exploit the staggered rollout of the Teacher Academy of Maryland career and technical education certificate program across public high schools, finding that exposed students were more likely to become teachers by 0.6 percentage points (pp), or 47%. Effects are concentrated among White girls (1.4pp/39%) and Black girls (0.7pp/80%). We also identify positive impacts on wages (5% on average/18% for Black girls), countering a prevailing narrative that teaching leaves one worse off financially relative to other labor market opportunities.

This document includes the "FY 2023 Annual Performance Report" (APR) and "FY 2025 Annual Performance Plan" (APP). The APR provides narrative and data on the Department of Education's (Department's) progress toward the strategic goals and objectives outlined in its "Fiscal Years [FYs] 2022-2026 Strategic Plan" (ED625432), and the APP details the Department's planned strategies and activities to achieve those strategic goals and objectives.

Mounting evidence supporting the advantages of a diverse teacher workforce prompts policymakers to scrutinize existing recruitment pathways. Following four cohorts of Maryland public high-school students over 12 years reveals several insights. Early barriers require timely interventions, aiding students of color in achieving educational milestones that are prerequisites for teacher candidacy (high school graduation, college enrollment). While alternative pathways that bypass traditional undergraduate teacher preparation may help, current approaches still show persistent racial disparities. Data simulations underscore the need for race-conscious policies specifically targeting or differentially benefiting students of color, as race-neutral strategies have minimal impact. Ultimately, multiple race-conscious policy solutions addressing various educational milestones must demonstrate significant effects--approximately 30% increases--to reshape the teacher workforce to align with student body demographics.

The K-12 teacher workforce is relatively large--each year, nearly 4 million teachers are employed in U.S. elementary and secondary schools. Turnover in these schools is high relative to earlier periods--16% of teachers left their school in the 2021-2022 academic year. In addition, there is evidence that teacher quality standards have been lowered in order to fill open positions. The problem of teacher turnover raises a number of recruitment and retention issues of interest to policymakers. The Higher Education Act (HEA) is the main federal law containing policies designed to address these issues. Title II of the HEA authorizes grant support for schools that prepare new teachers. Title IV of the HEA authorizes financial support to encourage people to stay in the teaching profession in the form of student loan forgiveness and other benefits. Congressional consideration of potentially reauthorizing the HEA is ongoing, with the introduction of numerous bills to amend current law and address teacher recruitment and retention. This report describes the history of federal teacher recruitment and retention policy, current policies in this area, and related issues that may arise as Congress considers reauthorizing the HEA.

High-quality, stable child care and early education (CCEE) can have lasting, positive impacts on children. However, the challenges of recruiting, strengthening, and retaining the CCEE workforce are well documented. CCEE educators typically have low levels of formal education and compensation; limited opportunities for education, training, and professional development; inconsistent working conditions; and high levels of stress and burnout. Additionally, the CCEE sector is well known for high turnover rates, which can strain remaining educators and decrease the quality of care they offer. Turnover can also lead to diminishing returns on an organization's professional development investments. The COVID-19 pandemic has exacerbated these issues. The Building and Sustaining the Child Care and Early Education Workforce (BASE) project conducted an environmental scan and a literature review to identify and document existing knowledge about the CCEE workforce and strategies to strengthen it. One of the main themes identified from this effort was a need for more and better data on the workforce dynamics of CCEE educators. In particular, data are needed on who enters, advances in, stays in, and exits different roles, settings, and types of CCEE care or leaves the field altogether--as well as when, how, and why they do. This information is important for understanding workforce dynamics and informing the development, evaluation, and improvement of strategies that effectively build and sustain a qualified and stable CCEE workforce. For this reason, the BASE project team conducted a data scan to summarize the landscape of existing data sources that may address these gaps and identify areas where future data collection may be most useful. This brief summarizes the findings from the data scan.

The challenges of recruiting, strengthening, and retaining the child care and early education (CCEE) workforce are well documented. Members of the CCEE workforce typically have low levels of formal education and compensation; limited opportunities for education, training, and professional development; inconsistent working conditions; and high levels of stress and burnout. The Building and Sustaining the Child Care and Early Education Workforce (BASE) project conducted an environmental scan to identify and review strategies that are currently being implemented across the country to build, advance, and sustain the CCEE workforce in the face of these challenges. In particular, the research team sought to understand the context in which these strategies are implemented and how that might influence their operation. The team also examined how strategies reach or are tailored to prospective and current CCEE educators. This brief summarizes important themes that emerged from the environmental scan, which was conducted between March 2021 and January 2022. The conclusions presented draw from a combination of activities, including a review of the literature, assessment of recommended sources and materials submitted in response to an open call for information, as well as interviews with key informants from the agencies responsible for putting strategies into place. [This report was written with Lisa Rau.]

While the U.S. population has become increasingly diverse, college faculty may not reflect those same levels of diversity. Little is known at the national level about the relationship between faculty diversity and student outcomes. Separately, faculty have reported experiencing discrimination at colleges. GAO was asked to review faculty diversity and employment discrimination at colleges. This report examines (1) selected aspects of diversity among faculty, (2) efforts by colleges to recruit and retain a diverse faculty, and (3) how Education and EEOC process employment discrimination complaints at colleges. GAO analyzed Education data on faculty and students from fiscal years 2003-2021, national workforce data from the Census Bureau and Bureau of Labor Statistics ranging from calendar years 2014-2021, Education complaint data from fiscal years 2011-2022, and EEOC complaint data from fiscal years 2011-2021 (each set was the most recent available). GAO also conducted literature reviews; reviewed relevant federal laws, regulations, and policies; and interviewed agency officials and selected higher education experts.

In 2022, the Boston Opportunity Agenda, the Birth to Eight Collaborative and the City of Boston's Office of Early Childhood partnered in the development of this survey of hundreds of early education professionals in the city of Boston, and then expanded its reach to total more than 600 respondents across the state. In it, educators and administrators shared their demographics and educational background, as well as elements of their work experience, wages, and more. Taken together, the data portray a diverse workforce of dedicated professionals who also must manage low wages and long hours in a system that seeks to attract thousands of new workers to replace retiring workers and meet the need for more available early education seats.

Teachers are the most important school-related factor impacting students' academic outcomes. To meet the needs and potential of all students, North Carolina must be able to recruit and retain high-quality teachers. North Carolina continues to experience challenges with vacancies and positions filled with teachers who are not fully certified in nearly all grade levels and subject areas. This report aims at identifying and amplifying actionable and replicable models for recruiting, preparing and retaining a diverse, highly effective educator workforce in North Carolina. This report was created with the input of the initial cohort of the North Carolina Educator Pipeline Collaborative which includes school districts, universities, and community colleges working in partnership to strengthen the educator pipeline in their communities.

Over the last decade, California leaders have made tremendous progress on supporting kids in some crucial areas. They have vastly increased the percentage of children enrolled in health insurance and made paid family leave available for most workers. They have also invested in free school meals, committed to universal transitional kindergarten, and significantly cut school suspensions among students of color. On too many issues, however, California has failed to significantly improve outcomes for kids, allowing unacceptable racial and economic disparities to stagnate and in many cases grow. That lack of progress is why low grades are seen all across the 2024 Report Card. What's particularly disturbing is that California continues to trail far behind other states on a number of important indicators of child well-being. Despite the relatively high tax burden, the progressive leanings, and the enviable 5th largest economy in the world, California is far from a leader when it comes to kids. That's not only a threat to the state's collective future, but to the entire country as well since California is so often a bellwether for the nation. The issues in this report must be the top priority issues for state policymakers. The report card is organized into the following sections: (1) Health; (2) Education; (3) Family Supports; (4) Child Welfare; and (5) Cross-Sector Issues.

New Leaders developed the Transformational Leadership Framework (TLF) to pinpoint practices commonly found in schools that were significantly advancing student achievement and in what sequence principals and their teams implemented those practices to deliver consistent and equitable outcomes for students. The TLF is based on: (1) More than 100 site visits and case studies of schools that achieved dramatic gains; (2) An extensive review of available research on effective schools and leadership; and (3) The collective knowledge of the New Leaders staff and program participants. The Framework is organized to show how specific school leader actions have influenced and enabled schoolwide practices that have collectively yielded sustained improvements in student achievement. [This report was adapted from "Breakthrough Principals: A Step-by-Step Guide to Building Stronger Schools."]

First 5 Los Angeles County partnered with the Center for the Study of Child Care Employment (CSCCE) to explore the state of child care centers and family child care (FCC) providers. As part of the California Early Care and Education Workforce Study, CSCCE conducted surveys in 2020 and 2023 to measure both individual- and site-level factors. In this report, we present highlights from longitudinal trends in each of the two levels (Chapters 1 and 2), as well as a portrait of current educator well-being (Chapter 3). [This report was funded by First 5 Los Angeles County and the Los Angeles County Office of Education.]

In 2022, after increasing pressures from the COVID pandemic and a shifting political climate, the nation's largest teachers' union warned that over half of teachers were considering exiting the teaching profession. More recent national and local work suggests that such evidence in the media is often not supported by administrative data and that reports of a teacher exodus are often exaggerated or incorrect. There is no public data on teacher vacancies in Maryland, so in this study the supply of teachers in Baltimore City Public Schools (City Schools) was examined, with a particular focus on sources of potential teacher shortages that emerged during the COVID-19 era. Data for this study was provided by the Maryland Longitudinal Data System Center (MLDSC), an independent state agency that supports research on education and workforce outcomes in Maryland. Through descriptive evidence on teacher entry and exit from 2016 to 2022, it was shown that teacher retention rates in City Schools actually improved over pre-COVID levels. However, the post-COVID period also saw an increase in the number of new teachers hired with temporary teaching certificates. This suggests that City Schools faces new challenges to recruit and develop the next generation of teachers for Baltimore students.

In this essay, we explore the consequences of the University of California's policies to address racial disparities and its support for social justice activism as influences on its commitment to academic freedom and other intellectual values. This is a story of the interaction between two essential public university missions -- one civic, the other intellectual -- and the slow effacement of one by the other. The University's expressed commitments to academic freedom and the culture of rationalism have not been abandoned, but they are too often considered secondary or when confronted by new administrative initiatives and social movement activism related to diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI). The experimental use of mandatory DEI statements on a number of the ten UC campuses, within willing academic departments, as initial screening mechanisms in faculty hiring is the most dramatic of the new administrative policies that have been put into place to advance faculty diversity. This policy can be considered the most problematic of a series of efforts that the UC campuses and the UC Office of the President have taken for more than a decade to prioritize representation in academic appointments. Our intent is to encourage a discussion of these policies within UC in light of the University's fundamental commitments to open intellectual inquiry, the discovery and dissemination of a wide range of new knowledge, and a culture of rationalism.

All students deserve access to a high-quality education and the resources they need to thrive. However, in Michigan this has not been the reality for far too long, particularly for students who are the most underserved. Longstanding inequities have persisted and worsened since the beginning of the pandemic, and Michigan has fallen further and faster than leading states since 2019. Further, pandemic recovery as of 2023 has been woefully inadequate. To improve outcomes for all Michigan students, Education Trust-Midwest (ETM) outlined 10 evidence-backed recommendations as part of the 2023 State of Michigan Education Report. In the Fiscal Year 2025 Executive Budget Recommendation, Governor Whitmer includes several key investments for students' educational recovery and acceleration that align with those recommendations. This document is intended to highlight these key pieces of Governor Whitmer's education budget recommendation and explore how these priorities, as well as other strategies, can advance equity and excellence in Michigan schools.

The United States has been cultivating STEM talent for decades with great success, but that robust talent pipeline is threatened by a growing STEM teacher shortage. Left unaddressed, that shortage could curtail employment in STEM professions and the many related careers that increasingly require some degree of scientific and technological literacy. While the STEM teacher shortage is a national problem, the effects are likely to be felt more acutely in a state such as Massachusetts with a high concentration of STEM jobs. This paper provides an overview of the causes of the STEM teacher shortage and offers three recommendations to address it.

A large share of Wisconsin's 400+ school districts are rural, and nearly half of all students enrolled in public schools statewide attend rural schools. Persistent challenges faced by rural districts in attracting and retaining educators, however, are contributing to an increasingly dire situation for the state's rural communities. This report summarizes findings from a yearlong research project investigating strategies being used by rural districts to address educator shortages, including a diverse set of "grow your own" (GYO) initiatives which involve school districts working with educator preparation programs (EPPs) and other local partners to identify, recruit, and prepare local candidates to become educators. The mixed-methods research design draws upon two statewide surveys (of rural superintendents and local site coordinators of the Educators Rising GYO program), along with site visits to five rural districts, to accomplish two main goals: (1) to identify strategies being used by rural districts to attract, recruit, and hire teachers; and (2) to describe the landscape of GYO initiatives being utilized by rural Wisconsin districts and local partners to address educator shortages. Broadly speaking, the work suggests that rural school districts are not waiting on state or federal policymakers to solve longstanding staffing challenges for them, but instead are actively engaged in implementing a mix of national GYO programs such as Educators Rising and "homegrown" GYO initiatives as one solution to chronic educator shortages. Not surprisingly, a distinct set of both successes and challenges have emerged as rural districts attempt to implement, launch, sustain, and scale up GYO initiatives that meet their needs. [Paper's original version August 2023; revised version September 2023. This work was made possible by a research grant from UW-Madison's Tommy G. Thompson Center for Public Leadership.]

Teachers of color have a positive impact on all students and make a particularly pronounced difference in the lives of students of color. For students of color, having a teacher of color can increase academic achievement and advanced course-taking, reduce discipline incidents, improve attendance, increase high school graduation and college-going, as well as increase social-emotional outcomes like grit and sense of self-efficacy. The national movement for teacher diversity--driven by both a national reckoning around racial injustice and mounting research on the positive impact that teachers of color have on students--is clearly ascendant. This is a policy area that will require sustained commitment from states to achieve progress and increase the number of teachers of color in the workforce. So to what extent is this commitment reflected in state policies and funding? In National Council on Teacher Quality's first comprehensive scan of state teacher diversity policies, this report takes stock of key trends across 50 states and the District of Columbia. [This report received funding from the Belk Foundation.]

As required in 105 ILCS 5/2-3.47a, the Illinois State Board of Education shall develop and maintain a continuing comprehensive strategic plan for elementary and secondary education. The 2020-2023 Strategic Plan consists of goals for equity, student learning, learning conditions, and elevating educators. The Strategic Plan leverages the wide range of talents and interests of ISBE staff, practicing educators, and stakeholders and considers how best to support agency work during and in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic. This report provides an update on the status of the 2020-2023 Strategic Plan, including: (1) Highlights of from the work of the strategic plan during 2023; (2) Information on the extension of 2020-2023 Strategic Plan through FY 2024 while the 2025-2030 Strategic Plan is in development; and (3) The process for the creation of the 2025-2030 Strategic Plan. [For "ISBE Strategic Plan: 2021-2022 Annual Status Report," see ED624088. For "Illinois State Board of Education 2020-2023 Strategic Plan," see ED624118.]

The Board of Education's mission is to equitably educate the whole child so that every student graduates with the tools to reach their full potential (Houston Independent School District (HISD), 2019). To succeed in their mission, the board participates in Lone Star Governance, whose intent is to provide a continuous improvement model for governing teams (boards in collaboration with their Superintendents) that choose to intensively focus on one primary objective: improving student outcomes. In compliance with Lone Star Governance, the Houston Independent School District (HISD) Board of Education developed four goals in alignment with their mission and vision. In addition, the board set a framework in which the Superintendent could operate to achieve the goals through five constraints. This report evaluates each goal and constraint with their respective progress measures for the 2021-2022 school year. To ensure the district is working towards these goals while operating within the constraints set forth by the board, consistent monitoring of these goals and constraints are required. This report summarizes the results of the Houston Independent School District's goal and constraint monitoring board presentations from the 2021-2022 school year. These results are used for the superintendent's evaluation.

Research shows that students derive both social-emotional and academic benefits from a diverse educator workforce. The state has taken notable steps to prioritize a more diverse educator workforce in recent years. These include: (1) convening a California Department of Education (CDE) Educator Diversity Advisory Group, tasked with offering recommendations on recruiting and retaining greater numbers of educators of diverse backgrounds; (2) establishing coursework alternatives to standardized tests that have historically served as a barrier to access for candidates of diverse backgrounds who want to enter the teaching profession; and (3) making significant investments in teacher residencies and financial supports for teacher candidates. Nonetheless, the state has not yet established a clear vision and comprehensive action plan to recruit, prepare, and sustain an educator workforce whose diversity reflects that of California's students. To help set a statewide agenda, Californians for Justice (CFJ), The Education Trust--West (ETW), and Public Advocates (PA) partnered to develop a community-informed educator diversity road map. We reviewed research about educator diversity, including the recommendations issued by the CDE Educator Diversity Advisory Group, and compiled a list of proposals for the state on how to recruit, prepare, and retain educators of diverse backgrounds. Next, we recruited students, parents, educators, and administrators to participate in focus groups to discuss these proposals and offer insight and feedback. Although the focus group participants, particularly students, highlighted the need for and importance of an educator workforce that reflects the myriad identities that students hold, the primary foci of their input, and thus of this road map, were about how to recruit and retain more educators of color and multilingual educators. In addition, we use the term "educator" to primarily focus on teachers but also include school leaders, classified staff, and other adults who work with students in our public schools. After conducting focus groups and reviewing community feedback, we distilled six key recommendations that emerged from our conversations and offer several ways that the state, LEAs, and schools may implement these recommendations. [This report was produced with Public Advocates Inc.]

The equitable and effective deployment of teachers is critical to achieving quality education for all. However, the uneven distribution of teachers -- both across and within schools -- contributes to significant disparities in class sizes and learning conditions. Recognizing the critical role that teachers play in learning, the Government of Zambia has committed to addressing teacher allocation through large-scale teacher recruitments. This report aims to provide policymakers an overview of the magnitude and distribution of teacher shortages, and inform ongoing efforts to address teacher shortages and improve teacher allocation. [Michelle Mills and Ivan Mahardika contributed to this report.]

The exact cause of teacher shortages is unknown. Some experts argue that shortages are localized, while others say that the lack of teachers is due to low unemployment and other factors. Regardless, school systems face big challenges with their teacher workforce, including finding enough teacher candidates and retaining the teachers they have, as well as filling specialized positions. These challenges require school systems to make changes to the role of the teacher. This brief identifies eight categories of strategies that school systems are using to reimagine their teacher workforce, then assesses the extent to which large and urban districts have adopted these strategies. Of the 100 large and urban school systems examined for this brief, 97 had strategies to address workforce challenges. But fewer than one in three of those districts were pursuing workforce strategies the authors would define as new or imaginative--and most focused on recruiting more candidates.

Innovation in education is vital for responding to emerging challenges, such as the COVID-19 pandemic, and for building progress on longstanding challenges in schools. The infusion of substantial, highly flexible pots of federal relief dollars created an opportunity to pilot new programs and initiatives. Many states and districts opted to invest resources in traditional K-12 expenses, such as increasing staff capacity or updating facilities. However, states are also using the funds to spark new initiatives that otherwise may not have been possible and can be replicated across the country. This Policy Guide presents six strategies along with state examples to assist in planning, designing, implementing, and sustaining innovative services and programs. In addition to these strategies, other researchers have developed models for change that put forward other unique approaches, such as allowing for locally driven variation, providing human capital support for ongoing technical assistance and tolerating small-scale risk. The end goal of using these approaches is to design innovative policies that endure and improve long-term student outcomes.

The academic professoriate is a determinant of successful higher education systems. Yet, recently, worsening conditions of employment, deteriorating salaries, and threats to job security have made the academic profession less attractive, especially to young scholars, in several countries. This paper investigates the salaries as well as the recruitment and retention procedures in public higher education institutions from a cross country perspective. The UK, Germany, France, and Italy are adopted as case studies to determine the attractiveness of European higher education systems. The evolution over the last decade creates an extremely variegated picture.

Efforts to attract and retain effective educators in high-poverty public schools have had limited success. Dallas ISD addressed this challenge with information produced by its evaluation system to offer large, compensating differentials to highly effective teachers willing to work in its lowest-achievement schools. The Accelerating Campus Excellence (ACE) program resulted in immediate and sustained achievement increases. The improvements were dramatic, bringing average achievement in the previously lowest-performing schools close to the district average. When ACE stipends are largely eliminated, a substantial fraction of highly effective teachers leave, and test scores fall. This highlights the central importance of performance-based incentives.

Crises have a way of shaking up the status quo and creating space for new thinking. When shocked out of their familiarity, people start to ask questions as to why things are the way that they are and brainstorm ways to make them better. Enter entrepreneurs. They are the people who take those ideas that are lying around and attempt to create solutions to the problems blasted open by crises. The pandemic was a crisis for American education. From 2019 to 2022 the average fourth grade math score dropped 5 scale score points, falling to the lowest level since 2005. In eighth grade, the average math score dropped 8 points, the lowest they have been since 2003. Entrepreneurs responded to the pandemic with gusto. The Prenda microschool network started in 2013 but tripled in size during the pandemic. Parents looking for smaller, more responsive education environments met a platform that was ready for them. The Art of Problem Solving, a content provider known originally for its high-level math courses, leaned into the pandemic, flooding their website with resources for parents and building out the functionality of their products. Now emerging from the pandemic, it is an opportune time to take stock of exactly where the world of educational entrepreneurship stands. What are the headwinds and what are the tailwinds? Where is entrepreneurship succeeding and where it is struggling? To answer these questions, EdChoice partnered with Hanover Research to survey 59 educational entrepreneurs working today to find out about their experiences. This paper shares the results of that survey.

This report profiles five public PreK-12 learning education agencies across the U.S. that participated in the Digital Promise Center for Inclusive Innovation Teacher of Color Recruitment and Retention cohort and utilized the Inclusive Innovation model to create and launch locally contextualized programs designed by teachers of color.

Across six Sub-Saharan African countries, grade 4 students of teachers who were hired after a free primary education reform perform worse, on average, on language and math tests--statistically significantly so in language--than students of teachers who were hired before the reform. Teachers who were hired just after the reform also perform worse, on average, on tests of subject content knowledge than those hired before the reform. The results are sensitive to the time frames considered in the analysis, and aggregate results mask substantial variation across countries--gaps are large and significant in some countries but negligible in others. Analysis of teacher demographic and education characteristics--including education level or teacher certification--as well as teacher classroom-level behaviors reveals few systematic differences associated with being hired pre- or post-reform. [Additional support for the working paper from the Research in Improving Systems of Education (RISE) (United Kingdom) and the Knowledge for Change Program (KCP) Trust Fund.]