Teacher recruitment is a pressing need in the United States. Equally important is the recruitment of more racial-minority teachers to help close the teacher-student diversity gap. We surveyed 300 undergraduates at our university regarding their perspectives on teaching careers--what they found attractive and deterring. Results from this survey and…

Historically underserved and minoritized students are more likely to thrive when they are supported and led by diverse faculty and staff. In 2019, leaders of the country's largest higher education system, California Community Colleges, recognized wide gaps in representation: 52% of 2.1 million students identified as underrepresented minorities,…

Efforts to recruit teachers of color during the ongoing teacher shortage in the United States have largely failed evidenced by the increasing diversity gap between students of color and teachers of color. This study focuses on one barrier to recruiting teachers of color, a traditional student teaching model that is equivalent to a semester to a…

School districts and educator preparation programs are important partners in the professional learning ecosystem. Their strong relationships have long been lauded as the gold standard of preparing and retaining high-quality teachers, yet they have been slow to develop robust reciprocal relationships that can address intensifying challenges of…

For years, policymakers, districts, and scholars have pushed for the inclusion of more Black male teachers in US public schools; however, their even smaller subset--Black male special education teachers--has been ignored, particularly by scholars. The results of this study provide insight into the recruitment and retention of Black male special…

There is a national need to recruit more science teachers. Enhancing pathways to teaching for science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) majors could help to address this need. The Learn By Doing Lab is a course in which STEM undergraduates teach hands-on life science and physical science to local third- through eighth-grade…

Using unique data from California on teacher job vacancies, we investigate staffing challenges across the urbanicity spectrum, focusing on the extent to which the characteristics of rural school systems explain the differences in staffing challenges as measured by vacancy rates and emergency credentialed teachers, relative to other urbanicities.…

This study examined the long-term impact of a special education residency program in high-need urban schools on the recruitment, program completion, and hiring and retention of graduates. Findings from this study, expanding research to special education teacher preparation, are consistent with a growing body of research that suggests that a…

Currently, there are 1.3 million English Learners (EL) in California public schools (CDE 2018). The passage of Proposition 58, which presented multilingual education as key to students' future economic success without every using the word bilingual, lifted the previous restrictions on bilingual education programs and increased the demand for…

This article traces the state takeover and neoliberal reconstruction of a mid-size urban school district in the California Bay Area. Aligning with research on social networks in school reform, it identifies three organizational nodes of power operating within the takeover and post-takeover landscape: venture-philanthropic capital, the Teach for…

The pandemic has exacerbated teacher attrition in California with 88% of the hiring demand in high needs areas of education (Darling-Hammond et al., 2018). The shortage of credentialed teachers has increased the need to fill positions with intern teachers who have limited or no teaching experience. This is most prevalent in special education,…

Although studies have been published that examine the effectiveness of large federal scholarship programs for recruiting new science teachers, few studies have examined whether new teachers recruited by these programs are as well prepared as those who were not recruited and supported by these scholarships. In an effort to address the discrepancy…

Police training programs at community colleges are a vital cog in ensuring that local law enforcement agencies have a steady supply of recruits who have not only the weapons training, legal knowledge and other traditional skills but also professional skills like critical thinking, in an age when police behavior has come under focused public…

To meet the needs of an increasingly diverse student population, leadership preparation programs must tackle the mutually-reinforcing goals of increasing the development of leaders from under-represented populations and cultivating culturally responsive leadership. This paper adds to the discussion of how best to improve leadership preparation by…

With a rise of alternative permit (AltPermit) teachers coming to education, many have little to no preparation or self-efficacy for the demands needed to support all learners. Low teacher efficacy is associated with high rates of attrition. As a result, districts throughout the United States struggle to retain the teachers they recruit and hire…