Plugging Leaks in the Latinx Teacher Pipeline: An Interview with Dr. Ana María Villegas

Why is it important to diversify the teacher workforce?

There are three main rationales for diversifying the teacher workforce. One of these is the role model rationale, probably the oldest argument. It goes something like, “kids in school want to see teachers who look like them, and this is something especially helpful to kids from groups that have been historically bypassed within school settings, like Latinx students.” The argument also extends to teachers of color helping students believe that they can make it within the education system.

However, there is relatively little research that involves interviews with K–12 students of color, asking whether or not they see their teachers of color as role models. There are a few studies that look at teachers or pre-service teacher candidates of color who say that they want to be role models for their students. We can infer that this is their view because they wished they had had teachers of color to inspire them during their own journey through the school system. But that's about as close as we get to evidence for the role model function of teachers of color, although I do not discount this rationale.

From my perspective, a more compelling reason for diversifying the teacher workforce is that because teachers of color tend to be closer to the cultural experiences of students of color, they bring insight to the profession that's sorely missing at this point, especially with an overwhelmingly white teacher population. I have framed this as the pedagogical rationale, which I see as including five general practices.

First, is that teachers of color can establish bridges to learning for students of color by creating lessons that are culturally relevant for and responsive to them. This practice of teachers of color is well documented in the qualitative research literature.

Second, is the existence of considerable evidence that teachers of color have more favorable views of students of color, including more positive perceptions regarding their academic potential, than white teachers. I believe this difference in expectations, and the interactions those expectations trigger in classrooms and schools, improves the education of students of color in significant ways.

A third pedagogical practice that is supported by research is that teachers of color can engage students of color in learning because they are often able to build trusting relationships with them, something that is more difficult for white teachers to do.

There's a little bit of research on teachers of color being more willing to confront issues of racism, and engaging students in conversation on race. This is an important fourth practice because students of color need to understand that their culture is not intrinsically inferior to the culture of the more politically powerful group in society.

And there is some work that looks at teachers of color as advocates, willing to go to bat and challenge school practices that disadvantage students of color. To me, these five practices add up to a very compelling argument for increasing the diversity of the teaching force.

There's a third rationale, which I have called the workforce rationale, that shows that teachers of color, compared to their white peers, tend to remain in hard-to-staff schools for longer periods of time. In so doing, they provide some continuity and stability in what could be—and typically is—a very unstable, revolving-door school setting. Within a given school year, a student may have a teacher replaced one or more times, which can create an unwillingness to engage with new teachers. Research confirms that high teacher turnover harms student learning since inexperienced and less qualified teachers are often hired to fill vacancies.

Rounding this out, there's a whole set of quantitative research, conducted mostly by economists using large databases, that shows that when students of color are taught by teachers of color, they accrue academic benefits. There is a complementary line of research, conducted mostly by sociologists, showing that when there's a concentration of teachers of color in a school district or in a school, especially in settings with a concentration of students of color, those students tend to perform better academically. Without question, these documented favorable outcomes reflect the influence of the three rationales I’ve discussed for diversifying the teaching force.

One of the problems is that the pool of potential Latinx teachers is small because of leaks along the educational pipeline. What needs to happen in order to plug these leaks?

In terms of sources of the problem, the leaky pipeline is the primary one. Fewer Latinx students graduating from high school means fewer Latinx students going on to college. And the majority of those who graduate and actually do go on, go on to two-year colleges. The transfer rate from two-year to four-year colleges is dismal, so the pipeline gets increasingly reduced.

In terms of solutions, there's the early teacher recruitment, or "future teachers" clubs, where you start working with kids in high school or sometimes even before that, to encourage them to go on to college, and major in education. This has not produced much in terms of people who go into education. That's not helping to diversify the pool much. It is helping, to some extent, provide support for some students of color to enter college. It’s a long haul from middle school into teaching and very often you lose students on the way there.

There are also articulation agreements between two- and four-year colleges that help combat low transfer rates for Latinx students by ensuring that they can transfer a large portion of the credits they've already attained toward their four-year degree.

Another productive approach is providing a clear career ladder into teaching that doesn't have to begin with a four-year degree in education. This has probably been the major approach to recruiting more Latinx students into teaching. The best work involves universities working with school districts to identify people already working in a school—like people who are working as paraprofessionals—to enter preparation programs, and will ultimately be hired by that district. The downside of the career ladder approach is that people of color who are recruited into those programs are generally struggling financially, and getting them to complete an undergraduate degree is not easy. Some people have referred to these initiatives as Grow Your Own programs. In a sense, people who enter the profession that way can circumvent the requirements of traditional teacher preparation programs. They come in more mature and often with professional experiences. Although they struggle initially, most candidates in these programs make their way through.

*This interview has been condensed and edited for clarity.

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