High school teacher academies have gained popularity as a way to build and diversify local teaching forces. But the lack of higher education support after high school may prevent these prospective teachers of color from ever making it to a classroom of their own.
That’s the upshot of a new study of Texas teacher-academy programs released Monday as an Annenburg working paper. It finds that while high school education academies can interest higher shares of students of color than typical in the teaching profession, they didn’t ultimately lead to more diverse local teaching pools because of racial gaps in college-going.
“There are a lot of places they can fall out of the teacher pipeline,” said Danielle Edwards, an assistant professor of educational leadership and workforce development at Old Dominion University, who co-authored the paper. “High school education courses are not going to be a silver bullet to solving teacher shortages, but if leaders are serious about making a local pipeline for your district, you need a more structured career academy.”
Edwards and co-author Matthew Kraft, a professor of education and economics at Brown University, tracked eight cohorts of more than 1.5 million students who started 9th grade between 2004-05 and 2011-12, including nearly 70,000 students who passed at least one high school education course.
Overall, students who completed education courses in high school were four times as likely as their peers to become teachers, but still, fewer than 1 in 10 eventually taught professionally.
Among high school education coursetakers, white students were more than twice as likely to become teachers as Black or Hispanic students (13.3% compared to 4.9% and 5.5%, respectively). More than 61% of novice teachers who had taken high school education courses were white, compared with 55% of other first-year teachers.
Edwards suggested differences in college attendance and completion drive the racial gap, as only 1.5% of students who completed high school education courses earned a teaching credential without a four-year college degree. Teachers who had participated in high school education courses were more likely than other first-year teachers to have completed standard certification programs (nearly 72% versus 37% of other novice teachers).
The study found nearly 70% of Black and Hispanic students who took education classes in high school never enrolled in four-year public colleges.
“It’s unsurprising to me, particularly for students of color, that the pipeline breaks,” said Heather Peske, the executive director of the National Council on Teacher Quality, which studies teacher-workforce issues.
Students of color are more likely to be the first in their families to attend college and often carry heavier student-debt loads, she said, so education leaders must lay out a clear path for students from course to course and through every step needed for licensure, “rather than just assuming that it should be up to the high school students themselves to figure out that pathway.”
Building a local talent pool can be critical for districts. Research suggests the majority of new teachers work close to the town where they grew up—often within 15 miles—and teachers stay longer in hometown schools. The effect is even stronger for teachers of color. However, rural teachers are less than half as likely to work near their hometown as urban teachers, in part because rural areas have fewer local college graduates.
Building better teacher pipelines
The 79,000-student Fresno Unified district in central California, for example, connects its high school teacher academies to more than a dozen different district programs to guide and prepare aspiring teachers, including part- and full-time jobs and paid fellowships.
For example, students who graduate from one of the district’s teaching academies can be hired as a paraprofessional with a stipend to attend a local university to study toward an education degree while they work. From there, an aspiring teacher might move into Fresno’s residency program, which provides $45,000 to attend university full time in exchange for a commitment to teach in the district after earning a credential.
“We see greater success of continuation when there is a progression of programs that lead into teaching,” said Teresa Morales-Young, Fresno’s director of teacher development. “Our greatest challenge is that students may want to leave the area for college. That’s where we try to incentivize the experience to stay and invest.”
For district leaders who want to ensure their high school academies build a strong pipeline into the classroom, researchers recommended the following steps.
- Provide explicit financial-planning support, including understanding the costs involved in preparation and licensure and finding financial aid or scholarships. David Blazar, an urban education policy professor at the University of Maryland, College Park, who studies the state’s grow-your-own programs, said that while Maryland offers $20,000 scholarships for aspiring teachers, most Black parents he has surveyed did not know they existed.
Partner with local higher education institutions to offer dual high school and college credit, focused on the courses needed to work toward an education degree.
- Engage academy students in hands-on teaching experience “much, much earlier” in an education sequence, Blazar said, rather than leaving it as a capstone experience in later courses. “That seems to be the mechanism for program retention,” Blazar said, “because these kids are signing up to work with children; they’re hungry to do the work of teaching.”
- Incorporate lessons and activities focused on grades and subject areas in which the district has teacher shortages. Edwards and Kraft found that teachers who had taken high school education courses were more likely than other novice teachers to teach basic elementary grades and subjects (66% vs. 44%). Edwards said most high school education programs focus on early grades for student-teaching experience, which may incline aspiring teachers to plan a career in those grades, despite districts typically having a harder time filling positions in older grades.
- Offer incentives for students to return to teach in the district. For example, Edwards suggested districts guarantee students who complete a high school teacher academy and go on to earn their teaching license a second-round interview with the district or favor them if they are tied with another candidate for a teaching post.
It’s worth investing in more comprehensive high school teaching academies, Edwards said, because the study finds those who complete the programs and go on to become teachers are just as effective as other novice teachers but have higher retention rates. Fewer than 1 in 5 teachers who had taken high school education courses left the profession within three years, compared to more than 30% of other teachers.
“The people who take these courses and become teachers are highly committed to teaching and are therefore less likely to leave the career,” Edwards said.
