Today\u27s students, tomorrow\u27s teachers: A new regional collaborative precollegiate minority teacher recruitment model

The need for minority teachers has already reached crisis proportions. Despite calls for increased numbers of minority teachers, despite countless well-intentioned recruitment programs, the number of newly prepared minority teachers is decreasing. The demographic mismatch between minority students and teachers has reached a point that most minority students will go through 13 years of public education (K–12) without the benefit of having a minority teacher. Increasing attention to precollegiate teacher recruitment is one of the most important answers to help solve the current alarming shortage of minority teachers. ^ This dissertation describes, examines, and analyzes the benefits and pitfalls of a complex structural precollegiate approach to help solve the minority teacher shortage as evidenced in minority teacher recruitment partnership programs. The focus of the research is Today\u27s Students, Tomorrow\u27s Teachers (TSTT), a regional collaborative “grow your own” program designed to recruit, mentor, and train high school students, provide them with a minimum 50% tuition scholarship to attend college, and place them into teaching positions back into their communities. The researcher employed the philosophy and processes of qualitative research through interviews, participant observations, questionnaires and surveys, and review of documents. These methods were used to gather feedback and data from the key participants involved in the regional collaborative partnership program, namely, students, parents, school officials, businesses, and community leaders. ^ The results of the study demonstrate how effective a collaborative precollegiate minority recruitment program like TSTT can help solve the critical need for minority teachers. TSTT has been effective because of the collaborative effort of school districts, colleges, businesses, government, and communities working together on a common mission. By creating a strong network of human and financial resources, TSTT participants are given enriched opportunities to learn about teaching, to gain exposure to outstanding public school and college mentors, to obtain guidance and financial support, and to become gainfully employed as teachers.