Use Data to Ensure that All Students Have an Effective 

TeacherAlice Ginsberg, BranchED

Meagan Comb, Massachusetts Department of Elementary and Secondary Education

Rachel Anderson, Data Quality Campaign

Reflection Questions:1. Do your educator preparation programs recruit and enroll candidates 

who are representative of the student populations in your state? What information would you need in order to find out?

2. What state data do you think educator preparation programs would benefit from having about their graduates? How could this data help the programs improve how they prepare new teachers for the classroom?

Alice Ginsberg, Ph.D.Director of Research and Evidence-Based Practice

May 22, 2018

Data Quality Summit

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OUR VISION

Highly effective diverse educators for all learners

ONE OF A KIND ORGANIZATION

Branch Alliance for Educator Diversity (BranchED) leads and supports a national network of Educator Preparation Programs at Minority Serving Institutions (MSIs) to achieve sustainable programmatic transformation leading to improved outcomes for candidates and, by extension, all of their PK-12 students.

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The Disappearance of the “Majority”The Future of the United States

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The United States has an educator diversity gap

51%of America’s public school children are children of color

20%of their teachers are from those same

racial and ethnic groups

Teachers of ColorStudents of Color

The “diversity gap” is the difference in the proportion of teachers of color and students of color in public schools. 

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A Closer Look…

State Students of Color Teachers of Color

California 73% 29%

Kansas 32% 5%

Arizona  57% 20%

Maine 8% 3%

Colorado 43% 12%

Mississippi 54% 27%

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Having diverse educators in our nation’s classrooms benefits all students and helps prepare them to succeed in our heterogeneous society.

DIVERSITY MATTERS

Lack of educator diversity in American classrooms continues to perpetuate inequity and undermines student learning.

Students of color earn higher test scores, high school completion rates, college matriculation rates, and school attendance rates when taught by teachers from their own racial/ethnic groups.

Experiences with counter-stereotypical authority figures, like teachers and principals, can decrease prejudiced responses to diverse others. Therefore, educator diversity benefits ALL students.

“I have a firm belief that I will be fair with my students and that fairness will triumph over any policy in place. However, each week, I am faced with struggles that stem from my reluctance to conform to policies --seemingly those set-in stone-- that are just downright unfair to students. I grapple with students in order to make them conform to policies I do not believe in and I grapple with administration because I feel forced to facilitate policies I do not believe in.”

“One struggle that I had during my first year of teaching was that I couldn’t seem to figure out a way to live and teach in a way that was authentic to who I felt as an individual. I feel like I didn’t have a space to be who I truly was and do what I felt was necessary to succeed in my mission as a teacher.”

“Three out of the four students reported that a teacher has told them that if they did not stay in that school, they would be on the corner. Although these comments are mostly likely meant to be a wake‐up call, they come across as low expectations from teachers…. Often times our means of discipline, such as sending them out of the classroom, reinforces the message that they are not worthy or capable of an education.”

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The United States has an educator diversity gap

51%of America’s public school children are children of color

20%of their teachers are from those same

racial and ethnic groups

Teachers of ColorStudents of Color

The “diversity gap” is the difference in the proportion of teachers of color and students of color in public schools. 

48% of whom are prepared by MSIs

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Nine Key Trends

• Diverse time and place• Personalized learning• Free choice• Project‐based• Field experiences• Data interpretation• New assessments• Student ownership• Mentoring is of renewed importance

The Future of Education

This Photo by Unknown Author is licensed under CC BY

A Need for Highly Effective Diverse Educators

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Three Key Issues

• Relationships are important

• Student strengths should be stressed, not their deficits

• Communities of color need to see schools as relevant and committed to educating their children

The Future of EducationA Need for Highly Effective Diverse Educators

“ Society perceives my students to be lost cause. I had to learn quickly that a lot of things are out of my control…I am very aware of the negative systems that I have to compete against in order to claim my students from their detrimental circumstances, but I am also aware that I am not a miracle worker and giving my students a good education is not a one woman show. I need help.”

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Redefining Quality Preparation (BranchED’s framework)Preparation

• Focus on content knowledge for teaching, not just subject matter expertise

• Expanding teaching strategies, while insuring rigor is not diminished

• Updating faculty teaching effectiveness, including their equity literacy and inclusive practice skills

• Providing academic and social supports for candidates

• Data empowerment, not merely data collection

• It takes a “community” to train a teacher

Targeted Impact

Community of Learners

Data Empowered

Content‐Grounded

Practice‐Based

Inclusive Pedagogy

Equitable Experiences

info@educatordiversity.org (800) 519-0249 www.educatordiversity.org

THANK YOU FOR YOUR TIME

P.O. Box 92405, Austin, Texas 78709-2405