Teach for América

Why do individuals become teachers?

On the whole, research suggests that intrinsic motivators play the largest role in drawing teachers in to the profession. Many studies suggest that one of teachers’ primary reasons for entering teaching is to make a difference in students’ lives (see e.g., Farkas, Johnson, Foleno, Duffet, & Foley, 1999). Early studies of teachers’ careers indicated that individuals’ altruism and interest in working with children played major roles in their decision to enter the teaching profession (Goodlad, 1984; Lortie, 1975). Additionally, Lortie (1975) found that a substantial number of teachers reported having liked school and wanting to continue their experience with it, noting, “It is clear . . . that some who attend school become so attached to it that they are loath to leave” (p. 29). Berry’s (1986) interviews with university seniors with high SAT scores led him to conclude that the following perceptions of teaching discourage them from pursuing it: poor working conditions in schools, bureaucratic constraints on teachers’ actions and decisions, and little opportunity for intellectual growth. Financial incentives played a lesser role than these factors.

Indeed, for most teachers, pay is not a primary motivator for choosing this career path, but teachers do expect to receive a wage that enables them to live comfortably (Goodlad, 1984; Lortie, 1975). Loeb and Reininger (2004) draw on several studies in concluding that individuals who are considering teaching assess teachers’ starting salaries relative to alternative occupations in deciding whether or not to teach.

Why do teachers leave the profession?

Teachers leave teaching for a host of reasons. Broadly, teachers may be pulled out of teaching by greater intrinsic or extrinsic rewards or professional opportunities outside teaching; they may be pushed out of the classroom by poor teaching conditions and scant opportunity for professional growth. Borman and Dowling’s (2008) meta-analysis of 34 quantitative studies led them to conclude that “the odds of attrition are higher among teachers who are female, White, young, and married and who have a child” (p. 396). They further found that the odds that teachers with a science or mathematics undergraduate degree would leave teaching were twice those of teachers with other majors. These teachers may be lured into higher paying jobs in the private sector. They also determined that teachers working in schools with less teacher collaboration or administrative support were more likely to exit. This suggests that the school environment plays a role in teachers’ decisions about whether or not to stay in the profession. Higher salaries were also associated with decreased odds of leaving the profession, especially for more experienced teachers.

Nationwide surveys of teachers echo these push-pull factors. On the most recent (2008–2009) Schools and Staffing Survey (SASS), the top reason teachers selected to explain why they left the profession was “personal life factors,” cited by 42.9% of leavers. In addition, 14.8% cited “other career factors,” 9.8% cited “school factors,” and only 4.0% cited “salary and benefits” (Keigher, 2010).

Within the push-pull factors inherent in teachers’ decisions regarding whether to continue teaching, these results underscore the primacy of personal reasons for entering and leaving teaching and the importance of teachers’ satisfaction with their work. Tschannen-Moran, Woolfolk, and Hoy (1998) found that new teachers who reported lower self-efficacy were more likely to leave teaching. Additional research suggests that working conditions factor into teachers’ decisions regarding whether or not to stay in the profession. Ingersoll and Smith (2003) found that teachers who left teaching because of dissatisfaction cited student discipline problems, lack of support from the school administration, poor student motivation, and lack of teacher influence over schoolwide and classroom decision making as influencing their decision to leave.

On the whole, personal factors, efficacy, and working conditions appear to play a large role in teachers’ decisions to leave teaching. Although it is not the deciding factor in most teachers’ career decisions, pay plays a role in their calculus nonetheless. Several studies have found that while teachers did not offer pay as their motivator for entering the career, they cited it as the second most important factor in their decision to leave teaching (Goodlad, 1984; Johnson, 1990). Observational studies suggest that teachers’ likelihood of leaving the profession decreases when pay is increased (see e.g., Murnane, Singer, Willett, Kemple, & Olsen, 1991).

The majority of research on teacher preparation and retention, including many of the aforementioned studies, rarely places empirical or analytic emphasis on racial differences among teachers. This likely reflects the demographics of both the teaching force and the researchers who examine teachers’ career paths. Because of the disproportionately small percentage of teachers and researchers of color and the pervasiveness of Whiteness within teacher education, research, and broader discourses that shape policy and practice in schools (see e.g., Castagno, 2008; Kirkland, 2010; Sleeter, 2001), race and racial difference are often rendered peripheral if not invisible within much of the research and resultant reform efforts. The grand narratives regarding the trajectories of teachers for the most part ignore racial/ethnic differences among teachers. Given the increasing Latina/o presence in schools and the need to ameliorate Latinas/os’ school experiences and outcomes, the recruitment and retention of Latina/o teachers takes on increased importance. Research regarding how Latinas/os and other people of color are attracted to and retained within the teaching profession is scarce, and additional studies that focus on racial differences and the racialized experiences of teachers of color are necessary to provide an empirical base to support efforts to increase teacher diversity.

The individuals grouped under the umbrella term Latino/a are diverse, and variation exists within and across groups that fall under this overarching identity category. Nevertheless, here we deliberately group Latinas/os together for the explicit purpose of examining factors that influence their presence in and persistence through the pipeline leading into the teaching profession. We acknowledge that some may see this process of “strategic essentialism” (Spivak, 1990) as contributing to an oversimplified and harmful treatment of group identities. However, we believe that temporarily essentializing Latinas/os in this article serves a valuable purpose. Given that few studies have examined Latinas/os’ progress through the teacher pipeline, this article employs the broad (and, admittedly, flawed) category Latina/o to begin to build a knowledge base about this important topic. Moreover, as Latinas/os from all backgrounds are underrepresented in teaching, strategic essentialism serves as a valuable heuristic for research aimed at diversifying the teaching profession and improving the educational experiences and outcomes for Latinas/os and other students who have traditionally been underserved by schools.

Data Collection

Data Analysis

To analyze data from the three studies, we treated each of them as a case (Patton, 1990; Yin, 2009). According to Patton (1990), case studies are warranted when a researcher wants to develop an in-depth understanding of a phenomenon and “a great deal can be learned from exemplars of the phenomenon in question” (p. 54). We analyzed the data to identify important themes within each case and then across the three cases.

For Studies 1 and 2, interview data were crafted into vignettes (Seidman, 2006). Each vignette was subjected to inductive analysis using the cross-case analysis method (Miles & Huberman, 1994) to generate and analyze themes that emerged across participants. Cases were first analyzed individually and subsequently compared to other cases (Creswell, 1998; Merriam, 1998). To bolster the validity of the findings, frequent member checks (Lincoln & Guba, 1985) were conducted to allow for participant input and verify the accuracy of the interpretations.

For Study 3, the researchers employed discrete-time survival analysis, a method well suited to analyzing longitudinal data. There were two related time-varying outcomes that describe the teacher’s: (a) first voluntary exit from the initial placement school by transfer or resignation from teaching (VEXITSCHL) and (b) first voluntary resignation from the teaching profession (VEXIT) (1 = if event was experienced in this year, given that it had not been experienced in an earlier year; 0 = otherwise). See Appendix C in online journal for variable definitions.

We were interested first in whether Latina/o teachers (1 = if respondent identified as Latina/o, 0 = otherwise) were less likely than Whites to turnover. In our discrete-time hazard models, we controlled for selected covariates, including cohort, gender, whether or not the respondent was related to a teacher, the age at which a teacher entered teaching, his or her college major, and whether he or she was assigned to teach in an urban or rural region in the first year. We included dichotomous variables for all other racial groups except Whites, which was the excluded variable. We used discrete-time survival analysis to determine the probability that Latina/o teachers, compared to White teachers, would voluntarily leave their initial, low-income placement schools by fitting logistic regression models in the teacher-year data set (Willett & Singer, 1991). A typical model is:

p ( V E X I T S C H L i j = 1 ) = 1 1 + e − [ ( α 1 T 1 i j + α 2 T 2 i j + … α 6 T 6 i j ) + ( β 1 L a t i n o i + γ 1 Z i + γ 2 j Z i j ) ] ,

where i represents the individual teacher in year j, the α parameters are a set of intercept parameters representing the “baseline” risk that a teacher whose values on all predictors are zero will exit her school for the first time in each year, given that she had remained in the school up to that year. Here, parameter β₁ represents the effect being Latina/o on teachers’ risk of exit from their initial placement school. Parameters γ₁ and γ₂ are vectors of parameters that represent the impacts of time-invariant (Z_i) and time-varying (Z_ij) controls, respectively. We repeated this analysis with voluntary exit (VEXIT) as the outcomes. ⁸ We used chi-square analysis to examine whether or not Latinas/os’ reasons for leaving teaching and new occupations entered differed from those of White teachers who also left teaching.

Bringing the three data sets together, we employed cross-case analysis (Miles & Huberman, 1994; Yin, 2009) to identify cross-cutting themes regarding Latinas/os’ progress through the teacher pipeline. Cross-case analysis is appropriate for this unique compilation of three data sets in that it allows the researchers to reconcile “an individual case’s uniqueness with the need for more general understanding of generic processes that occur across cases” (Miles & Huberman, 1994, p. 173). To facilitate this process, we constructed categorical matrices representing key findings. We then looked across cases to identify key themes, which we then developed in analytic memos. Constructing matrices and then writing memos allowed us to use the constant comparative method (Glaser & Strauss, 1967) to identify and test the robustness of themes across the cases.

Limitations

As with all research, this study has limitations. Specifically, the three studies that constitute the data for this analysis differ in key ways. First, each study focused on a different segment of the pipeline from high school student to practicing teacher, which made it impossible for us to compare and contrast themes within a particular segment of the pipeline. Second, the samples are drawn from different geographic areas. While the two qualitative studies’ samples are drawn from similar small Northeastern cities, the TFA sample is national, drawing participants from around the country. Third, only one study, the TFA inquiry, contains an explicit comparison group composed of individuals identifying as “White.” We have sought to address this limitation by drawing on prior research that reported the behaviors and attitudes of White prospective and current teachers. While important to recognize, these limitations do not reduce the importance of this work. To our knowledge, this piece is the first to look at Latinas/os’ experiences across various portions of the teaching pipeline to systematically examine the factors that pull Latinas/os into teaching as well as those that push and pull Latinas/os out of or away from this profession. Motivated by the shifting make-up of our nation’s classrooms, we believe that this study takes an important first step toward understanding the factors that affect the supply of Latina/o teachers.

Return and Resistance: What Pulled Latina/os in to the Teaching Pipeline

Across the three data sets, a primary motive for entering teaching appeared to be the desire to give back to one’s community. Latinas/os displayed a forceful commitment to returning to schools like those they had attended to address systematic injustices in their own educational backgrounds. At three points in the teacher pipeline, Latina/o teachers exhibited a strong commitment to teaching in schools serving students of color and low-income students. In these ways, Latina/os in our study differ from the dominant narrative around why individuals enter teaching.

As noted earlier, the teaching profession is composed largely of “good girls” (Galman, 2006) who had positive experiences in schools and entered the profession inspired by teachers with whom they have interacted (Lortie, 1975). The participants in our studies did not conform to that dominant narrative. The majority of the participants in the study of high school students and the study of Latina/o preservice teachers were motivated primarily by a desire to redress negative experiences in schools so that Latinas/os would fare better in the future. Carmen, a high school student, explained:

I want to be that teacher that I really never had. Most of the teachers, not all but most of them, like hate Latinos. They just don’t like us. That’s it. They treat us bad and don’t teach us the right way. They don’t think we are going to make it in life, so they like don’t do anything to help us. They ban Spanish. They put us in the lowest classes. They put us ISS [in-school suspension] for stuff they let the White kids get away with. They just don’t want to teach us. That’s why we need more Latino teachers. I want to be that person . . . the one that comes back, believes in Latino kids and works to fix this place.

Discussing teaching as a potential career, Carmen and her fellow students in Project FUERTE described a desire to become teachers who could eventually be viewed as role models for Latino students. Their experiences in school were largely negative, dominated by school-sanctioned efforts that discriminated against Latinas/os. They wanted to enter the profession to change the status quo. Their ambitions were rooted in their lived experiences, emerging sense of critical consciousness, and burgeoning commitment to social justice and educational equity. The following interaction among three Project FUERTE students in class highlights the dilemma faced by Latina/o youth who have been systematically marginalized by schools but aspire to become teachers to increase Latinas/os’ educational opportunities:

As they contemplated pursuing teaching as a career and working in the district where they were educated, their conversation moved swiftly back and forth, from an imagined future full of hope and promise where Latina/o students were educated in their best interests to the current sociocultural realities of a school that they experienced as antagonistic and unfriendly. These competing discourses characterized the bulk of their conversations around teaching as a career choice for Latina/o youth. At the same time, they consistently described teaching as a platform from which to challenge the injustices they experienced in schools and transform the institutions they viewed as critical to shaping the opportunities available to Latina/o youth.

The Latina/o preservice teacher candidates in Project TEACH faced a similar dilemma. Recruited from an urban district with the lowest performance and highest dropout/pushout rate in the state, the participants were bombarded by negative messages about their communities from faculty and other students. Like the Project FUERTE students, Latina/o preservice teacher candidates also overcame deleterious, racialized experiences in K–12 schools and saw their future work as teachers as inherently political and potentially transformative. They embarked on their journey to become teachers with a sense of fierce urgency to transform the schools in their community for Latina/o youth and all students. During a group mentoring meeting in her senior year, Jennifer summed up her motivation for pursuing teaching as a career: “I went into teaching because I saw everything that was wrong with [Hoop City] schools. I know it sounds crazy but it is true. I want something different for my daughter and all kids, really.” Instead of internalizing the negative appraisals of their community that dominate the media and some teachers promulgate, the Latina/o preservice teachers in this study leveraged those circumstances to serve as motivation for pursuing careers in teaching. The following comments from Roberto and Gladys reflect the participants’ desire to enter the teaching profession to disrupt and transform an educational system that oppresses many Latina/o students:

The Latino community needs help. We are not doing as well as we should be in schools and then obviously can’t get good jobs and things like that. If you really want to make a difference, you should go into teaching. You have the kids for seven, eight hours a day. Think about all of the wonderful things you can do in that time. That is why I wanted to be a teacher. Right now most teachers don’t see that potential. They only see negative things when they look at our kids. I see potential. I see the positive. (Roberto)

Similarly, Gladys noted,

I had so many bad teachers in school. Thinking back I really can’t remember any really good teachers that stand out. The system ignores Puerto Ricans and other Latinos. I never learned anything about Latinos. Guidance counselors never helped me [apply to college]. Teachers, principals, guidance [staff] don’t do enough to change the system. I made it in spite of the system not because of it. The system needs to change, and I am going to change it.

In contrast to the majority of teachers who cite positive experiences in schools as a motivating factor for pursuing teaching as a career, the participants in Project FUERTE and Project TEACH cited negative experiences with teachers and other school personnel as a primary motivator for becoming teachers. They embarked on their professional preparation focused on ameliorating the conditions of schooling for Latina/o youth.

Like Carmen and Gladys, Latina/o TFA teachers displayed a strong commitment to “coming back” to the places where they grew up and giving back to schools like those they had attended. TFA allows corps members to request a placement site from among TFA partner districts. Twice as many Latinas/os as Whites had lived in the specific city/town where TFA placed them (18.95% vs. 10.00%) and 37% of Latinas/os had lived within a 2-hour drive of the place where TFA placed them, compared to 20% of White respondents (p = .002) (see Table 1 for all results for this section. More generally, 68.09% of Latina/os teachers but just 45.88% of White teachers reported having lived in a location as rural or urban as their TFA placement locale (p = .00). Thus, Latina/os in this sample expressed a strong preference to teach in their hometown or in a similar community.

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Table 1

Percentage of Respondents in Each Category (n = 1,550).

	White	Latino	p Value
Characteristics upon entry to teaching
Majored or minored in education	5.01	7.37	.05
Applied to teaching job in addition to Teach For America (TFA)	6.08	11.58	0.03
Had lived in a location as urban/rural as TFA placement site	45.88	68.09	.00
Had supervised students similar in race and class to those in TFA placement school	41.41	64.21	.00
Had lived in specific town/city where TFA placed them	10.00	18.95	.002
Had lived within a 2-hour drive of where TFA placed them	21.42	36.84	.002
Why they left teaching
“Strongly disagreed” that lack of discipline caused them to leave teaching	46.16	56.90	.08
“Strongly agreed” that salary was a factor in their decision to leave teaching	13.87	24.13	.006
Current occupations
Medicine	1.68	5.08	.06
Engineering/architecture	.99	5.08	.005
Educational nonprofit	11.53	20.34	.04
Business	4.64	8.47	.18
Educational administration	5.33	8.47	.30
Comparisons of current occupation with teaching
My current job’s salary is better than that in teaching	49.06	64.81	.08
My current job’s “opportunities to make a different in the lives of others” are better than that in teaching	12.60	25.93	.01
My “sense of personal accomplishment” in my current job are better than that in teaching	24.31	37.04	.05

Latinas/os were also more likely to report prior experience with students and settings that resembled those associated with the low-income urban or rural school in which TFA placed them. Nearly two-thirds (64.21%) of Latinas/os reported that they had supervised students (e.g., teaching, coaching, or leading a youth group) similar in race and class to those in their TFA placement school; in contrast, only 41.41% of Whites reported that they had worked with such students (p = .00).

Overall, Latinas/os in the sample also demonstrated greater interest in entering teaching prior to their initial placement than did their White counterparts. For example, 7.37% of Latinas/os in the sample had majored or minored in education, compared to 5.01% of Whites (p = .05). Latinas/os were nearly twice as likely to have applied for another teaching job when they applied to TFA (11.58% vs. 6.08%, p = .03). These findings suggest that from the outset, Latinas/os in the sample were more committed than their White counterparts to entering teaching whether through Teach For America or another route.

In sum, Latinas/os in Teach For America were more experienced than their White counterparts with both the types of students and the kinds of communities that characterized their TFA teaching placement. Latinas/os’ prior experience with students and communities that were largely low income and of color may have enabled them to cultivate the competencies and capacities to achieve success in their TFA placement more quickly and remain in these placements longer than their White counterparts.

Our data suggest that widely accepted theories utilized to understand how individuals are attracted into the profession are largely insufficient for explaining the professional trajectories of Latina/o teachers. Specifically, Latina/o teachers in these studies demonstrated a particularly strong commitment to teaching and transforming the schools they had attended or those enrolling a similar student population. From a CRT and LatCrit perspective, those characteristics that make Latina/o teachers unique and especially valuable stem from community cultural wealth—“the array of knowledge, skills, abilities, and contacts possessed and utilized by Communities of Color to survive and resist racism and other forms of oppression” (Yosso, 2006b, p. 175)—developed through relationships with the Latina/o communities with which they identify. Moving beyond notions of cultural capital that privilege White, middle- and upper-class cultural frames of reference, knowledge, and meaning making, the paradigm of community cultural wealth posits that characteristics of communities of color are equally, if not more valuable.

In our sample, the Latina/o preservice and inservice teachers demonstrated a fervent commitment to becoming teachers, one that surpassed that of many White teachers. The participants’ willingness and capacity to hold steadfast to their desire to enter the teaching profession in spite of great obstacles, a form of community cultural wealth referred to as aspirational capital (Yosso, 2006a), was distinct. Most notably, the preservice teachers in Projects FUERTE and TEACH had to navigate institutional contexts that were overtly hostile to Latinas/os, harsh spaces shaped by problematic policies and practices that aimed to marginalize Latinas/os and that could have deterred the participants from pursuing and entering the profession if they had not had sufficient aspirational capital. Similarly, the TFA teachers were undeterred in their desire to become teachers, reporting increased interest in the teaching profession and higher rates of community connection. It was the participants’ aspirational capital, we assert, that fueled their desire to become teachers and provided them with the strength to persevere in spite of barriers aimed at impeding their progress.

Persistence and Commitment: What Helped Latinas/os Remain in the Teaching Pipeline

Across the three data sets, Latina/o teachers displayed particular determination to persist in the pipeline. Despite obstacles, such as the highly racialized practices of academic tracking and high-stakes testing that impeded their academic and professional success, Latina/o preservice teachers in Projects FUERTE and TEACH demonstrated tenacity in pursuing their goals of becoming transformative educators. While they derived strength and support from a variety of sources, all of the individuals in these two programs said that a commitment to their communities and a belief in the potential for teaching to serve as a platform for personal and community uplift attracted them to the profession. In a letter to a future teacher written as a class assignment, Jasmine, a senior in Project FUERTE, cogently articulated her rationale for pursuing teaching:

I want to be a teacher, too. I see how teachers can really shape the lives of their students. They can give them hope and give them a chance at life. Right now kids like me, Latino kids, are not getting a good education. I want to change that. I want to come back to my community and help improve it. The best way to improve a community is to improve the schools. No matter what I have to do, how hard I have to work, I am going to make it. I will be a teacher.

Likewise, Carmen expressed a commitment to pursuing teaching as a career in an interview at the end of her senior year.

School has been tough for me, but I am still going to be an English teacher. My goal is to go to college, become a teacher, and come back and teach here. I want to be the teacher I never really had. It is going to be tough, but that won’t stop me. I’ve been through a lot, and that has made me strong. I won’t quit until I am a teacher.

Jasmine and Carmen’s comments reflect determination, which is especially vital as they try to navigate schools that have not served them well. Articulating a commitment is one thing; putting that commitment into action is another. Upon completing high school, Jasmine and Carmen enrolled in a local community college and studied Early Childhood and English, respectively. They both planned to complete their associate’s degree and transfer to a 4-year institution to complete the requirements for teacher licensure.

The preservice teachers in Project TEACH shared a similar resolve to persevere and demonstrated a similar commitment to working in the communities in which they were born and/or raised. They entered the program with the intention of returning to work in the urban school district that most of them had attended. Their desire to “give back” to the communities that nurtured them gave the participants inspiration and strength to endure difficult times during their undergraduate teacher preparation program. Judy faced the most significant obstacles, having passed the teacher licensure exam after her graduation too late, according to the teacher education program’s rules, to have the college endorse her certification. Nevertheless, she persevered. In an interview several years after her graduation, Judy expressed her steadfast commitment to becoming an educator and working in her home community.

That policy [to require passing the entire battery of tests before graduation] was BS. I was really hurt and disappointed at the time, but I always knew that no matter what I had to do, I was going to become a teacher in [Hoop City]. That was my life-long goal. Teaching is where I think I can make the most difference for kids, especially Latino kids. [The college] tried to hold me back with the teacher test and making me do the practicum twice. I had to pay to take it again, but I was able to overcome that and succeed. Now I am living my dream. I’m teaching.

Without exception, all of the Latina/o preservice teachers articulated and demonstrated a commitment to becoming teachers, ideally in their home communities. Of the seven Project FUERTE students, four are, as of winter 2011, seriously contemplating becoming teachers. Two of the four are undocumented, and without the financial assistance available to U.S. citizens, their access to college is obstructed. Carmen and Jasmine, as noted earlier, have begun the next phase of their preparation, enrolling in college. Four of the five Latina/o members of the final Project TEACH cohort completed undergraduate teacher preparation and embarked on careers in the public school system. Gladys is currently on leave to serve her community in a political appointment. The other three have been teaching for a minimum of 5 years and remain optimistic about their futures in the profession. Although the cohort was relatively small, the retention data for Project TEACH alumni are noteworthy. A consistent thread cutting across the stories of all participants was a commitment to teaching in their home communities and an unwillingness to be deterred.

As foreshadowed by their more robust background with students and communities like those in their teaching placement, Latina/o TFA teachers were more likely than White TFA teachers to remain in their initial, low-income placement schools. Similarly, congruent with their greater initial commitment to teaching, most Latinas/os were also more likely than Whites to remain in teaching altogether. However, Latinas/os with science, technology, or mathematics majors (STEM) were more likely than Whites with those majors to leave the teaching profession.

On the whole, Latinas/os were significantly less likely than White teachers to leave their initial, low-income placement school (see Table 2 for all results with “leave the initial placement school” as the outcome). Controlling for cohort, gender, age, college major, whether one was related to a teacher, and the urbanicity and level of one’s placement school, Latinas/os’ odds of leaving their school in any year were .73 times the odds that Whites would leave (p = .04). Approximately 20% of Latina/o teachers remained in their low-income placement schools longer than 4 years, whereas only 12.8% of their White counterparts behaved similarly. Whether because of their prior experience with similar students or their background in communities like the one in which they are placed by TFA, Latinas/os stayed longer in these low-income schools.

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Table 2

Parameter Estimates (Standard Errors) and Goodness-of-Fit Statistics From Selected Discrete-Time Hazard Models in Which the Risk That a Teacher Will Voluntarily Leave Her Initial, Low-Income Placement School Is Predicted by Race, Time, Cohort, Gender, Whether or not One Is Related to a Teacher, Age of Entry, College Major, Placement Urbanicity, and School Level (n = 1,550)

Model	(1)	(2)	(3)
2002 cohort	0.153~	0.151~	0.138
	(0.090)	(0.090)	(0.091)
2003 cohort	0.155~	0.156~	0.149~
	(0.082)	(0.082)	(0.083)
Year 1	−2.335**	−2.375**	−2.291**
	(0.143)	(0.149)	(0.153)
Year 2	−0.036	−0.076	0.036
	(0.131)	(0.136)	(0.140)
Year 3	−0.106	−0.142	−0.015
	(0.140)	(0.145)	(0.150)
Year 4	−0.721**	−0.756**	−0.604**
	(0.160)	(0.165)	(0.169)
Year 5	−0.368~	-0.401~	-0.232
	(0.208)	(0.211)	(0.216)
Year 6	−0.672*	-0.701*	−0.518
	(0.324)	(0.326)	(0.330)
Female	−0.158*	−0.152*	−0.135~
	(0.075)	(0.075)	(0.076)
Has family member in teaching	0.009	0.009	−0.013
	(0.067)	(0.067)	(0.068)
Age at entry to teaching	−0.054**	−0.056**	−0.055**
	(0.015)	(0.015)	(0.016)
Social science major	0.059	0.056	0.051
	(0.085)	(0.086)	(0.087)
World language major	−0.166	−0.170	−0.235~
	(0.139)	(0.139)	(0.141)
English major	0.041	0.035	0.020
	(0.103)	(0.105)	(0.106)
Science, technology, or math major	0.312**	0.289*	0.304**
	(0.108)	(0.113)	(0.115)
Rural placement		0.123	0.071
		(0.083)	(0.084)
Secondary school placement		0.029	0.007
		(0.072)	(0.073)
Multiracial background			0.058
			(0.164)
African American			−0.503**
			(0.111)
Asian American			−0.137
			(0.137)
American Indian/Native American			−0.139
			(0.769)
Latino			−0.318*
			(0.152)
Goodness-of fit-statistics
−2LL	5,487.36	5,484.79	5,396.87
Delta −2LL (df)		2.57 (2)	87.92 (5)
p value		.28	< .0001

Note. ~significant at 10%; *significant at 5%; **significant at 1%.

Most Latinas/os were also more likely to remain in the teaching profession than their White counterparts (see Table 3 for all results with “leave the profession” as the outcome). Controlling for cohort, gender, age, whether one was related to a teacher, and the urbanicity and level of one’s placement school, Latina/o non-STEM majors were much less likely to leave teaching than all White teachers and Latina/o STEM majors. Latina/o non-STEM majors’ odds of leaving teaching were .70 times those of White non-STEM majors (p = .04). However, Latina/o STEM majors’ odds of leaving were 2.0 times those of White STEM majors (p = .07). And the odds that Latinas/os with STEM majors would exit the profession were more than three times (3.20) those of Latinas/os without these majors (p = .005). For Whites, there was virtually no difference in STEM and non-STEM majors’ probability of leaving the teaching profession. These findings, discussed at greater length in the following, point to the push-pull factors that affect teachers’ willingness to remain in teaching and suggest that the forces that influence high-achieving Latinas/os’ retention may contrast with those that affect their White counterparts.

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Table 3

Parameter Estimates (Standard Errors) and Goodness-of-Fit Statistics From Selected Discrete-Time Hazard Models in Which the Risk That a Teacher Will Voluntarily Leave the Teaching Profession Is Predicted by Race, Time, Cohort, Gender, Whether or Not One Is Related to a Teacher, Age of Entry, College Major, Placement Urbanicity, and School Level (n = 1,550)

Model	(1)	(2)	(3)	(4)
2002 cohort	0.140	0.137	0.110	0.104
	(0.089)	(0.089)	(0.090)	(0.090)
2003 cohort	0.168*	0.169*	0.166*	0.163*
	(0.082)	(0.082)	(0.083)	(0.083)
Year 1	−3.008**	−3.070**	−3.053**	−3.044**
	(0.157)	(0.162)	(0.166)	(0.166)
Year 2	−0.643**	−0.701**	−0.650**	−0.638**
	(0.128)	(0.134)	(0.138)	(0.138)
Year 3	−0.964**	−1.018**	−0.955**	−0.941**
	(0.135)	(0.140)	(0.145)	(0.145)
Year 4	−1.477**	−1.529**	−1.472**	−1.456**
	(0.147)	(0.153)	(0.157)	(0.157)
Year 5	−1.305**	−1.355**	−1.299**	−1.280**
	(0.173)	(0.178)	(0.181)	(0.181)
Year 6	−1.832**	−1.869**	−1.800**	−1.778**
	(0.268)	(0.271)	(0.273)	(0.273)
Female	−0.328**	−0.323**	−0.311**	−0.308**
	(0.072)	(0.073)	(0.074)	(0.074)
Has family member in teaching	−0.053	−0.051	−0.040	−0.049
	(0.065)	(0.065)	(0.067)	(0.067)
Age at entry to teaching	−0.091**	−0.094**	−0.094**	−0.094**
	(0.017)	(0.017)	(0.018)	(0.018)
Social science major	0.226**	0.219**	0.195*	0.197*
	(0.085)	(0.085)	(0.086)	(0.086)
World language major	−0.099	−0.104	−0.149	−0.147
	(0.138)	(0.138)	(0.140)	(0.140)
English major	0.183~	0.180~	0.153	0.152
	(0.102)	(0.104)	(0.105)	(0.105)
Science, technology, or math major	0.227*	0.196~	0.156	0.114
	(0.105)*	(0.110)	(0.111)	(0.113)
Rural placement		0.246**	0.218**	0.227**
		(0.080)	(0.081)	(0.082)
Secondary school placement		0.020	0.020	0.015
		(0.070)	(0.071)	(0.071)
Multiracial background			0.028	0.027
			(0.160)	(0.160)
African American			−0.317**	−0.320**
			(0.114)	(0.114)
Asian American			0.215	0.218
			(0.133)	(0.133)
American Indian/Native American			0.199	0.187
			(0.702)	(0.702)
Latino			−0.201	−0.357*
			(0.156)	(0.173)
Latino × STEM Major				1.054*
				(0.422)
Goodness-of-fit statistics
−2LL	5,896.70	5,886.70	5,796.41	5,790.47
Delta −2LL (df)		10.00 (2)	90.29 (5)	5.94 (1)
p value		< .0001	< .0001	.01

Note. ~significant at 10%; *significant at 5%; **significant at 1%.

Examined through a CRT and LatCrit lens, the findings strongly support the staying power of Latina/o teachers. The high school students who were contemplating teaching as a career graduated high school and continued their ascent into the profession, a noteworthy feat when one considers that approximately half of their Latina/o counterparts do not complete secondary education and even fewer enroll in institutions of higher education. The undergraduate preservice teachers in the sample remained on course, exerting exceptional effort to successfully navigate college and meet licensure requirements. The data from Latina/o inservice teachers suggest that Latina/o teachers were more likely to remain in schools serving low-income students of color than their White colleagues. We assert that increased retention on a pathway that leads into the profession and within the teaching profession itself reflect the participants’ “resistant capital” (Yosso, 2006a), a form of cultural wealth developed through asserting resistant stances against oppression. In this context, the teachers remained committed to transforming schools. Entering and remaining in the teaching profession represent acts of resistance. As Latina/o students are pathologized in the grand narratives of school reform, Latina/o teachers, by virtue of their presence and the unique skill sets they acquire, challenge and disrupt those majoritarian discourses and replace them with counternarratives of hope and possibility.

Barriers and Opportunities: What Pushed or Pulled Latinas/os Out of the Teaching Pipeline

At each juncture in the pipeline, potential or actual teachers can be pushed or pulled out of the teaching profession. Formidable barriers depress the numbers of prospective Latina/o teachers who enter the profession. For the high school students in Project FUERTE, the most significant barrier was access to information and courses that would allow them to gain access to college. The racialized practice of tracking, the grouping and placement of students into classes based on their perceived ability levels, resulted in a system of “academic apartheid” (Akom, 2003) in RHS. Latina/o students were largely placed in lower level, less rigorous courses; White students were overrepresented in college preparatory and advanced placement courses. Despite the fact that all of the Project FUERTE students articulated aspirations to attend college, only two of seven 11th graders had taken Algebra 1, a prerequisite for college admission, and none knew what high school courses to take to position themselves as viable candidates for admission into a 4-year college. In fact, at the inception of the study none of the students were aware of their grade point averages nor did they know that this information would be considered in the college admissions process. As the students came to realize the ways in which opportunities in the school were structured to privilege some students, particularly White students in college preparatory courses, and disadvantage Latina/o students who were on a “general” or “fundamentals” track, they expressed frustration with the system.

Taína’s experience accessing information for college was similarly fraught with problems and hindered by a lack of communication between counselors and students. All of the students qualified for free or reduced lunch, which entitled them to a fee waiver for the SAT exam, yet most of the participants were unaware of how to access the waiver, how to prepare for the test, or what constituted a “good score.” The following excerpt from a class session during students’ senior year reveals the students’ lack of access to information and experiences that would increase their chances of gaining admission to college.

This conversation demonstrates students’ lack of knowledge about a key aspect of the college application process. Without sufficient information about prerequisite courses and entrance examinations, students’ chances of accessing higher education, a necessary precursor to becoming teachers, are severely compromised. Consequently, only two of the seven Project FUERTE students were eligible to apply to 4-year institutions of higher education.

For those Latina/o students who are fortunate enough to successfully navigate high school and access undergraduate programs, there are additional obstacles that can impede them from entering the profession. The experiences of the Project TEACH participants suggest that like their counterparts navigating elementary and secondary schools, there was an anti-Latina/o and anti-“urban” (often used as code to reference Latina/o and Black, economically disadvantaged communities) sentiment that permeated their interactions with faculty, staff, and students and profoundly shaped their experiences at this crucial juncture on their journeys into the profession. Reflecting on his experiences as a preservice teacher 9 years after joining Project TEACH, 5th-year teacher Francisco shared the following:

It was hard. You have to deal with a lot of crap sometimes. Most of the professors would talk poorly about [Hoop City]. I grew up here. This is my city. Those kids they talk badly about, all that bad behavior and crime talk and stuff, they are talking about me, my brother, my cousins, my family. They never seemed to understand that when they were criticizing [Hoop City] and [Hoop City Schools] that they were criticizing me personally. That was one of the hardest things for me.

Along those same lines, Gladys, a community activist in Hoop City who entered the teacher preparation program after working as a paraprofessional, focused her critique of teacher preparation on the climate created by insensitive faculty, staff and students.

[The faculty] would always say things like, “Don’t walk to your car alone when you leave the school in [Hoop City].” They would say, “Make sure you lock your car.” What are they telling these White teachers? To be scared of [Hoop City] and the people who live there.

All participants described frequent instances of racial discrimination and cultural insensitivity within their preservice teacher education program. They spoke poignantly about how these overt acts of discrimination and more subtle racial microagressions, insults, often subconscious or automatic, aimed at people of color (Solórzano, Ceja, & Yosso, 2000) prompted them to contemplate leaving the program and abandoning their pursuit of the teaching profession.

Beyond problematic interactions with faculty and other students, there were also structural impediments that hindered Latina/o teacher candidates in their pursuit of an undergraduate degree and educator licensure. Most notably, the creation and implementation of a state teacher licensure examination presented a formidable barrier that threatened the progress of Latina/o teacher candidates. In an attempt to raise standards for teachers and pressure institutions of higher education to take more responsibility for ensuring teacher quality, the state mandated that 80% of preparation program participants pass the tests. Failure to meet the new benchmark would result in the college losing state accreditation. To protect against this, the Project TEACH institution, like many others in the state, made passing the state exam a prerequisite for official admission into the program even though it was designed to be an exit exam measuring teachers’ knowledge. Teacher education students who did not pass the tests were not allowed to officially enroll in certain upper-level courses required for licensure. Like other standardized measures of achievement, including the ACT and SAT, Latina/o and African Americans have consistently received lower scores on teacher tests (Flippo & Riccards, 2000; Smith, 1987; Valencia, 1991). The Latina/o preservice teachers in Project TEACH struggled to pass the exam and voiced their displeasure with their institution’s complicity in using a test known to yield disproportionately lower scores for Latina/os as a gatekeeping mechanism, potentially blocking them from completing their programs and earning a teaching credential. Comments from Roberto and Jennifer echo the sentiment of the group. Reflecting on the willingness of the institution to blindly engage in a potentially discriminatory practice that might limit diversity in their program and the profession at large, Roberto noted:

They [the teacher education program and institution of higher education] know that the test is unfair, but they use it anyway. That tells me that they don’t care about us . . . about [producing] Latino teachers. This is one more thing to block us from getting into schools [as teachers] to help our kids.

Jennifer expressed similar frustration and anger regarding how the policy temporarily derailed and delayed her entry into the teaching profession:

Because I didn’t pass [one of the tests], they won’t count my practicum, even though I did all the work. Even if I pass the test after I graduate, they won’t [endorse] my certification. I will have to pay more and do the practicum again. I only missed [achieving a passing score] by 3 points. That’s completely wrong.

Roberto, Jennifer, and all but one of the other Project TEACH students passed all of the tests required for certification. Jennifer demonstrated exceptional perseverance and continued to take the test, passing shortly after her graduation. As noted earlier, to obtain licensure and achieve her goal of becoming a teacher, she re-enrolled in the institution of higher education, completed an additional practicum experience and student teaching seminar, and is now a successful elementary teacher. If Latinas/os can successfully navigate the often hostile environments of K–12 schools and preservice teacher education programs, they are then faced with working in a profession that has not always supported them.

Approximately half of all teachers leave the profession within 5 years (Ingersoll, 2003), and the rates of departure are higher in schools serving larger percentages of students of color and students from lower socioeconomic strata (Ingersoll, 2001). Latina/o inservice teachers in our study who left teaching tended to be pulled out of teaching by opportunities in other fields more than pushed out by poor working conditions; they were less likely to cite school factors and more likely to cite external opportunities as influencing their decision to leave (see Table 1 for all reports presented in this section). In fact, 56.90% of Latinas/os compared with 46.16% of Whites disagreed or strongly disagreed with the notion that a lack of discipline in their placement schools pushed them to leave teaching (p = .08). In addition, 24.13% of Latina/o teachers but just 13.87% of Whites agreed or strongly agreed that salary was a factor in their decision to leave teaching (p = .006). Thus, Latinas/os seemed not to be pushed out of teaching by the difficult working conditions but pulled out by more lucrative offers in other fields. This latter finding likely speaks to the relatively high likelihood that Latina/o STEM majors would leave teaching.

Consistent with this theory, Latina/o leavers held different occupations than White leavers. Latina/o leavers were more likely than White leavers to work in medicine, engineering or architecture, or an education nonprofit. Latina/o leavers were more than three times as likely as White leavers to work in medicine (5.08% vs. 1.68%, p = .06) and more than five times as likely as Whites to work in engineering or architecture (5.08% vs. .99%, p = .005). Almost twice the proportion of Latina/o leavers worked in educational nonprofits, compared to White leavers: 20.34% versus 11.53% (p = .04). Although not statistically significant, Latinas/os who left teaching were also more likely to have entered business or become principals.

When they compared their current jobs to teaching on a number of different dimensions, again, Latinas/os’ responses were different from those of their White counterparts who also left teaching. Latinas/os were more likely than Whites to say that their current job’s salary was better than that in teaching (64.81% vs. 49.06%, p = .08). They were also more likely than Whites to say that the “opportunities to make a difference in the lives of others” in their current job were better than those in teaching (25.93% vs. 12.60%, p = .01). Lastly, they were more likely than Whites to say that their “sense of personal accomplishment” was greater in their current job than it was in teaching (37.04% vs. 24.31%, p = .05). It appears that high-achieving Latinas/os in this sample had found professions that were more financially lucrative than teaching but also allowed them more opportunities to give back to society while also feeling professionally fulfilled. The findings suggest that medicine, engineering and architecture, and the nonprofit sector are successfully recruiting some high-achieving Latinas/os out of teaching.

Applying CRT and LatCrit frameworks to these data sets, we argue that through their experiences successfully navigating high school and undergraduate programs, the students developed and refined their “navigational capital” (Yosso, 2006a). That is, Latina/o teachers were particularly skilled in navigating complex, often hostile social institutions. Although not a focus here because of space constraints, the participants also demonstrated additional forms of cultural wealth including linguistic capital, stemming from their ability to speak multiple languages and context-specific language variations, and familial capital garnered through connections to family, broadly defined, and manifested in cultural intuition and other tools for meaning making developed through extended time spent in communities of color. The combination of their content knowledge and cultural wealth makes these teachers valuable not only to schools but also to other professions. Other professions may place more value on these skills than schools yet still offer platforms for Latina/o educators to fulfill their commitments to their communities, often in settings that offer employees more professionalism, responsibility, support, and respect than do schools or public education.

Implications

In addition to offering alternative, race-conscious perspectives on social phenomena, analyses informed by CRT and LatCrit theories should be leveraged to address racial inequality and transform social institutions such as K–12 schools and institutions of higher education (Lynn, 1999; Rolón-Dow, 2005; Sólorzano et al., 2005). Building on theory to drive practice, the practical implications emerging from the application of CRT and LatCrit to our analysis can contribute to more race-conscious approaches to improving the educational experiences and outcomes for Latina/o and other youth of color by informing efforts to diversify the teaching profession.

For many Latinas/os, the low-quality education they receive as students restricts their professional options. Latinas/os who have dropped out or been pushed out of high school, those who have successfully navigated high school but were not prepared with the skills necessary to embark on higher education, and those who enter college but fail to complete their studies—totaling more than 85% of the entire Latina/o population—are virtually shut out from pursuing careers in teaching. The miseducation of Latina/o youth initiates an insidious cycle that results in the underrepresentation of this community in teaching and other knowledge-based professions. Because of the diminished population of Latina/o teachers, schools are unable to attract sufficient numbers of teachers who speak students’ languages, are connected to their communities, and have the potential to increase the academic achievement of Latina/o youth. Consequently, the majority of Latina/o students continue to languish in classrooms where their histories are omitted from the curriculum, the sociocultural realities of their lives are largely ignored, and their futures are severely compromised, virtually ensuring that the supply of Latina/o teachers will remain depleted. In order to develop a more diverse teaching force, schools need to be transformed into institutions that foster the intellectual and personal growth of youth of color.

Teacher education programs can also play a major role in addressing the critical shortage of Latina/o teachers by working to attract diverse candidates into the profession and more effectively preparing all teachers to work with the students who need them most. Findings from this study speak to the need for teacher education programs to conduct systematic outreach efforts aimed at attracting Latinas/os to teaching as a profession and providing support for them along the way. Transforming the racial/ethnic texture of the teaching force is a long-term endeavor, one that will take years to realize. In the interim, teacher preparation programs can do more to better prepare all teachers to work effectively across lines of cultural and linguistic difference. Producing more culturally responsive teachers can lead to improved instruction and important learning gains for Latina/o youth, thus increasing their ability and qualifications to pursue higher education, a prerequisite for entering the teaching profession. Simultaneously, more attention needs to be given to creating an environment within teacher education programs that is more supportive of Latina/o teacher candidates.

Our study also provides important insights for schools seeking to recruit and retain Latina/o teachers. In addition to the changes needed in PK–12 schools to improve learning opportunities for Latina/o students, schools also need to be transformed into more rewarding places in which to work so as to attract and retain high-achieving Latinas/os. With an increasing array of professional options available to highly educated Latinas/os, the teaching profession is competing with other, sometimes more intrinsically and extrinsically rewarding professions that may place relatively greater value on the funds of knowledge Latinas/os bring with them to their work. To attract Latinas/os with strong academic backgrounds, schools need to become places that are conducive to the personal and professional growth of teachers as well as students.