Strategies for Building and District Leaders
Leaders in this category include educators with primary responsibility for overseeing the implementation of all programming in a school or district—especially decision-making with respect to the recruitment, hiring, supervision, retention, and promotion of educators.
To see strategies, make a selection below.
Cultivating an interest in becoming an educator
Cultivating an interest in becoming an educator
- Advocate for, support, and participate in a region-wide effort to promote careers in teaching and educational administration.
- Establish partnerships with community organizations and institutions of higher education that provide training to become paraprofessionals in the local district.
- Create pathways in your school or district for paraprofessionals and new Americans to become certified educators.
- Create and strengthen education pathways and within middle schools, high schools, and career and technical education programs.
- Ensure equitable access to education career K-12 career and technical education pathways.
- Engage communities of color and multilingual communities in building pathways into teacher education programs.
Providing access to and supporting the completion of education preparation programs
Providing access to and supporting the completion of education preparation programs
- Advocate for removing barriers to accessing Pell Grants for adult education enrollees to participate in education courses leading to certification.
- Advocate for antiracist and anti-bias training for all educators.
- Support the participation in antiracist training of all personnel involved in supervising educator preparation candidates.
- Advocate for the creation of a micro-credentialing or endorsement for culturally responsive teaching (either at the pre-service or inservice level).
- Work with state leaders, local and state policymakers, and higher education leaders to pay the costs associated with paraprofessionals becoming certified teachers.
- Advocate for educator preparation programs to annually report on the percentage of faculty and students of color in their programs.
- Require anti-bias training for all teacher mentors (supporting prospective educators), education faculty, sponsoring teachers, and coaches.
- Advocate for the completion of annual surveys of educator preparation programs by their stakeholders on indicators of progress related to cultural competency.
- Participate in annual surveys of progress for all educator preparation programs with whom the district partners.
- Partner with institutions of higher education to provide K-12 classroom experiences for college students in their first two years in your school and district.
- Advocate for eliminating the cost of certificates from credentialed candidates that require translations.
- Partner with local colleges to develop and implement mentorship programs.
Streamlining certification and licensure
Streamlining certification and licensure
- Advocate for shifting away from traditional examinations (such as Praxis) as requirements for certification toward alternative ways for candidates to demonstrate skills and competencies, such as portfolios, demonstrations, or expanded waivers.
- Advocate for implementing full certification reciprocity across the region.
- Advocate for streamlining and making obtaining a license and endorsements easy and clear.
- Advocate for or create opportunities for groups of educators who may be displaced (from other countries) to become certified.
Recruiting and hiring diverse educators
Recruiting and hiring diverse educators
- Advocate for legislation to subsidize moving expenses for racially, ethnically, and linguistically diverse educators. Allocate local resources to do the same, where possible.
- Establish local district policies that outline district and board responsibilities and commitments to state recruitment, hiring priorities, and measures.
- Engage school boards, districts, and school leaders in anti-bias training, rethinking hiring processes and procedures, and updating hiring policies.
- Collect demographic information about hired candidates and retirees; send this information to the state.
- Support the participation of hiring decision-makers in professional learning networks that facilitate the sharing of ideas, strategies, resources, support and provide professional development in key areas such as anti-bias education.
- Design and implement a hiring plan for diversifying the educator workforce with stakeholders in your community.
- Advocate for the creation of a position at the state education agency to support the diversification of the educator workforce, promote stronger collaboration across agencies, and support the development and sharing of resources.
- Broaden hiring practices to build a larger and more diverse pool of candidates, including posting openings on regional or cross-state platforms that have wider reach.
- Expand partnerships with institutions of higher education to create more formal and informal ways to share the lived experience of educators of color. Develop and share resources based on these experiences.
Supporting, retaining, and promoting diverse educators
Supporting, retaining, an promoting diverse educators
- Adopt and work toward the achievement of statewide goals for increasing the number of superintendents of color.
- Broaden hiring practices to build a larger pool of candidates; build mentorship and support systems to attract diverse candidates.
- Promote and connect leaders to mentorship and support organizations.
- Participate in studies that examine the role that salary discrepancy plays in the recruitment, hiring, retention, and advancement of educators of color.
- Train school leaders in equity and antiracist practices.
- Establish affinity groups and support their implementation.
- Join regional networks to share thinking about diversifying the educator workforce resources and practices.
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