Key Findings

Our research confirms a clear need for more intentional and creative recruitment of Latinx students into the teaching profession. But it also demonstrates that the underrepresentation of Latinx individuals in teaching is due largely to the academic, financial, and sociocultural challenges they face along the pathway into teaching. Many of these challenges begin early in their educational trajectory, when they are segregated in schools with fewer experienced teachers and fewer financial resources, for example. These types of systemic inequities will likely take substantial time to overcome. In the meantime, this research pinpoints a key approach that could be used to address many of the challenges to getting and keeping Latinx students on the pathway into teaching: collaborative partnerships across PreK–12 and postsecondary systems.

The three pathways to entering teaching profiled here each demonstrate how faculty at two-year and four-year colleges, leaders within PreK–12 schools and districts, and non-profit organizations can collaborate to design programs that meet the needs of Latinx students interested in the teaching profession. When it comes to recruiting future teachers and ensuring that they are prepared for postsecondary education, colleges are aware that they cannot do this work in isolation from PreK–12 schools—and vice versa.

When it comes to recruiting future teachers and ensuring that they are prepared for postsecondary education, colleges are aware that they cannot do this work in isolation from PreK–12 schools—and vice versa.

While different in many ways, the partnerships we studied share four key areas of focus that purposefully address the needs of prospective Latinx teachers:

1) Transitions into Postsecondary Education and Beyond

Becoming an elementary or secondary school teacher requires a bachelor’s degree, so ensuring Latinx students make a successful transition from high school to college and from two-year to four-year college is critical. Meeting this goal takes a lot of coordination and capacity, such as figuring out how to offer courses for college credit in high school and making sure these classes will raise interest in teaching or aligning coursework and curricula between two- and four-year colleges so students transferring from one to the other do not lose time or money by repeating classes. In order to do this well, institutions need to have dedicated personnel that coordinate between schools and offer guidance to students along the way.

State policy also plays a role in making it more or less difficult for students to make necessary transitions on the pathway to teaching. In Texas, for example, state policy allows students who complete their AAT at a community college to transfer all of their credits over to any public college in the state that offers baccalaureate degree programs leading to an initial teacher certification.¹

In states where a basic skills test is required for entrance to an educator preparation program, the test can be another barrier, but some states are recognizing this and working to address it. In Chicago, some residents were provisionally admitted into the bilingual residency program even though they had not passed the basic skills exam. But in August 2019, the governor signed a bill removing the requirement for teachers to have to take the test.² If the governor had not signed the bill eliminating the basic skills requirement, those residents would have had to leave the program, even though CPS’s staff felt confident in their residents’ ability because of the recruitment and selection process that they have in place. And in Skagit Valley, one student talked about the difficulty she had passing the writing section of the exam and how that held her back from enrolling in courses she needed to advance in her teacher preparation program. But in April 2019, the governor of Washington signed a law that removes the requirement of meeting a specific score on the basic skills exam before being admitted to an educator preparation program.³ The test is still required for admission, but will be one of multiple measures that assess a candidate’s skills.

The implications of these testing policy changes are unclear, particularly as the disparities in passage rates could be explained by a variety of other factors, such as testing bias, stereotype threat, or inadequate preparation in students’ PreK–12 education.⁴ In both Illinois and Washington, teacher candidates still have to take content exams to earn certification, but they no longer have an exam barring them from entering a teacher preparation program.⁵

As students prepare to enroll in an educator preparation program, they need clear communication about the requirements needed to enter the program and access to academic tutoring to ensure that they are prepared for those requirements.

Through partnerships, districts and educator preparation programs can also facilitate the transition for teacher candidates into the classroom once they complete the program. Data currently collected by the federal government on preparation programs are not connected to the PreK–12 education system,⁶ making it difficult for preparation programs to meet the needs of regional teacher labor markets without purposeful collaboration. Partnerships can actively recruit and prepare Latinx students for the teaching positions that districts are likely to have and then help place teachers in those positions. Partnerships can also design programs that are informed by what is happening in schools, in ways that are likely to bolster new teachers’classroom readiness, as well as the ultimate success of their students. In San Antonio, in addition to working to prepare more bilingual teachers to meet a regional need, UTSA’s preparation program is incorporating biliteracy courses which are aligned to the biliteracy model that one of its largest local public school district uses.

2) Intensive Mentorship and Academic Support

Partnerships that provide intensive mentorship and academic support for students aid them both in their current educational institution and in their transitions from one institution or system to the next.⁷ Students that we interviewed for this project talked about being the first in their family to attend college and the difficulties of navigating a complex higher education system while also having to deal with financial and academic responsibilities.

Students who participated in these pathway programs talked about how helpful it was to have connections—whether to a mentor, guidance counselor, or a summer bridge program—during their transition from high school to a postsecondary institution, or during their transition from community college to a four-year college. These supports were key in whether students felt like they were able to succeed. Students from Skagit Valley spoke in depth about the invaluable support that they received from their high school teacher and college navigator at SVC—from helping them apply to college and finding the information they needed for financial aid to providing cheerleading when they needed it. In San Antonio, one transfer student talked about how the information he received at the summer bridge program between his two-year and four-year college helped him chart a path for success, and also helped him see the assets he brings to the classroom. In Chicago, bilingual residents talked about how they could not have made it through the application process without the step-by-step information and support from CPS staff. All three pathways are attempting to provide support structures that help combat academic, financial, and personal barriers.

3) Early and Creative Recruitment Efforts

A core element of the three programs that we profiled is targeted recruitment—early and often—into the profession. In Skagit Valley's RWT program, high school students have the opportunity to explore teaching through coursework and they can volunteer as tutors in elementary schools. For some students, this solidified their interest in teaching, but for others, it made them realize that teaching was not the career they wanted to pursue before they had sunk time and money into an education degree. In San Antonio, students in a bilingual high school program explore their own identities and cultures, and what that would mean if they became educators, through summer activities like identity-building workshops and institutes hosted by UTSA. In Chicago, residents are recruited from the current pool of CPS employees who already have bachelor’s degrees but are not certified to teach. All three programs encourage culturally responsive teaching through programming that helps students to explore their own identities and appraise what assets they bring to the classroom, which also helps attract Latinx and bilingual students to teaching.⁸

While early recruitment programs are gaining popularity as a way to recruit more diverse educators, we do not yet know how effective these programs actually are at getting students to stay on a pathway into the teaching profession. Student privacy policies and lack of longitudinal data collection and alignment make it difficult to track students once they graduate from high school and enter postsecondary education, which is critical to understand the effect of these pathway programs. Washington State has been collecting and reporting data on the success of the RWT high school program, but it was not following and collecting data on where students ended up after graduation until 2017, when it added an RWT student program code to its Comprehensive Education Data and Research System so that students can be followed over time.⁹

4) A Focus on the Role of Finances and Family

In recruiting and preparing Latinx students for college and for careers in teaching, these partnerships consider the role that finances and family play in students’ educational decision-making and trajectory. Latinx individuals tend to have strong social and family ties. The partnerships that we profiled make efforts to engage parents along the way when recruiting teacher candidates.

The decision to pursue a career in education can be impacted by familial pressure to pursue higher paying or more prestigious careers that will lead to financial security.¹⁰ In San Antonio, district staff began encouraging parents to attend summer bridging activities along with students, so that they have a better understanding of the opportunities that exist in the teaching profession.

That decision is further impacted by the cost of the degree, although each community we researched has different levels of financial resources and stability.¹¹ Students that we spoke with talked about the influence of finances in their decision-making process, particularly as it related to choosing whether to attend a four-year or two-year college. In interviews, students often said that they could not rely on their parents for financial support, and that sometimes their parents or other family members relied on them for financial support instead. Additionally, students did not want to take out significant amounts of debt. They cited lower costs as a primary reason for choosing to enroll at a community college instead of a four-year college. Bilingual residents in Chicago talked about how the ability to continue working in a school and earning a stipend pushed them to choose the CPS/NLU residency program over other programs.