Citation
Noble, R.; Peske, H. (2025). What Can California, Texas, and Washington, D.C., Teach Us About How to Diversify the Teacher Workforce?. Washington, DC; National Council on Teacher Quality
Nationally, the diversification of the teacher workforce is slowing compared to the diversification of college-educated adults, but California, Texas, and Washington, D.C. are bucking that trend. Explore what factors contribute to their relatively high rates of teacher diversity and how their policies and practices will likely affect teacher quality.
Noble, R.; Peske, H. (2025). What Can California, Texas, and Washington, D.C., Teach Us About How to Diversify the Teacher Workforce?. Washington, DC; National Council on Teacher Quality
In the final month of 2024, a Newsweek article celebrated an apparent victory in the Lone Star State: “Texas’ Teachers Are More Diverse Than California’s.” In Washington, D.C., the press was slightly more subdued, but still proud: “Teacher diversity is slowing down, but D.C, offers a bright spot.”
These and many other headlines emerged as reporters dug into NCTQ’s new Teacher Diversity Dashboard, and the corresponding brief, A New Roadmap for Strengthening Teacher Diversity. The dashboard revealed a troubling national trend: The diversity of the teacher workforce is slowing down compared to the diversity of adults with degrees. Yet California, Texas, and D.C. stand out for bucking the trend. In each of these two states and D.C., the teacher workforce is more diverse than the population of college-educated adults. More precisely, compared to their populations of working-age adults with degrees, the teacher workforce in California, Texas, and Washington, D.C., has a greater share of adults from historically disadvantaged groups—those who identify as American Indian/Alaska Native, Black/African American, Hispanic, Islander/Pacific Native, or two or more races.1
The finding about California, Texas, and D.C. is important because research shows that teachers of color matter for all students, especially students of color.2 The benefits of having a same-race teacher for a student of color include improved academic,3 social-emotional,4 and behavioral outcomes.5 Teachers of color are more likely to have high expectations for students of color and create classrooms where they feel like they belong.6 In fact, Black students who have at least one Black elementary teacher are nearly 40% less likely to drop out of high school.7
So, on the surface, the data from California, Texas, and D.C. seems like cause for celebration, but what story lies behind those numbers?
In this brief, we tap into our Teacher Diversity Dashboard along with other external sources to explore what factors contribute to the relatively high rates of teacher diversity in California, Texas, and Washington, D.C. Is their success sustainable? What can other states learn from these places about increasing the diversity of the teacher workforce, and what potential hazards may still lie concealed?
Since at least 2014, the percentage of teachers from historically disadvantaged groups8 in Texas has consistently been higher than the percentage of working-age adults with degrees from historically disadvantaged groups. This suggests that college-educated Black and brown Texans have long viewed teaching as an attractive career choice, which is not the case in many parts of the country.
However, this chart doesn’t tell the whole story. Some of the driving forces behind the relatively high percentage of Black and brown teachers—such as alternative certification programs and uncertified teachers—may ultimately backfire, creating higher teacher turnover in Texas schools, leaving more students, especially Black and brown students, with underprepared teachers.
A major factor in the composition and stability of the teacher workforce in Texas is the outsized role alternative teacher preparation programs play in the state. According to the most recent federal Title II data,9 which represents the 2021-22 school year, a whopping 51% of graduates from Texas teacher preparation programs, nearly 8,500 aspiring teachers, completed alternative teacher certification programs. To put this in context, nationwide—when excluding Texas—alternative programs accounted for just 19% of teacher prep program completers. Alternative teacher preparation programs vary widely in their design. They are often less expensive and take less time to complete than traditional teacher prep programs, but in many cases, candidates in alternative programs are teachers of record while they complete the program and before they are fully certified.10
The significant presence of alternative teacher prep programs in Texas is a double-edged sword when it comes to teacher diversity. Aspiring teachers participating in these alternative certification programs are more racially diverse than those entering through traditional routes,11 and the diversity of teachers in alternative programs has increased over time.12 One study of Texas teachers found that Black teachers were more than three times as likely to take an alternative certification route than a traditional route. Hispanic teachers were also slightly more likely to choose alternative routes.13
However, while alternative programs may be effective at recruiting diverse cohorts of aspiring teachers, they may not provide aspiring teachers with the training and support they need for a long and effective career. For example, a recent analysis of online alternative certification programs in Texas found that these programs yield “markedly higher turnover rates” than traditional preparation programs.14 Still more alarming, students taught by teachers from these programs experienced declines in their reading and math achievement.15 Additionally, a Texas study on STEM teacher retention found that teachers from alternative certification pathways suffered worse five-year retention rates—about eight to ten percentage points lower than those from traditional undergraduate preparation routes.16 So while alternative routes to teacher certification are helping to diversify the Texas teacher workforce, they are not adequately preparing these individuals to succeed in the classroom, leading to higher rates of teacher turnover, which ultimately harms students—especially those living in poverty and students of color.
Even more concerning than the large number of teachers entering from alternative prep programs is the growing number of uncertified teachers leading Texas classrooms. These individuals assume full responsibility for student learning without having to demonstrate content knowledge or teaching skills. According to data from the Texas Education Agency (TEA), a record 34% of new teachers stepped into their classrooms in 2024 without any certification.17 Uncertified teachers have even higher attrition rates than teachers entering the classroom through alternative programs.18 While TEA provides a wealth of data about its teacher workforce, the racial demographics of these uncertified teachers is notably absent. Identifying the racial demographics of uncertified teachers will help Texas policymakers and advocates understand the impact on the future diversity of the teacher workforce (i.e., how many teachers of color are entering and then leaving the profession through the uncertified pathway who might have stayed and thrived with better preparation and support?). Notably, Texas has already begun to address these preparation shortfalls through additional observations and feedback for teachers with little to no preparation, and to attract people into more robust preparation routes through stipends for teacher residents.
While alternative certification programs and uncertified teachers are two major (albeit detrimental) forces driving Texas’ higher teacher diversity rates, high levels of interest in teaching among Black and brown Texans serve as a positive force.
A 2023 study looked at a question on Texas’ centralized college application form that asked college applicants of all races whether they would seek teacher certification.19 In a recent article describing their study, the researchers noted that while overall interest in teaching declined significantly over a decade, “the shortage of teachers of color is not because of a lack of interest, as some have theorized.” In fact, of the individuals interested in teaching, approximately 45% were people of color, closely mirroring the share of all college applicants of color.20 Instead, these potential teachers of color are lost later on the path between entry into college and entry into the classroom.
Another study of Texas teachers found that once in the classroom, teachers of color in Texas are more likely to stay teaching than their white counterparts.21 This study accounted for whether teachers completed an alternative teacher prep program or a traditional program, noting that teachers from traditional programs were “significantly more likely to remain teaching.” This is further evidence that high attrition rates of teachers who come through alternative programs may be slowing progress on teacher diversity in Texas.
Though the margin between people from historically disadvantaged groups in the teacher workforce and those with college degrees has started to show signs of shrinking (down 2 percentage points since 2014), Texas is still uniquely positioned to grow the diversity of its educator workforce. The challenge before Texas policymakers is how to harness the high interest in teaching among people from historically disadvantaged groups, while supporting effective preparation and staving off high rates of attrition. That starts by ensuring that pathways into teaching are accessible and well-designed to prepare aspiring teachers to meet the needs of students on day one. These pathways, coupled with strong supports for in-service educators to increase retention rates, will position Texas as a leader in growing a diverse and effective teacher workforce.
California, like Texas, exhibits a consistent trend showing that people from historically disadvantaged groups represent a greater share of the teacher workforce than the overall population of working-age adults with college degrees. However, unique to California is the fact that the margin is increasing, growing from just over 4 percentage points in 2014 to 6 percentage points by 2022. While Texas is closer to having a teacher workforce that mirrors the demographics of its adult and student populations,22 California’s progress on teacher diversity is notable in that representation of people from historically disadvantaged groups within the teacher workforce is growing at a faster rate than in both the broader adult and student populations.
California’s relative success over the past decade and positive trajectory in diversifying the teacher workforce is worthy of a deeper look. The data is unlikely to be a matter of happenstance. The playbook for making progress on teacher diversity in California involves at least four conditions: state-level prioritization, investment, research-based advocacy, and strong data infrastructure.
The California Department of Education (CDE) publicly documented its priority of diversifying the teacher workforce. On its website, CDE cites research on the value of a diverse teacher workforce, provides resources for recruiting and retaining teachers of color, and promotes strategies for using federal and state funds to support local diversification efforts.23 Along with legislative leaders and the Governor, CDE leadership has also supported legislation focused on teacher diversity. In recent years, CDE convened an Educator Diversity Advisory Group to provide research-based recommendations for the state to increase teacher diversity. The advisory group included educators (teachers, school and district administrators, higher education faculty and leaders), researchers, and advocates. CDE also provides specific programmatic and funding recommendations to school districts, the entities ultimately responsible for who gets hired.
Because advancing policy priorities is more viable when coupled with funding, California has invested over $1 billion in recent years to strengthen the teacher workforce.24 While not all of the funded grants and initiatives explicitly seek to improve teacher diversity, many are in line with NCTQ’s evidence-based recommendations for doing so, such as supporting tuition subsidies, standing up teacher residencies and other high-quality pathways into the profession, and supporting local teacher leadership and retention initiatives.25
California’s portfolio of grant programs also includes a grant specifically focused on increasing the diversity of school administrators.26 Studies have shown that school leaders of color contribute to teacher diversity in several ways.27 For example, Black principals are more likely to hire Black teachers, and Black teachers are less likely to leave a school with a Black principal.28 Teachers also report higher job satisfaction when supervised by a same-race principal.29
Education advocates in California have built a strong culture of research-based advocacy for teacher diversity, along with collaboration with stakeholders. Data-rich reports abound, with recommendations grounded in research that are responsive to California’s context. For example, the California Educator Diversity Road Map authored by Californians for Justice, Public Advocates, and The Education Trust–West shares a set of six recommendations for recruiting, preparing, and retaining educators of diverse backgrounds. Parents, educators, and administrators vetted the recommendations before publication. After publishing the “road map,” these partners followed-up with a series of briefs recommending actions for state and district leaders and sharing real-world success stories. Similarly, the University of California Los Angeles (UCLA) Center for the Transformation of Schools established the California Coalition for Educator Diversity and counts among its relevant publications A Funding Guide for More Diverse California Schools. This guide describes state grants available to individuals and entities and a description of how each can be used to promote teacher diversity. Informed advocacy applies pressure on the system—everyone from state leaders to district administrators—ensuring teacher diversity efforts remain at the forefront.
Smart policy and sound decision-making is only possible when informed by good data. California’s equity-focused Cradle-to-Career Data System has been in development since it became law in 2019. The goal is to connect previously siloed data on early education, K-12 education, higher education, and employment to better understand the factors that impact students’ educational experiences and outcomes. This statewide longitudinal data system includes data from a host of government entities, including the California Department of Education, the Commission on Teacher Credentialing, and several higher education partners.
Specific to teacher diversity, advocates are optimistic about the potential to more deeply understand and expand the pathways and opportunities available to teachers of color with the 2025 launch of the Cradle-to-Career Teacher Training and Retention Dashboard, which will “provide a landscape view of pathways from teacher training to employment, highlight outcomes for various teacher demographics, and promote awareness of the relationships between teacher preparation, employment, and retention.” This dashboard will allow policymakers and advocates to identify and address leaks in the teacher pipeline, monitor investments and programming, and identify leaders and laggards among districts and teacher prep programs.
It appears California is well set up to continue its positive trajectory toward a more diverse workforce and the conditions described above are likely to be accelerants to greater and lesser degrees. Given that context, the state would benefit from ensuring that the bar for entry into the profession isn’t unnecessarily lowered in the name of teacher diversity. Lowering the standards for entry perpetuates the myth that racial diversity and teacher quality are incompatible goals.30 California has already created pathways that allow teacher candidates to circumvent basic skills and subject matter licensure tests—important signals of aspiring teachers’ knowledge and capacity. For example, instead of a licensure test, teacher candidates may use coursework to demonstrate content knowledge.31 Given that coursework requirements are varied across the state, this coursework alternative could compromise teacher quality. And more recently, the state eliminated requirements for teacher preparation programs to verify competence in reading, writing, and mathematics for applicants who hold a bachelor’s degree.32
The Commission on Teacher Credentialing has also announced the sunsetting of the Reading Instruction Competence Assessment (RICA) on June 30, 2025, in favor of a new literacy performance assessment.33 The RICA served as a protection for students to ensure teachers had the knowledge and skills to teach them to read and earned high marks as a strong reading licensure test in NCTQ’s recent analysis. It remains to be seen whether the performance assessment that will replace it will be as valuable a means to assess a teacher candidate’s readiness to provide scientifically based reading instruction.
Research from the last three decades shows that licensure tests are predictive of teachers’ effectiveness in the classroom,34 so it’s critical to keep these guardrails in place. Rather than drop or sidestep licensure requirements, California should maintain high standards for teacher licensure and continue to support all prospective teachers to attain the knowledge and skills to be successful with students and achieve full certification.
The teacher workforce in Washington, D.C., is much more diverse than the college-educated population in the city. D.C.’s trendlines do not display the exciting upward trajectory of California, or even Texas. Yet, D.C. exhibits a much wider margin than both states between the share of teachers from historically disadvantaged groups and the share of working-age adults with degrees from historically disadvantaged groups.
It would be easy to explain away D.C.’s teacher diversity by pointing out that it is a city, not a state, and cities are typically more diverse than states. However, comparing D.C.’s teacher and student demographics to those in other large cities in the United States suggests D.C.’s approach to diversifying the teacher workforce is yielding results.
For these comparisons, we rely on our colleagues at TNTP and their K-12 Demographic Data Dashboards, which include district-level data and focus on the student-teacher racial diversity gap, a marker that TNTP defines as “the percentage of students identifying as a person of color minus the percentage of teachers identifying as a person of color.”35 Where data is available, TNTP includes charter school students and teachers in the counts for the districts in which the charter schools are located, which is important in the case of Washington, D.C., given that nearly half of public school students living in D.C. attend public charter schools.36
The table below shows the student-teacher racial diversity gap for District of Columbia Public Schools (DCPS) and a set of comparison school districts. NCTQ used the Peer City Identification Tool to identify school districts representing cities of similar size and racial demographics as Washington, D.C.37 With the exception of the Atlanta Public Schools, D.C.’s public schools have the lowest student-teacher diversity gap (13 percentage points). In other words, D.C.’s teacher workforce more closely mirrors its student population than in other districts of similar size and student demographics.
Washington, D.C.’s student-teacher diversity gap also compares favorably to the nation’s three largest public school districts.
D.C. shares some of the same conditions present in California, which may explain its relative success in not only maintaining, but growing a diverse teacher workforce. For example, teacher diversity is a clear and consistent priority of the Office of the State Superintendent of Education (OSSE), the agency that oversees all of D.C.’s public schools, both traditional and charter. Since it released the first biennial educator workforce report in 2019, OSSE has consistently shared research with the public on the importance of teacher diversity to student outcomes and made available data celebrating D.C.’s relative success in recruiting and retaining a diverse workforce. These reports also transparently identify specific areas of the district where more significant student-teacher diversity gaps persist.38 OSSE also publishes regular reports on teacher retention disaggregated by race, which consistently show that Black and Hispanic teachers leave at lower rates than their white peers–a fact that is unusual compared to other districts and states, where teachers of color often leave at higher rates.39
OSSE has also established “Grow Your Own” teacher preparation programs with university partners as a strategy to increase teacher diversity and address specific workforce needs such as special education and English as a second language teachers. These programs support current D.C. high school students, recent graduates, and currently employed paraprofessionals to earn teacher certification by raising awareness of routes to teacher certification and removing barriers such as tuition and test fees.
DCPS, which oversees the traditional public schools in the district, has also implemented a detailed, centralized hiring process called “TeachDC,” which is focused on offering positions to top candidates early in the hiring season following a rigorous multi-step interview process. DCPS has paired this effort to bring in the highest-quality teachers with a focus on teacher diversity.40 The district has partnered with national organizations with proven records of recruiting diverse teacher cohorts, such as Relay Graduate School of Education, Teach for America, and Urban Teachers Residency, as well as local institutions that serve people of color, such as Howard University, to recruit strong aspiring teachers of color.41 The previously noted strong retention rates suggest that DCPS teachers of color are choosing to stay once recruited and hired.
Many other factors contribute to people from historically disadvantaged groups choosing to teach in D.C., economic factors among them. In a past publication about strategies for districts to improve teacher diversity, NCTQ featured Washington D.C. as an example of a locale with a high cost of living that has developed programs to make housing more affordable for teachers. DCPS also touts its higher starting salaries than nearby districts and opportunities for growth, differentiated roles, and performance pay.42 In a 2021 analysis of teacher pay across 90 of the largest school districts, NCTQ found DCPS ranked 11th in lifetime earnings for a teacher with a bachelor’s degree (earnings adjusted to account for varying costs of living).43
Washington D.C. is poised to hold its position as a leader in teacher diversity through a strategy involving recruitment and retention of an effective teacher workforce. D.C. should continue to invest in partnerships with teacher preparation programs to identify a large and diverse pool of prospective teachers and support those aspiring educators to complete their programs and earn certification. As with the other locales featured in this brief, more research is needed to fully understand why and how D.C.’s teacher workforce bucks the national trend. In particular, D.C. should get to the root reasons for their strong teacher retention rates, especially among Black and Hispanic educators, to identify replicable best practices.
The Teacher Diversity Dashboard was designed to be a rearview mirror—reflecting where we’ve been with teacher diversity over past years—as well as a roadmap—showing where each state’s trajectories are heading and which prep programs are leading the way. This deeper dive into these three places, California, Texas, and D.C., all of which are a bit further down the road than the rest of the country when it comes to diversifying their teacher workforces, aims to provide insights and guidance to education leaders, advocates, and teacher prep programs across the country on how they can drive teacher diversity efforts forward and ultimately improve outcomes for students.