 All right. Good morning, everyone. We're going to get started. So welcome and thank you, everyone, for attending the briefing, diversifying the teacher profession, barriers to recruiting and retaining teachers of color, and how to overcome them. My name is Jessica Kardeshanum, director of the Washington DC Office of the Federal Policy for the Learning Policy Institute, where we conduct and communicate independent, high-quality research to improve educational policy and practice in ways that support empowering and equitable learning for each and every child. So thank you all for attending this briefing today. We'd like to start off with just a number of thank yous and some logistical information. So first, we just want to thank Senator Booker for sponsoring this briefing and for his wonderful staff, Nia Lissane, for all her efforts in putting this briefing together and supporting this important work. We'd also like to thank Evan Griffiths with the help committee for all the logistics with the room. We also want to welcome you on behalf of and thank our wonderful co-sponsors, Education Trust, Unidos US, the National Education Association, and the National Black Child Development Institute. We'd also like to thank Stephen Costion on LPI's team for all his work in putting this briefing together. We originally scheduled to go until 11.30, but we are fortunate enough to have the room until 11.45 so that we can get to even more audience questions as they come in, so we will make sure that we get to them. We do have resources out on the table, and we also will post them on LPI's website, and we'll send a follow-up email with all of that information. We also have bios of all our wonderful panelists that are included in the folders so that you can learn a bit more about them and the wonderful experiences that they bring to this presentation. We're going to start with a few comments from Amisha Cross from the National Black Child Development Institute, and Amisha is the Director of Policy and External Affairs for the National Black Child Development Institute. She currently leads the Civic Engagement for the Greater Washington Urban League and serves as Senior Advisor to the Vice President of the National Urban League. Thank you. Thank you, and thank you everyone for being here. I'm extremely excited that we are having this conversation today, and thankful to be a partner in this great work. Workforce development, teacher training, and the advancement of diversity in the teacher workforce is one of the foundational resources that we could create to ensure that all students of color have equal opportunity and access, not only as they pursue their education, but also in the workforce beyond graduation. Diversity in the teacher workforce is a necessity. Student outcomes, not only in high school, are contributed to actually having teachers of color in the classroom, but also studies consistently show that the performance of graduates, having confidence as they apply for jobs, having confidence as they elevate in their careers, in addition to having mentors. In many cases, your first mentor is going to be someone who taught you in a class in K-12. Sadly, across this country, we have far too many students who are students of color who will never have a class led by someone who looks like them. In a country where we know that diversity is the name of the game and that by 2050, the white population, the overwhelming population at this point, will be less than 15%. We have to ensure that we are directing our efforts towards creating a pipeline, not only that ensures that we have teachers that are willing and equipped and ready to face the challenges of today in our classrooms, but also who respect and understand the unique cultural diversity and learning experiences of those that are represented in their classrooms every day. At the National Black Child Development Institute, we are committed to ensuring that we are protecting the lives of black children and families across this country and that we are advocating for them in the areas of policy, of health and wellness, literacy, ensuring that we have an understanding of what our parents, what our children are going through, but also that we are working with legislators to be able to pass legislation, to be able to advocate on legislation that matters to our children and families the most. Students of color need to see leadership that represents them, and they need to see it for a few reasons. One, because they need to feel supported. One of the issues that we see when we are talking to a lot of African-American students, Latino students as well, is that they don't feel supported in their classrooms. They don't feel supported by their teachers. We have to ensure that teachers exhibit culturally relevant, culturally responsive practices in that classroom. To provide for that, it is essential that we create a pipeline that pushes teachers of color and places them in the classrooms of the students that need them the most. In America today, less than one in five public school teachers are teachers of color, while over 50% of public school students are students of color. In some cities, particularly in major cities, that number is 70% for students of color, but it does not change for their teachers. Our current teaching workforce is over 82% white, predominantly white female. As we consistently see the calls for diversity across multiple fields, as we consistently see the images of racism, of essential bias, of implicit bias, of biases that cross multiple fields, multiple areas, we recognize that it is extremely important that we address this issue early on and that we attack it in one of the fields that we know places young people at the forefront of change, and that is education. In order to advance workforce development, particularly in this field, the National Black Child Development Institute has taken on two major initiatives, one being the Teach Early Childhood Scholarship Program. We administer that program locally. The Teach Early Childhood Scholarship Program is designed to ensure that early childhood educators do not get displaced. One of the major issues that we've discovered when we were talking about the teacher pipeline is that there have been major legislative efforts across the teaching field, across education, for a very long time. And typically, those efforts, though they may start with well-intentioned, end up in many cases pushing black teachers out of the classroom. With that knowledge, we want to ensure that our current black teachers and those who are going through the pipeline are going to have the supports that they need to not only be successful in their classrooms, but to also meet the ever-growing challenges of the additional education requirements and the means that they need to perform at the highest levels in their classrooms. The Teach Early Childhood Scholarship Program provides tuition-free for students who are interested in, for students who need to get their bachelor's degrees in early childhood education, as is now required by the District of Columbia. With that, we have incorporated supports, ensuring that there are tutors that are available for those teachers, should they need them. Being that we have counseling services for them, should they need that. One of the things that we understand is that there are a lot of issues and instances that occur within the black community that are not equal across the board for other communities. So we have to make sure that while we are calling for more teachers in the pipeline, while we are supporting more teachers in the pipeline, that we are also being attentive to the issues that may impede their progress. In addition to that, we have launched the initiative called the Responsible Transformation of the Early Childhood Education Workforce. The Responsible Transformation addresses a lot of what you'll hear panelists talk about today. It is essentially an initiative designed to address workforce issues around keeping our teachers in the classroom, ensuring that displacement does not occur, ensuring that there is an understanding among not only the colleges that produce our potential teachers, but also the current population that culturally respond to pedagogy is a necessity, that black teachers are a necessity, that we understand that to keep teachers in the classroom, there are certain things that us as a population, us as a nation are going to have to do, to ensure that we continue to progress and that we are reflective and the people who are leading our classrooms and leading student administration are reflective and responsive to the needs of those classes. Interesting fact, when students of color have been studied, students who have a non-black teacher versus those who have a black teacher or a Latino teacher tend to have a higher estimation of their student ability. One of the most startling facts around teacher pedagogy is that students have a very intrinsic motivation from their teachers. And when a student is able to see themselves reflected in their teacher, and when that teacher understands their culture, when that teacher affirms their culture, when that teacher is also utilizing tools and resources in that classroom that allow that student to see themselves, it makes a difference in that student's trajectory. We are here not only to promote teacher diversity, but to also work towards ensuring that we are providing the supports necessary to get there and that we are addressing the pipeline issues that have currently created the system that we have today. The National Black Child Development Institute is honored to be a part of this work and we are excited for this event. Thank you, Amisha. Great, thank you. And we do have one seat here, one here, and then a couple throughout if people want to sit. So I'd like to invite up Desiree Carver-Thomas, she is a research and policy associate with LPI and a member of our educator quality team. She's written numerous reports on teacher shortages across the country. Previously Desiree taught in New York City public schools for five years and as a graduate student she consulted with the San Francisco Juvenile Probation Department on strategies for diverting recidivism, I practice that one, and with West Contra Costa Unified School District on implementing a full service community schools initiative. So we're really excited to have Desiree present the research on this issue. Thank you and good morning, everyone. So there have been a host of studies on teacher diversity in recent years. And what our report attempts to do is bring those together in order to help policy makers understand the obstacles to recruiting and retaining teachers of color and also the promising practices that are helping to overcome those obstacles. And while teacher diversity has been an important topic, has always been an important topic, teacher shortages across the nation have really brought the issue to the fore as states and districts are thinking about how to best grow and support their teacher workforces to meet demand and student needs. So with that in mind, I'll speak briefly about the teacher shortage context. In 2016 we released a report on teacher shortages that estimated if trends remain the same, we could expect a shortage of at least 100,000 teachers by 2018. So this past fall we did a 50 state review of state data reports and based on what we found, estimated more than 100,000 teachers are uncertified for their teaching positions nationally. These teachers are most often teaching in schools with more low income students and more students of color. And teacher attrition or teachers leaving the field plays a key role in driving these shortages. This overall national shortage varies by state, district, subject area, student population and it also means that there are too few teachers of color to meet demand. By investing in recruiting and retaining teachers of color, states can accomplish at least two goals, addressing teacher shortages and increasing their teacher diversity. So what do we know about teachers of color in the workforce? From the nationally representative schools and staffing survey, we know that teachers of color have increased from 12% of the teacher workforce in 1987 to 20% in 2015. Teachers of color overall are increasing in the population but that's not true across subgroups. Black and Native American teachers are actually declining in the workforce. There is some promising news, about a quarter of new teachers are teachers of color. However, we know that high teacher turnover rates can undermine that growth, which I'll talk about later. This graph shows how the proportion of people of color in the population diminishes along the teacher pipeline. Black and Latino students made up nearly 40% of students in 2007, this is K to 12, but less than 30% of high school graduates that same year. And as we look across the pipeline to post-secondary enrollment, to graduating with a bachelor's in education, to entering the teaching profession, that proportion continues to decline. And this is unfortunate because there are great benefits to teacher diversity as was mentioned earlier. Teachers of color often feel hard to staff positions. Three in four teachers of color work in the quarter of schools serving the most students of color nationally. These are schools that often face ongoing teacher shortages. Several studies have found improved academic outcomes for students of color when they have teachers of color, including increased math and reading scores, increased graduation rates, increased aspirations to go to college. There's the often cited study that just having one black teacher for one year in elementary school means black students will be more likely to graduate from high school. Some research suggests that teachers, in addition, students of color are less likely to be chronically absent or to be suspended when they have teachers of color. Some research suggests that teachers of color may experience greater satisfaction in more diverse faculties so greater staff diversity can actually help to decrease turnover rates for teachers of color and increase school stability for students. And finally, I just want to mention that students regardless of race benefit from having a diverse teacher workforce, students are more likely to report things like feeling cared about or academically challenged when they have teachers of color. And all students can develop the dispositions to work and live in a diverse and global society when they have diverse role models in childhood. So I'll talk about some of the barriers to recruiting and retaining teachers of color. One of the major barriers is cost. And while the rising cost of college discourages all college students in general from pursuing lower paying careers like education, research shows that it's especially true for students of color, college students of color, who are more likely to report that their student debt changed their career choices. Black college students in particular borrow more than other graduates and that debt gap grows over time to almost $25,000 more than white graduates four years after graduation and $43,000 more 12 years after graduation. So it's not hard to imagine that college students of color might opt for better paying careers, especially when beginning teachers nationally earn 20% less than other college graduates in other fields and 30% less by mid-career. In fact, in 30 states, teacher heading a family floor is eligible for several forms of government assistance. Only about college, there are obstacles to completing college. Only about 40% of college students finished within four years, but it's even lower for black, Native American, Latino and Pacific Islander students. We see similar trends over six year graduation rates as well and scholars cite several reasons. Again, the cost of college in having to work more, transportation difficulties, family responsibilities, dissatisfaction with faculty diversity and curricula. Teacher licensure exams pose a barrier and evaluation of the praxis exam, the one of the most common teacher tests found gaps in pass rates as high as 38% by race with lower scores in pass rates for black, Latino and Asian American test takers. And there's little evidence that these teacher tests consistently and accurately predict teacher effectiveness, which is what we really care about. Performance assessments like the PPAT, edTPA, CalTPA and others are more authentic assessments of candidates ability to actually teach. In 18 states, these policies are in place that allow or require teacher candidates to pass performance assessments and more states are moving in that direction. Again, with the cost of college, it's no surprise that many teachers of color choose alternative certification pathways into teaching. One in four teachers of color enter into teaching through these pathways and that's twice the rate of white teachers. And we know that teachers who enter through these pass rates through these pathways have turnover rates 25% higher than teachers who enter through traditional programs while there's variation in alternative certification programs, their quality on average, these candidates complete less coursework in student teaching if any before becoming responsible for their own students. Other programs like teacher residencies can help districts fill critical shortages without compromising on teacher quality. Residents apprentice for a full year in a high need school under the guidance of a master teacher before leading their own classrooms. And once teachers of color enter the field, challenging teaching conditions can push them out. Among them accountability pressures which could be related to demands to teach to test, for example, having a lack of resources and support, not having autonomy in their classrooms or not having the ability to influence school decision making, experience racial discrimination in stereotyping and being assigned job assignments or workloads that are less desirable. An important note is that school leadership has a significant role to play in all of these conditions and can help to improve them. Black teachers in particular are more likely to say that they move schools involuntarily. It will be important for research to dig into why that is, but some research suggests that school turnaround policies might be playing a role. One study, for example, found that schools with mostly black and Latino teachers were more likely to be slated for closure than other schools with similar student outcomes, but mostly white staff. So now I'll talk about some of the promising practices that are overcoming these barriers. And I'm going to focus on high retention pathways into teaching. These are pathways that offer high quality preparation and financial supports and other supports so that candidates are prepared to be successful in the classroom and to teach for the long haul. Service scholarships and loan forgiveness can underwrite the cost of high quality teacher preparation. A recent correlation study found that in districts where these programs were available, they had 25% more teachers of color. In teacher residencies, again, residents at Prentice with a master teacher while they complete coursework for a master's and about 50% of residents nationally are people of color greater than the national average and they also tend to have much higher retention rates and are rated to be effective teachers. Grow your own programs, recruit students, high school students, paraprofessionals, after school program staff and other community members who are more likely to stay, continue teaching in their communities. The California classified school employee teacher credentialing program is doing just that and about half of the school employees coming into teaching through that pipeline are Latino. Inclusive admissions policies can include conditional admissions. Rhode Island, for example, allows teacher preparation programs to evaluate teaching candidates on a holistic set of criteria even if they don't meet the GPA and standardized test requirements as long as those teacher prep programs also agree to support candidates to develop the skills that they'll need to be effective. Course articulation agreements are what are often called two plus two programs. Our partnerships between community colleges and universities, candidates begin their teacher preparation with two years at the community college level and then finish their preparation at the university level. And as a result, candidates can earn a teaching credential with considerable savings. These programs can be especially effective at supporting rural communities to grow their teacher workforces. And mentorship and support can help to address some of those obstacles to completing college through things like peer support, career advisement, tutoring, covering exam fees, and test preparation. An example of a two plus two program that offers mentorship and support is Leeward Community College in Oahu. At Leeward, Leeward serves the largest native Hawaiian population of all university of Hawaii community colleges. The program coordinator that says we understand that life gets in the ways and times, especially for students from hard to serve communities. We don't water down anything that we do, but we do provide safety nets. At Leeward, these supports include peer mentors, dedicated counselors, and more. In addition to high retention pathways, three other types of policies can support recruiting and retaining teachers of color. First are data and licensure policies. Monitoring teacher diversity in teacher prep programs can incentivize those programs to better recruit and support candidates of color. The new Tennessee report card is a good example of that. State teacher testing policies can move towards more accurate and authentic performance assessments like the edTPA, which has not been shown to have the same kinds of disparate outcomes in student pass rates as typical paper and pencil exams. Next, districts can partner with minority serving institutions to recruit teachers. They can also offer comprehensive induction. First year teachers who receive induction support are twice as likely to stay in teaching as those who don't receive that kind of early support. And finally, teaching conditions are critical to retaining teachers and teachers of color specifically, and improving school leadership can play a role in that. States can take advantage of the 3% Title II set aside to strengthen the quality of school leaders through the preparation, induction, and development of principles. And there are also other federal funding sources for improving school conditions like the 7% Title I set aside for school improvement and Title IV funding for student support and academic enrichment. Finally, H.E.A. reauthorization is an opportunity to improve existing programs. For example, incentivizing and supporting high quality residencies, improving the quality of teacher preparation and strengthening partnerships between schools of education and the schools they place their teachers in. It's also an important opportunity to address college affordability. Congressional appropriations is also an opportunity to invest available funds to increase access to high quality teacher preparation programs with a focus on diversity. There are several existing H.E.A. authorizations that funds could be directed toward, including Title II TQP grants, title III funds for MSIs, and Title IV loan forgiveness and teach grants. So there are more details in our report, which you can find at learningpolicyinstitute.org. And now it's my pleasure to welcome the president and CEO of LPI, Linda Darling Hammond. I wanna thank Desiree for this brilliant study. And another one that she's recently finished is on teacher attrition, which is related to this topic in a variety of ways. And I recommend both of those to you. I'm gonna stand up so I can see the wonderful panel here and see all of you. As I reflected on the findings of this study, I had to recognize a couple of teachers my own children had, and I'm gonna call them out, Faye Freeman and Evelyn Jenkins-Gun, who helped my own black children through public schools and had some of the effects that Desiree writes about, as well as being tremendous teachers for all of their students. So many of you will reflect on teachers that you know and take a moment and give them that sense of spirit. Desiree talked about the federal policy implications that are possible on this front. Teacher recruitment and development are key preparation, mentoring, and offsetting college debt compensation. She mentioned HEA, Title II, the teacher quality partnership grants. Just wanna note those were authorized at 300 million and are currently funded at about 15% of that amount. There's a lot of room for growth and the teach grants that we're gonna talk a little bit more about in terms of how they might evolve to be responsive to the need and the possibilities here. And of course, Title III does offer support to minority serving institutions, which are a major pipeline for teachers of color, another place where investment is possible and desirable. We have a wonderful group of panelists and I'm going to kind of work from the far end of the table towards the podium here. I'm gonna introduce them first and then we'll begin a moderated conversation. Think of your questions because we'll be back to you for those just shortly. Nia Lissane is the Education and Appropriations Legislative Aid for Senator Cory Booker of New Jersey. Senator Booker is sponsoring this briefing and we hope he'll make it here after his other briefing but that's uncertain because they landed on top of each other. Previously, she worked on the Education Appropriations and Healthcare Portfolios for Senator Barbara Mikulski of Maryland. She's been very busy on this issue and we're gonna come back to her for some words about what that office has been up to. Loren Trule is the Senior Policy Advisor for the Education Policy Team at Unidos US. In her role, Loren serves as an expert on education policy and advocacy work on a wide range of issues, impacting Latinx and English learner students and there are bios in your folder if you want more information about all these wonderful speakers. Ashley Griffin is the Interim Director of P-12 Research at the Education Trust where she conducts primary and secondary research to inform national, state and local decision makers and to help practitioners raise achievement and close gaps for students of color and students from low income families. And Dr. Jennifer Robinson is faculty and executive director of the Center of Pedagogy, the institutional structure at Montclair State University with responsibility for coordinating teacher preparation and the simultaneous renewal of teacher education in the schools. Since 2009, she has directed an innovative clinically based urban teacher residency to prepare new teachers for the Newark public schools and a long time ago, former student of mine at Teachers College, I am bursting with pride at all that she has accomplished. So we're gonna start with Naya and Naya, I wanna ask you about why the issue of teacher diversity is a priority for Senator Berger and then we'll talk a little about this drive act. Well, thank you all for coming out today. This is such an important topic. Teacher diversity is such an important issue for my boss specifically just going back to his time as mayor of Newark. New Jersey has done excellent work especially in teacher preparation as Dr. Robinson will attest to Montclair State has done, has an amazing program and has put many diverse pool of teachers into the Newark public schools, which is such a passion for my boss. But he, when we were working on the drive act, it was such a labor of love hearing what teachers needed and what we really wanted to do was not only make it easier for people to come into the teaching profession, make it attractive but keep them in the profession for longer. And talking and working with Jessica, we, I learned that teachers are most effective in their fifth year, but they leave far before that. And as was mentioned in the 2016 report, everybody is advantaged when we have a diverse teaching field. And we just teachers, especially teachers of color leaving far too soon. And so we really wanted to take the good work we were doing in New Jersey and kind of put it into policy so that all students have the opportunity to have a well-rounded education. And my boss is very, very much supports the fact that a well-rounded good education shouldn't be dictated by zip code, which it currently is unfortunately. And a large part of that is just having excellent teachers in the classroom and giving them the support we needed. Unfortunately, we've divested from teaching, from investing in teaching for far too long and in putting together the STRIVAC, we wanted to re-up that investment and make up for lost time, essentially. And would you like to say a little bit more about what the STRIVAC does? Yes, it's a very big bill. And so I might miss a couple of parts of it. But what we really wanted to do was both support students coming into higher education and then also keep them in the teaching profession for longer. And so as part of that, we kind of created a teacher loan forgiveness program, which would essentially, I don't wanna, I'm trying to pick my words correct, which would essentially make it easier for students who wanted to pursue teaching to come into college. And then we also dealing with the teach grant, wanted to streamline those dispute processes and just make sure the secretary is working with the state so students are aware that these programs are out here. Just in talking to a couple of teaching candidates in my daily day-to-day meetings, a lot of people just don't know that they have these options where, that there are these scholarships, there are these grant programs out there that will lessen the student loan debt. Because student debt is a major issue and it's a major barrier to a lot of people to coming into the teaching profession. People don't come into teaching for the money. They come because of the service and because they love children, they wanna help the next generation. And so we should be investing in those students. And so in addition, when people are entering the teaching profession, licensing and certification is an expensive process. It varies from state to state, which type of practice, how many practice exams you're gonna have to take. Sometimes you need to take it more than once. That's a barrier to entry. We wanted to lower that. And so we provided for subsidizing those fees. In addition, we also wanted to mandatorily fund the teacher quality partnership grant just because when teachers have access to those residency programs, they stay in the teaching profession for so much longer as Dr. Robinson will probably attest to later. And then further, we also wanted to invest in our early childhood educators. That's such an essential tool for students when they are going into kindergarten through all the way through 12th grade is having access to not just early childhood education, but being taught by excellent early childhood educators. And for a lot of the time and a lot of the legislation, they've been largely left out. And so we wanted to invest in those and make sure we were teaching them cultural competency, folding them more into teacher quality partnership grants. And we also wanted to invest entitled to that something that has always been on the chopping block, but teachers take advantage of it and get that professional development. And that's honestly what we need to have a strong, diverse, qualified teaching workforce. Thank you, both for those comments and for working on the bill. Loren, what makes Unidos US interested in diversifying the teacher workforce and what are the challenges that you're encountering as you seek to recruit and retain teachers of color? Well, thank you. Thank you for having me here today to talk about this. It is really important to the organization. Unidos US, formerly National Council of La Raza is the largest Latino advocacy and civil rights organization in the nation with the mission of really improving outcomes and opportunities for Latinos. And so we think key to that is improving outcomes and opportunities for Latino children. We think that that's really important not only for our communities but for the country as a whole. As many of us know, one in four students are Latino and that number is only meant to grow. It will be one in three in just a few years. And by 2050, 30% of the workforce will be Latino. So our country really depends on a well-educated Latino workforce to fulfill those needs. And so we think if you're talking about the success of Latino students, you have to talk about the inputs that lead to those successes. And as many of my colleagues have already touched on, a high-quality teacher and specifically a teacher of color or a Latino teacher can lead to that type of success. And so it's something that we know is really important to our students. We hear from our students that they do feel more challenged by their teachers who are also Latino. They feel like they are in a more welcoming environment where they feel safe and warm. And so it creates an environment within which they can do well. So, excuse me, I'm a little under the weather. So it's an issue that we think is key not only to our students, but to everyone. One of the challenges though that we hear beyond just what you've heard in this report about the going to college graduating and the debt that comes along with it is the additional burden that is often put on Latino teachers. So, you know, with great responsibility, there also comes a lot of overwork pieces of the work that are not part of your teaching plan, right? Where you have to kind of wrap your arms around students in a way, and it leads to burnout. Also, we hear that in the same way that there are not a lot of Latino teachers, there are not a lot of Latino school leaders. And so when our teachers are in schools that they don't feel are culturally competent as a whole, they feel like they are doing much of the work on their own. And so oftentimes it leads to burnout. And then I think another key piece of it is that Latinos from the students to the teachers, everyone involved often feel a great pull towards their family obligations. And so when you think about, they look at every Latino student as part of their family and what they should be doing for their individual success, plus the familial obligations that they may have outside of that building, it puts a lot of stress on the individual to be excellent in the classroom, outside of the classroom and at home. And so all of those things lead to a situation where you're seeing high turnover with Latino teachers. Your comments remind me that we've done some research recently on community schools which provide wraparound services and social workers and a variety of other supports for kids and found that they often also help with teacher retention because they help teachers have other places to other resources to meet the needs that you're describing. Ashley, I wanna kind of move right along because I think this links to the work that Ed Trust has been doing. You've been sharing stories in your research and on social media about the importance of having teachers of color in the workforce, the impact that teachers have on students and what their own voices tell us about their experience. I think the reports are available. They should be. Yes, outside, I think that is true and if not, yeah, I'm sure you can get them on the Ed Trust website. So how do these efforts fit into Ed Trust's approach to the issue of teacher diversification and what recommendations are you pursuing in terms of diversifying the teaching profession? So the first thing for our organization is the critical importance of teacher voice and this narrative. So as we have been hearing the conversations across the country about diversifying the workforce, one of the things Desiree highlighted so well is about working conditions. What we found is that those numbers don't oftentimes get to the real nuances that were also discussed by Lauren about what happens in this additional tax burden and so we think it's critical to really understand these challenges, the racial discrimination and those challenges faced, the issues of isolation and what it feels like to be the one person of color in a building and the supports necessary to move forward and through those challenges and just naming out and continue to elevating those conversations not just nationally but also in districts and in states. And so as we push these teacher conversations and we push around teacher policy, one of our big conversations organizationally and as we do this work, we traditionally are more on the quantitative side but really think it's critical to have a high level conversation with educators about what do they need to be retained in the workforce? What are the working condition issues and challenges? And what we found similar things, the isolation, culture and climate, we really hear a lot about conversations about not having a voice, not having conversations in school influence and what that means for wanting to stay and feeling respected and valued in the community of schools that they're a part of. The way that we're handling this right now is to make sure that as we go and talk to districts and as we talk to states and our advocates and policy makers that they are including their teachers in these conversations. They are deliberate about including them and ensuring that their voices aren't lost in these conversations because we wanna make sure that we understand behind all of these numbers are people and if our teachers are experiencing some of these challenges, what's happening to the students who look just like them and have similar challenges experiences. So those are some of the big takeaways for us. And as the Director of P-12 Research at Trust, how do you see a more diversified workforce impacting students over the course of their careers? Oh, so many things. All of the things that Desiree raised, including school culture climate, which is a part of our school improvement and conversation as a, but really having impact on school culture climate. Again, the more likely to graduate, the less likely to drop out. We don't talk about this a lot, but these notions of identity and what that looks like to see career professionals of color, both for students of color, but also for white students who have not had the opportunity to see professionals of color in buildings. Hopefully this increases some pipeline issues and we also are able to see some more leaders of color come into play as principals and leaderships. We also think that this amplification of the racialized experiences of teachers of color helped to amplify that students in schools may also be experiencing these things. And so we get back into school culture climate and possibly some conversations about social emotional learning and what that looks like and how we can better talk about those things. We know that there are decreases in exclusionary discipline rates. And so also having conversations, again, back into the school improvement conversation with Essa about what does it look like? It's more than just about putting in RTI or PBIS that some of this conversation is about the culture and climate that folks are experiencing. And our teachers may also be giving us an indicator that there's something going on here and their rates of turnover may help shine a light to some of those issues that we could address. Wonderful. I wanna, before I come to Jennifer, I'll loop back to Loren who's also engaged in research at Unidos US about this issue and whether there are some findings from the research that you're working on that are particularly notable in this regard. So if you don't mind, just because I think a lot of the research is gonna come to the same findings that you just heard from Ashley. If I could give some stories about that have come directly from our community schools about where these moments in time we're having teachers who look like you who have a similar experience to you really matters. So we have affiliates at Unidos US, they're community based organizations, many which are schools themselves. Earlier last year, I guess at this point we had a parent picked up for deportation right outside of the school. And in that moment that school because it has Latino teachers, it has Latino leaders, they were able to wrap their arms around that student and those families in a way that really made a difference. In a way that meant the student did not lose that many days in school. They were able to come back in the next day and know that they were safe and welcome and the school knew what was going on and that they were helping their family unit go through this really devastating event. And so I think that behind kind of the findings that we often talk about in research, there are these very real stories that make a difference in that student's life. One other, we do have a program, the National Institute for Latino School Leaders where we're working with folks already on the ground that are doing this work to help them be better policy and advocates. And one group in particular, and this is talking about how important it is to have the same experience kind of even for within group differences. So knowing that Latinos are not a monolith. One group, they were doing a presentation on ESSA and the name of their organization or their presentation was KESSA. And everyone in the room kind of looked, including the Spanish speakers, and said, well, don't you mean KESSA? What is ESSA? And the response was, no, it's a Puerto Rican community and this is what resonates. And so it really gave way to the fact that these Latino school leaders knew how to communicate with the parents in a way that would get them engaged on something that probably isn't that interesting to parents. And so that they were better in a place better to advocate for their children. So I think I'm, you know, I don't wanna move away from the research. I know that that's what we're here to talk about, but I think those are stories where you can point to examples that it really made a tangible difference in the parent's lives or the teacher's lives. Yeah, hard to believe that a policy discussion would not be a gripping experience for all of the parents in that school, but you know, here we are, a group of policy wonks. So one of the things that has been really held up as a strategy and a solution for some of the issues that teacher shortages are bringing and including shortages of teachers of color are teacher residency programs. And Jennifer Montclair State University has a well-known, well-much-studied residency program. And I would love for you to talk about why do teacher residencies prepare so many more teachers of color than traditional prep programs we see nationally that nearly half of the people who come through residencies are teachers of color, which is well more than double the national averages. And what do these programs look like at Montclair? So I wanna certainly thank Senator Booker for sponsoring this drive bill and for this congressional briefing as well. I think starting off, teacher residencies are attractive because candidates can receive a high quality preparation in one year in a classroom with an excellent mentor teacher who will provide at elbow feedback and support in the process of becoming a teacher. I think that's one very, very critical part of why residencies are attractive. A second, a residency provides a financial support. So because we are a teacher quality partnership grant program, and that's how we got started, many of our teachers of color need the stipend and the tuition waiver that comes with it. And they also take advantage of the teach grant, which was also mentioned on this panel earlier, which is why I hope that this drive bill is able to provide the kind of financial support through legislation. At Montclair State, I think our residency is really designed around a social justice lens on the curriculum, focusing on assets based approach to teaching and learning and looking at high expectations for the students who our graduates will teach. They're also experiencing a lot of understanding about what it means to teach in a democratic society, what it means to be a teacher in a democratic society. Teachers have to be leaders. They have to definitely provide their students with the access to the knowledge and the information and the opportunities and experiences that they need in order to be successful. Teachers need to be the ones who are also teaching in the way that children learn, so that they will be always looking for better ways to connect their students to the curriculum in the way that they need to. And certainly teachers are the ones who are basically transmitting our concepts around democracy. And so they sit in a very, very critical space in terms of helping our young people understand what they can do and empowering them to be leaders and to advocate for themselves and have agency. We also ask our candidates to look within and without. So they look at their own experiences as learners themselves. They do a lot of self-examination and then they're immersed in the neighborhoods where they're going to eventually teach. We have our students interning with community-based organizations. So they have a really great understanding of what it means to be in a community and be a part of the education experience, talking to the adults who are there, talking about the value of education to the people who live in those communities. Residencies spend four days in the classroom with a really, really strong mentor teacher who also receives quite a bit of professional development about being a culturally responsive mentor, about being an individual who not only teaches children well but also teaches adults well. And then finally, our program also includes induction and that's the preparation and support for new teachers. First, second and third year teachers. We have coaches who we hire and ask to go into the schools and to the classrooms, many of whom have taught in urban schools themselves. They work with the new teacher. They also work with the required mentor teacher, first year mentor teacher that's required in New Jersey and probably many other states. But that coach also works with the administration, with the leadership in those buildings as well to help them understand their role in supporting and retaining those new teachers. So residencies obviously pack a wallop in terms of teacher diversity and teacher efficacy. They also tend to be relatively small in relation to the need that's out there. So how do you answer the concern about how residencies impact teacher preparation on a larger scale and contribute to reducing teacher shortages? So we made a conscious decision at Montclair to engage as many of our tenure track faculty and adjuncts in the residency program itself. And so over 20 of our faculty have rotated in and out of the residency. And as a result, once they've had the chance to work in the residency, once they've established new ways of teaching our students, they're rotating back into our larger programs and certainly doing the exact same practices. When I go back home, I'm going to engage in a conversation about how we're going to expand upon some of the practices in terms of admissions, in terms of ways that we are partnering more closely with our schools. And I think that's a very important part of this work as well. The partnership between a university and a school district or schools that are supporting students of color and how we can ask those hard questions sometimes when we see practices that perhaps are not reflective of what we would want to see in our classrooms, but we're able to have those conversations because we're building closer relationships. I would say also in terms of retention, 86% of our graduates after three years of serving in the district are still working in those schools, either those schools or if they do move, they're moving to other high need schools. And so they're staying in the practice of teaching. I think because our state requires pretty close to a full year residency, we've also replicated the other residency on the undergraduate level. So we have faculty who've already said, this is the best way that we should do this work. So let's do it on all levels as well. I said finally that because of what we've learned about the importance of induction and because we believe in school university partnership so strongly, our provost has agreed to support and continue an induction coordinator that will be connected to our program. So we'll be following our graduates and we will be implementing many of the practices that came from our residency experience. And so overall, I would say the investment is a good one in terms of transforming, changing teacher preparation. One more thing I'll add is just that when you have the opportunity to do that kind of partnership work with a district and you're building trust and you're building rapport with the leadership, you'll get the kind of request that we got, which was, okay, you're bringing us math teachers, you're bringing us science teachers, you're bringing us special education teachers and I know that the grant doesn't necessarily support this but how about bilingual teachers and that's the request that we got. And fortunately because we had a program ready to launch we were able to build that and so we've expanded what we can do in that district and providing now we're into our second cohort of teachers, experienced teachers who are bilingual, biliterate and they're getting the bilingual bicultural certification for New Jersey which wouldn't have happened I think without our being able to do this work through the residency. And bilingual teachers are the next wave of shortages all across the country so that is not unique to Newark. I would just add to that the set of facts around retention that we see something similar in the San Francisco teacher residency which has about 97% of its folks continuing to teach somewhere and more than 80% of them after five years still in San Francisco which is a hard place to stay because of housing costs compared to about a third of the people who enter through other routes. And so the fact that it costs you over $20,000 to replace a teacher who leaves saves the district a lot of money, builds a more continuous and effective teaching force since teachers are more effective after their first two or three years in the profession and they're willing to make those investments because of that payoff. So I want to invite Desiree to come up here because we're gonna get questions from you and you may have some about the study. So please join us up here and let me open the floor to those of you who have comments or questions. And I want to also encourage you if you have a question for Naya, raise your hand first because she has to scoot out at 11.30 for yet another event that she has to take care of. So if you have a question first for Naya you can go first. Oh, well, wait a minute. Does anybody have a question for her? Okay, we'll start here and here and then we'll come back to you for number three. Go ahead, speak up. Okay, and you had one, yes. And speak in your outdoor voice. As long as necessary, I mean, we think it's such an important piece of legislation and we just want to keep up the drumbeat around it and so we're always welcoming more co-sponsors. All right, I will repeat it. So the question there was, how long will the Strive Act be open for others to sign on? And we just heard that answer and I think we have another question for Naya. No, okay, so now we're gonna open up the floor for other questions and you have the first dibs. The question is, how do we recruit men of color into teaching? And Desiree, I know you have a couple of ideas about that from the paper. So I'll start with you if you would like to talk about Call Me Mister or any of the other programs. Yeah, so the paper does mention some programs that are specific to the needs of men of color like Call Me Mister, like New York City Men Teach and other programs. The Fellowship is another, there's several programs that have really focused in on the needs of men of color. The Fellowship, for example, offers mentorship that is sort of every person who's involved, it's sort of a professional network, every person who is involved is expected to be a mentor to a high school student or to someone who's considering a career change. They also offer things like an annual conference and career fairs where men can participate in mock interviews, career advisement. So similar to some of the other supports that I mentioned in the presentation, these communities are offering support networks, peer networks for men of color. New York City Men Teach is another great example that includes that kind of peer support and other supports. Okay, I'm gonna take like two or three questions and then let the panel kind of have at those so that we can get more of them on the table. So I'm gonna go over to this side here and then back here and then over there and then we'll take another three questions. Is there a question in there? So the question is whether programs are making sure that all teachers get the kind of content knowledge and other knowledge they need in order to be able to teach, well, including teachers of color. And we'll get another couple of questions on the floor and then we'll let people take at them, yes. Okay, how do you get parents who are traditionally not involved to get involved? And then you are next, I think. Okay, deported. And so I think that one of the takeaways that I've learned a couple of times from the panel is this coupling of, if I were to diversify the workforce, there's culturally responsive practice and leadership out there. And I just wanted us to make sure we're continuing that. And so the question is really around how are in your work, how are you ensuring that our focus on diversifying workforce is not the track of the need to ensure all teachers, all divers, it's alongside teachers of color who are not culturally responsive and reflective of you, right? And so while we're trying to diversify, that's not gonna happen in the next 10 years, the way we need to do. We've got to make sure that the workforce is culturally responsive in every sort of sense of what that means to ensure educational efforts are security here. So the last question has to do with how do we ensure culturally responsive teaching skills are also on the burner, right? With a more and less diverse teaching force. Okay, so Loretta, you look like you wanna take on one of those questions. Yeah, if I could quickly take on this one and then the one about parent engagement. So I mean, I think that that is a reality of the work that we do, right? The teacher workforce is not gonna catch up tomorrow to look like what our student population looks like. And so I think a lot of that work is done with teacher preparation programs to talk about what cultural responsiveness looks like for all teachers, including most of teachers who are white women. And so it is about getting a better handle around cultural competency at the preparation programs, but then creating community partnerships and training programs for the teachers who are already in the school. I don't think that any of us think that this work is done in isolation on just one piece of the issue. And we recognize that it kind of has to go across all different areas. And that's something that we talk about often. To the piece on parent engagement, so at Unidos we actually do a lot of work on parent engagement. My colleague Kayla is in the room who has a hand in that work. And a lot of times what we find is actually that it's not, for our parents, that it's not that they are disengaged or that they don't care about what their parents are doing. It's rather that either they don't feel welcomed at the school or don't see the avenue in which they could be, participate more with their child at the school. So for our parents that could come in a variety of ways. Maybe it's a language barrier. Maybe it is a fear of going to a school because in this environment they don't know that it's a safe place. And so we try to work with parents, one to make them more comfortable in those spaces and make them feel like they have a handle on what's going on around the content knowledge and what they should be saying. But also with the schools to say, sometimes you have to meet parents where they are. So where are you holding meetings that parents can come to at what time? Is it at a time that a parent who works a 12 hour shift is able to come? Do you have translators there? What's happening with childcare during those meetings? And so it has to be a reciprocal relationship between the parents and them feeling more comfortable about being able to interact with the school, but also with school leaders and teachers recognizing that all parents are not the same. And most parents do care quite a bit about what is happening with their students and with their child in the classroom. But it's figuring out how to break down the barriers of communication between the two. Yes, go ahead, Ashley. So just to Saroja's question, one of the things that we heard a lot about is wanting to use culturally relevant practice in classrooms and a pushback from either other colleagues or leaders in buildings about what that looks like aligned with the standards of a given district or school. And so what I would say is that when we talk about this notion of teacher diversity, it is a part of what makes our teaching workforce strong. It does not take away the notion of having, I'm gonna use the word strong or excellent, stay away from words like quality, but strong and excellent workforce. And so they go hand in hand and culturally relevant practice is a key component of that regardless of your race and tone ethnicity. It has to be taught and learned. One of the things we've heard a ton in our focus with whether black or Latino educators is that we actually need support in knowing how to manifest this unique gift or skill that students seem to see in us, right? A student seems to have a trust with us, seems to connect with us, but I don't always know how to connect with my students just because I'm a person of color either. And so I do think it goes to teacher prep programs, but again, not just for our white teachers, but also for our teachers of color who may not know how to bridge those gaps themselves, right? And so I think they do go hand in hand. It's not one or the other. One of the things I know, Jennifer, are you about getting ready to speak? I'll just note that in programs like Montclair, not only in the residency, but in others, the work of culturally responsive teaching and learning happens both in coursework and in the clinical experiences that sensitize teachers to the community. So I was just going to say that we have really infused our programs with a lot of other kinds of experiences that our students need. So we enlist undoing racism, border crossers, those kinds of organizations that help us to teach and help our students, all of our students understand institutionalized racism and that it's not an individual issue at all. And I think that has helped. And that's for all of our students, is whether they're students of color or whether they're not students of color. I think the other thing that Beverly Tatum taught us, many years ago in her book, why do all the black children sit together in the lunchroom? We have a similar situation, I think with our teachers of color in that. And in fact, on our campus, we just instituted a book study that some of our teachers of color have said, we'd like to come together, we'd like to share with each other the things that we're learning as teachers of color about what it means to be culturally responsive to our students. Then we will share those thoughts and those ideas and those things that we're learning with other teachers as well. And we're opening the doors to that. So they're doing a book study, they're learning together, they're talking together about what is unique about what they have found is working and helpful with their students. And then they're going to share that with the larger network of teachers that we work with. So yes, I think there's opportunities and spaces that we can provide for our teachers that will help them, our teachers of color, to learn what it means to be culturally responsive and then share with others as well. Naya, thank you so much for being here. I know you have to run to your next thing. We're gonna continue on this. And give the senator our best regards and thank you. And Desiree, would you like to... I can speak to the second question. So there are several qualities that make a teacher, a strong teacher. One quality of course is strong content knowledge. Another is strong pedagogical practices, the ability to create classroom environments where that content knowledge can be learned, explored, practiced, and of course using culturally responsive practices like we've been talking about and others. So performance assessments like the TPA and others can help do two things. Help candidates to actually develop all of those skills because it can be a teaching tool and also assess their ability to do all of those skills. Unfortunately exams like your typical pencil and paper exams don't do all of that. They don't assess your teacher. They don't predict your teacher effectiveness in the way that a performance assessment can. And to the point that there have been disparate outcomes, there are several studies on the praxis exam on performance assessments. By and large performance assessments have been found not to have the kind of disparate outcomes that the praxis and other typical multiple choice tests do. In instances where there are slight differences, they're not in the realm of your typical tests which have had historically very large gaps in pass rates. So, and then in other instances, there are no disparate outcomes. So we're talking about a very different scale when it comes to outcomes on those kinds of tests. So I'll say that. I'll add a point to the content question that you asked which was a really important one. How do we ensure that people have the content knowledge? And yes, there are those differences in the degree of disparate outcome. The other thing that's interesting is that in a lot of the production function studies that have looked at teacher effectiveness, having a strong content background is more predictive than having a particular score on a single day test of content. I know that NCTQ has really focused on the content coursework learning that candidates need and that's a really important piece of the agenda that I think is good to have on the table. That we need strong content and content pedagogy that is related to the knowledge of that content. And that's a challenge both for undergraduate and graduate level programs that is very important to take up. We've just done a study that's coming out in the fall on teacher preparation programs where this content and content pedagogy strand is very important in programs that are teaching for both deeper learning and for diversity. So I wanna kinda reinforce the importance of that point and note that there are a lot of ways to get at an understanding of that knowledge and when candidates have the knowledge. We can take maybe two more questions. I'll take you in the front row and then Dilworth right behind you get the second question and I apologize to others, we'll keep the panel here if we can to answer more questions afterwards. Go ahead, Rob. Use your teaching voice. Virtual hug, yeah. So the question is there any evidence about online opportunities for networking and mentoring? Mary? So the question is what about millennials as teachers of color? All right, I'll throw, yes, any differences? Loren? So I can hop in I guess maybe on the millennial question. We've been looking a lot around student debt and what it means for Latino teachers or Latino students, I'm sorry. And so that kind of flows over to Latino teachers as well. And so I think what you heard about kind of the low earnings that teachers often experience and then combined with the high debt of going to college for Latino students in particular, so those going into teacher preparation programs who are millennial or now out of the programs, that's kind of more evident than ever. The way that debt weighs in to the decisions that they're making because while Latino students do tend to take on less debt that they're white students, we're seeing a trend where they're taking on more than they have in the past. And so as they continue to do that, it will impact their decision to go into a profession like teaching or that we just may not match the debt that they have to get. And I think an underlying point that you're making is that our society is much less kind to children and to young people than it was 30 years ago in terms of the policies that enable people to have an opportunity and a future. And so one of the issues for millennials is that, fact that they are trying to get through college in a time when they're much less supported than they were some years ago. Anybody else wanna, Desiree? Yeah, unfortunately, I can't really speak to the technology piece. I believe that there is online peer network for black male teachers and I'm blanking on the name of it and that's the one example that I can think of. And I'm sure that there are others but it's not something I looked into. I'll just say we did a study about a year ago on effective professional development for teachers. And I was surprised and interested to find that among these programs that actually have been shown to change teaching practice and student achievement outcomes are a couple of them where a lot of the mentoring is online and where teachers put their videos up from their classroom and they connect with others and that that can be a really effective strategy when it's done with sufficient intensity and duration and embedded in the content and so on. Yes. Not at all research based but a promising practice. We do a ton of social media and so there are weekly Twitter chats. Black male educators have a weekly Twitter chat. There's an edu colored Twitter chat. There are ongoing conversations and those chats look like anything from talking about challenges to just highlighting strengths that are happening to highlighting district practices. So there are chats that are literally happening about what's happening in your district around teachers of color. Questions could be anything from what are promising things that you're doing, what are things that are challenges. So like these real connections across the country of folks chiming in about here's what we're doing in my district. Here's what you can learn from and I think both at the district level and at the individual level, those things are moving probably a little in silence on Twitter if you're not on Twitter but seems very promising for those who are isolated in spaces and just want to reach out. So kind of like that virtual hug you're talking about those spaces are being created. I think they are promising because even for the fellowship when they did their first convening there are 500 African-American males in one room and a lot of that conversation is happening over Twitter. And so just using some of those social media networks we do see it a lot. And for those interested in finding those Twitter chats they are weekly and they are very, they're really helpful, great food for thought is everything from research to just experience happening in those conversations. And you may have managed to touch on the millennial question at the same time. So thank you very much. It is 11.45. We are mindful that we now stand between you and your lunch date. We send a virtual hug to those who will be seeing us on video. I want to thank these wonderful speakers and the audience for attending. And remind you that there are materials on the tables outside. Thank you.