May 21, 2025 12:25:05 PM
Despite the benefits of a diverse teaching force, prospective teachers of color fall out of our leaky preparation pipeline at every stage: preparation, hiring, induction, and retention. Here’s what our pipeline should look like:
But for prospective teachers of color, each section of the educator pipeline is either leaking or badly broken. Here’s why: ineffective preparation, bias in hiring, and a lack of both early-career mentoring and long-term support pull teachers of color out of the profession at every stage.
Teacher preparation is a two-step process: formal education and statewide licensing.
Teacher preparation starts with one of the many programs in the U.S. that train teachers in the principles of learning and education.
The traditional preparation model involves some form of higher education for aspiring teachers, including formal coursework, student teaching, and other opportunities to gain hands-on experience.
However, schools of education in the U.S. often do not prepare teachers to teach well.
The content of these programs hasn’t clearly translated to better student outcomes. Most of them exclude key components of effective student teaching experiences. Shrinking public budgets for these programs have also caused tuition costs to balloon.
Alternative routes to teaching have proliferated to fill the gap. These programs can range from residencies to short-term internships. Generally, they are more effective than traditional programs in certain areas, like teaching strategies for classroom management.
Teachers of color face additional obstacles regardless of their path.
Those who opt to pursue the traditional path often bear a heavier financial burden. 91% of Black students and 82% of Latinx students who trained to teach borrowed federal student loans for their undergraduate education, compared with 76% of white students.
Unsurprisingly, then, teachers of color are more likely to have come to the profession via alternative pathways. However, many programs limit student teaching experiences, another key part of preparation.
As a result, many aspiring teachers of color face a difficult choice: entering the profession with less practice or entering the profession with more debt.
The second step of preparation—statewide licensing—comes at the end of preparation programs. It can be another barrier to entry for teachers of color.
Many states have introduced more difficult teacher licensing exams as part of their efforts to improve teacher quality. However, minority candidates have been doing especially poorly on these new exams.
It’s unclear if these poor results are linked to racial bias in the exams or the poor quality of teacher preparation for aspiring teachers of color.
Whatever the cause, the result adds to the problems for efforts to advance teacher diversity.
After licensing exams, the next step in the educator pipeline is getting hired. This can be a huge hurdle, particularly for Black teachers.
Research has found that aspiring Black teachers are significantly less likely than their white counterparts to receive a job offer—one of many reasons why there are so few Black teachers across the country. And when they do get job offers, Black teachers are significantly more likely to be placed in schools characterized as “struggling,” which tend to have fewer resources and even higher teacher turnover.
Due to discrimination in the hiring process, many Black teachers start their careers at a disadvantage even before they walk into a classroom.
The teacher “induction” section of the educator pipeline offers professional development for first-time teachers to learn from experienced teachers. Induction can include mentorship from veteran teachers, seminars, and informal feedback sessions.
Research shows that high-quality, multi-year induction programs increase teacher retention and effectiveness. States have varying requirements and options for inducting new teachers.
But teachers of color may have a harder time with induction into their new jobs.
Due to turnover, there are fewer veteran teachers of color to mentor first-time teachers of color. Unsurprisingly, teachers of color feel that they don’t have the necessary supports to grow. The schools where they tend to teach often have fewer resources and experience outright closures rather than efforts at improvement.
The going often stays rough for those teachers of color who make it through the challenging first few years in the teaching profession.
Instead of being supported through the pipeline, educators of color are often caught in a “revolving door” that leads many to leave their school or leave the profession entirely. 10.6% of teachers of color change schools, and they are more likely to report these moves as “involuntary,” compared to 7.5% of white teachers. 8.3% of teachers of color leave the profession compared to 7.5% of white teachers
Working conditions, poor salaries, and involuntary displacement contribute to the higher rate of departure for teachers of color.
They also cite emotional and psychological costs as reasons for leaving, ranging from an antagonistic work culture that leaves them feeling unwelcome and underrecognized to feeling deprived of agency and autonomy in their schools because they are unable to tailor their teaching to the population of students they serve.
Aspiring educators of color face systemic hurdles when they prepare to be teachers, become teachers, try to get hired as teachers, are first-time teachers, and try to stay in the profession.
End to end, the pipeline for educators of color is broken. And we need to fix it.
Teachers of color help all students achieve, and they are essential to our fight for a more equitable education system. For ideas on how to fix it, visit EdTrust, the National Council on Teacher Quality, and Katy Reckdahl's article in the Atlantic.
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