The Framework

The framework illustrates the actions, or career-development phases, by which our education system must support racially, ethnically, and linguistically diverse educators. These career-development phases are: cultivating an interest in becoming an educator, providing access to and supporting the completion of educator preparation programs, streamlining certification and licensure, recruiting and hiring diverse educators, and supporting, retaining, and promoting diverse educators.

At the heart of this framework is student success: the vital and urgent outcome all students deserve. The framework takes the shape of a circle to convey that the goal of student success is dependent on an investment in not one but all five surrounding elements: the interconnected career-development phases that must be addressed to effectively and equitably diversify our educator workforce. This work is and must not be about launching or relaunching a single effort or initiative. It is about working across our framework and across positional and dispositional leadership to fundamentally change our educator workforce

Explore the career-development phases by making a selection below, or jump to the development or organization of the framework.

Grounding principles: Cultivating an interest; Supporting program completion; streamlining certification; recruiting and hiring; supporting, retaining, and promoting.
See “Development of the Framework” below for an important acknowledgement to our Connecticut colleagues.

Development of the Framework

We are particularly indebted to our colleagues at the Connecticut State Department of Education (CSDE) Talent Office and the Center for Public Research and Leadership (CPRL) at Columbia Law School for their work in designing and launching the Building a Diverse Educator Workforce initiative. Task force members were both impressed with and inspired by the initiative’s five critical stages of the educator career continuum. Our task force recognized that a comprehensive strategy involving each of these stages is essential to achieve the goal of diversifying the educator workforce.

The elements of our framework include and build upon this work. When the task force developed this framework, they specifically shifted the language of the phases to be focused not on the individual educator level but instead on the system. This framework was developed as a guide for systems change. To that end, it also includes the grounding principles—a set of practices and beliefs that are critical to ensuring the success of any and all efforts to diversify the educator workforce.

Organization of the Framework and Report

This report will describe and rationalize each of the five career-development phases. Within each phase, this report will list generalized promising practices and strategies that all positional or dispositional leaders should consider. In a separate section, titled Strategies to Consider by Sector, separate lists of strategies for leaders to consider by sector or position will appear as follows: policymakers, state government leaders, building and district leaders, teacher leaders, community leaders, and higher education leaders. Regardless of your role, we invite you to join us in creating a system of education that nurtures and supports racially, ethnically, and linguistically diverse educators

Back to the Table of Contents

To return to the main menu of this report, please click the button below.

Table of Contents