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…

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…

This article explores the development of teaching identity among Teach for America (TFA) corps members through the use of storied experience. Grounded in a conceptual framework of intersectional identities, specifically Gee's notions of "institution-identity" and "affinity-identity," we consider the storied experiences of two…

Current research in teacher education has turned a gaze toward recruiting students of color into teacher preparation programs. Yet teacher education programs fail to deconstruct the intersectional racial grammar of teacher education to provide meaningful learning experiences for preservice teachers of color, who often endeavor to teach in the very…

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…

While Grow Your Own (GYO) programs have sought for decades to remedy teacher shortages across the United States, myriad factors, including the demographic shifts in public school populations, have in recent years exacerbated the need to recruit and retain teachers of color and of bilingual backgrounds. Amid models of precollegiate and…

This article introduces a strategy to diversify the teaching workforce through de-centering teacher education as the primary stakeholder in the preparation of diverse teachers. The article expands the focus on teacher recruitment and retention by proposing a model that counters the educational context of White supremacy through Grow Your Own (GYO)…

In 2007, the Multilingual/Multicultural Teacher Preparation Center, a teacher education program, was featured in a "Teacher Education Quarterly," 34(4), special issue on diversifying the teaching workforce. Though this center has since ended due to the disbandment of the Bilingual/Multicultural Education Department, this commentary…

English learners (ELs) make up 10% of the U.S. student population and are increasingly enrolling in school districts that have little experience with educating these students. A majority of states report shortages in teachers prepared to work with ELs, particularly in the area of bilingual education. Grow Your Own (GYO) programs that recruit and…

Efforts to recruit and retain Teachers of Color are rarely accompanied by policy and programmatic changes that adequately address their unique learning needs. In this article, I propose a framework that draws on sociocultural learning theory and Critical Race Theory to examine how programmatic structures embedded in a racially structured society…

Having been concerned with the recruitment, enrollment, and retention of teachers of color nationally and at State University (all names of persons, places, and institutions in this article have been given pseudonyms) where she serves as chair of elementary education, author Mary Gomez was intrigued by the experiences that students of color were…

According to the U.S. Department of Education, Office of Special Education Programs (2004), the United States is lacking 41,141 certified special educators. Texas is no exception to the national trend; in Texas alone, there is a shortage of 5,024 certified special educators (U.S. Department of Special Education). Any successful remediation of this…

Today in the United States, there is a shortage of teachers who culturally and linguistically match the increasing United States school-age population of Latinos/as. Latino/a youth are not faring well academically in U.S. schools. One widely discussed remedy for the low achievement and high dropout rate of Latino/a students is developing a larger…

This article examines the efforts of a team of educators in a mid-western urban university in Omaha, Nebraska, to understand why so few persons of color enter the teaching profession and to identify actions that can be taken to attract them. The questions that were posed included the following: (1) What does past research say about recruiting…

The attack against teacher education has seemed increasingly focused and pervasive in recent years with the national government joining the discussion. The 2002 U.S. Secretary of Education's Annual Report on Teacher Quality (U.S. Department of Education) called for the dismantlement of teacher education programs and their "burdensome requirements"…