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,…

Purpose: The purpose of this article is to debut a novel initiative that could potentially optimize resources that are currently constrained but, if unleashed, could help ameliorate the science, technology, engineering and mathematics teacher shortage. The initiative involves the reconceptualization of the National Network for Educational Renewal…

The population of Manitoba has become significantly more diverse in recent years. However, this diversity is not reflected in the teacher workforce. What factors contribute to this incomplete representation of our society? This article examines the most current Canadian data available for the school and teacher populations. The established…

The U.S. elementary and secondary teaching force in recent decades has changed significantly and in important, sometimes surprising ways. It has become far larger, far less experienced, less diverse by gender, and more diverse by race/ethnicity. And it remains unstable. Yet researchers, policymakers, and the public appear not to have much marked…

Since its founding 34 years ago, Teach For America has prepared nearly 70,000 recent college graduates and career-changers to teach in high-poverty schools across the United States. Unlike traditional teacher-preparation programs, it places "corps members" in short-staffed public schools after an intensive summer seminar, before they are…

Antiblack geopolitics and educational policies continue to produce oppressive systems, making it difficult for educators to acknowledge Black families' actions as contributions to produce equitable education. Policy processes have the potential to transform oppressive systems of power. Conceptualizing policy as a practice of power permits local…

The LGBTQ+ community is one overlooked and underresearched in education recruitment and retention, as compared with other minoritized groups. A growing teacher shortage is rooted both in recruitment and in retention and can be mitigated by examining policies that support equitable preservice programs and reduce high teacher rates of attrition.…

New research shows where we've made progress and what still needs work, especially to retain educators of color. Richard Ingersoll and his team of researchers analyze the best national data to uncover what trends and changes have occurred in the diversity of the K-12 teaching force over time. Their five findings reveal some interesting facts. [A…

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…

The dominant public discourse regarding the recruitment and retention of teachers is one that is often framed in terms such as 'crisis'. Data from the Department for Education, the National Audit Office and bodies such as the Education and Training Foundation highlight challenges in filling vacancies across each part of the education sector. This…

This study of the University of Texas (UT) at Austin surveys the most influential policies enacted on campus in the name of diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI). This report compiles and examines the university's DEI plans, its progress updates, and all of the publicly accessible DEI plans and updates published by the university's various…

Grow your own (GYO) programs are designed to recruit, prepare, and place community members as teachers in local schools. They do this through partnerships between educator preparation programs, school districts or local educational agencies, and community-based organizations. The nation is currently seeing new and thoughtful uses of the approach.…

Academics are becoming more thoughtful on where they want to live as the culture war on queerness has entered higher education. Universities, in order to recruit the best and the brightest, need to consider how to create an environment that retains and attracts diverse talent. In this article, we examine how to recruit and support LGBTQIA+…

Over the last few years, much attention has been focused on the nationwide teacher shortage. As teachers begin to retire in record numbers, and the number of students entering teacher education majors continues to decline, concern around the teacher shortage heightens (US Dept. of Ed., 2016). The numbers are even more dire when looking at Teachers…

This book examines the lives and contributions of career change teachers: individuals who have switched careers to become classroom teachers. Their leadership experiences, industry connections, ways of embedding real world applications in classroom teaching practices and diverse skills sets are investigated in the context of their contributions to…