Barriers to Racial Equity for Teachers of Color and Indigenous Teachers in California’s Teaching Pipeline and Profession

Executive Summary

Like the rest of the United States, the diversity of California’s teaching force continues to lag behind its student population. While students of color make up 78% of the state’s K-12 population, Teachers of Color and Indigenous Teachers (TOCIT) comprise just 34% of the teaching workforce[1] (California Department of Education, 2018), a statistic that has dominated the teacher shortage narrative. Although there is promise in the fact that TEP enrollment is more diverse than the state’s current educator workforce, it's still 27% less diverse than the state’s K-12 students. As demand for greater representation increases, so have the initiatives to recruit and retain more racially diverse teachers. In the past few years, California has spent billions in an effort to diversify its teacher workforce, including Assembly Bill 520, which allocated $15 million to be distributed to school districts to develop and implement programs that diversify teaching staffs, and Assembly Bill 130, which appropriated $350 million over the next five years to create or expand Teacher Residency Programs, a pathway that has been shown to recruit and retain higher numbers of TOCIT (California Legislative Information, 2023). But even with these measures, the realities of higher rates of burnout, turnover, and early retirement among TOCIT force us to explore what other factors might be contributing to their departure, or in some cases, their noticeable absence.

This study sets out to 1) explore how current policies, structures, practices, attitudes, and ideologies across the pipeline and profession impede the recruitment and retention of TOCIT, and 2) better understand the racialized experiences and perspectives of pre-service and in-service Teachers of Color and Indigenous Teachers. The following paper is based on a mix of qualitative and quantitative data collected from system leaders in teacher preparation, pre-service teachers, in-service teachers, and former teachers over the course of approximately one year: spring 2021 to summer 2022.

See the complete Executive Summary, findings and recommendations on the attached.

[1] Teacher of Color and Indigenous Teacher data from 2018-2019 academic year