Ensuring Equity in Grow Your Own Programs: Advancing State-Level Criteria for Program Design

• In Event: Transforming Teacher Education: Policy Life Rafts as Consequential Intervention During a Time of Global Chaos

Abstract

Created by partnerships of educator preparation programs, districts, and community-based organizations, grow your own (GYO) programs recruit, prepare, and place community members as teachers (Author, 2022). Education leaders hope these programs will attract and retain more teachers and, in particular, more whose race and ethnicity reflect those of the student bodies whom they will serve. Although a majority of students in U.S. schools are Students of Color and Indigenous Students, Teachers of Color and Indigenous Teachers (TOCIT) represent less than 20 percent of the educator workforce (Ingersoll & Lisa Merrill, 2017). To ensure GYO programs can succeed as a strategy for diversifying the educator workforce, education leaders should adopt state-level equity criteria that embrace supporting TOCIT at each stage of teacher development.

While having Teachers of Color and Indigenous Teachers benefits all students, it is important for state leaders to understand what research reveals about these teachers’ impact on Students of Color and Indigenous Students. For example, Black teachers improve Black kindergarteners’ reading and mathematics scores (Dee, 2004). The culturally relevant teaching practices of TOCIT are associated with positive socioemotional, academic, and behavioral student outcomes (Blazar, 2021). Also, shared racial affinity between Teachers and Students of Color is associated with reductions in exclusionary discipline practices and the likelihood to enroll in college (Shirrell et al., 2021; Gershenson et al., 2018).

Yet TOCIT are more likely than others to enroll in alternative certification programs rather than take traditional routes to the classroom. They thus often have limited clinical teaching experiences and mentorship support. They are also more likely to be placed in schools with challenging working conditions and experience racial microaggressions that can constrain their teaching effectiveness (Simon & Susan Johnson, 2015; Kohli, 2019).

To address the shortage, preparation, and retention challenges facing the teaching profession, it is critical to ensure equity across the teacher development continuum (Author, 2021). Adopting state-level equity criteria for GYO programs is one policy lever toward this end. To do this, this paper uses the conceptual framework of facets of power by Collins and Bilge (2016) to consider the ways in which structural, disciplinary, cultural, and interpersonal forms of power influence the experiences of community teachers in GYO programs. Specifically, these aspects of power are explored to review research on GYO programs in order to understand how state education policymakers can identify and overcome barriers community Teachers of Color and Indigenous Teachers can experience when attempting to enter the educator workforce.

Many state boards of education have authority to require educator preparation programs to present evidence of their commitments to advance equity in their accreditation and ongoing state approval applications. Research on GYO programs indicates the statewide approval process should at least involve the following: 1) Examining equity provisions and teaching outcomes in educator preparation programs for community TOCIT; 2) Reviewing equity commitments in program assessments of community TOCIT learning experiences; 3) Piloting equity-embedded GYO program evaluation protocols; and 4) Ongoing assessment of evaluation processes that examines progress toward advancing equity for teachers, students, and schools.

Author

• Conra D. Gist, University of Houston
  Presenting Author