![]() Numerous studies show that students of color have less access to effective teachers, 428 and the inequities in their K-12 education experience are manifest in lower test scores on the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP), 429 licensure tests, and other outcome measures. Unfortunately, the system often fails aspiring teachers of color long before they enter a teacher preparation program. Content licensure tests for aspiring elementary teachers generally address the subjects taught by elementary teachers, including English language arts (especially children's literature), science, social studies, and mathematics. Much of this content comprises material that high schools should have taught all students, including aspiring teachers. 426 It is important to note that while institutions of higher education and the teacher preparation programs within them are best positioned to address low and disparate pass rates on licensure tests for their aspiring teachers, the problem does not necessarily start with teacher prep programs. 425 Historically, institutions have been less successful in preparing aspiring teachers of color to pass these exams, hindering their efforts to become licensed teachers. Moreover, most research finds that content licensure tests predict teacher effectiveness. These tests intend to set guardrails for entry into the profession, ensuring that anyone entrusted to teach children has demonstrated an adequate understanding of the content that they will be expected to teach. ![]() Licensure tests are an efficient, reliable, scalable, and comprehensive measure of teachers' content knowledge. ![]() The field agrees that teachers cannot teach what they do not know, and while licensure tests are not the only way to measure that knowledge, they offer some important advantages over the alternatives: they are efficient, reliable, scalable, and comprehensive. Further, while it may not be possible to fully remove bias from any assessment, standardized licensure tests typically undergo a rigorous process to identify and remove or mitigate bias in the assessment, although states should inquire about this process whenever considering a new test (for more, see the FAQs below). Licensure tests are one point in the pathway into the classroom that have received a great deal of scrutiny. 424 Equally important is providing conditions in schools that retain teachers once in the classroom, although this report will only focus on the recruitment and pipeline. Aspiring teachers of color are lost at disproportionately higher rates at all points in the pathway into the classroom. 423 Bringing more teachers of color into the classroom is a priority, yet remains a challenging goal to achieve. ![]() While the teacher workforce has become more racially diverse over the years, it has not kept pace with the far more rapidly diversifying student 421 Further,Īll students benefit from access to a diverse teacher workforce over the course of their years in school. 420 The impact is particularly great for students in the elementary grades. 419 While much of the research has coalesced around Black students and teachers, a new study finds similarly positive outcomes for Hispanic student-teacher matches. Compelling and ample evidence demonstrates that students of color benefit in both the short term (such as through fewer absences and suspensions, and higher academic achievement) and in the longer term (such as through greater high school graduation and college matriculation rates) when they have a same-race teacher. While there is no panacea, a long-standing priority in education has become even more essential: building a more diverse teacher workforce. One of these is inequitable access to a diverse, effective teacher workforce. 418 This moment brings new urgency to the need to not only address the pandemic's educational impact, but also the educational inequities that long preceded the virus. ![]() The pandemic has exacerbated this divide, its harsh toll on students of color particularly alarming. Building a more diverse teacher workforce is essential to addressing educational inequity for students of color.Įducational inequity-both the opportunities available and outcomes produced-for students of color has long been one of the most persistent and troubling issues in education. ![]()
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