Keeping Up with the Kids: Increasing Minority Teacher Representation in Colorado

Prepared for the Colorado Department of Education in 2014

Colorado House Bill 14-1175 required the Colorado Department of Education (CDE) to study and develop strategies to increase and improve the recruitment, preparation, development, and retention of high-quality minority teachers in elementary and secondary schools across the state. CDE selected Augenblick, Palaich and Associates (APA) to prepare this report in response to HB 14-1175. APA used a mixed-methods approach to evaluate minority teacher recruitment and retention, starting with a set of initial research questions to guide data collection, review, and analysis. Our final report synthesizes themes from demographic data, quantitative data, qualitative interview data, and policy data to create recommendations for different key parties in Colorado. The challenge of increasing minority teachers in Colorado involves both the recruitment and retention phases of teaching, and we analyze both of those phases in this study.

The report finds that while Colorado’s student population is increasingly diverse, the state’s teaching workforce has not kept pace: only about 10 percent of teachers are minorities compared to more than 40 percent of students. This mismatch matters because research shows students benefit from having teachers who reflect their backgrounds, yet barriers such as low pay, costly preparation, licensing hurdles, and weak retention make it difficult to attract and keep teachers of color. Although minority representation among new teacher hires is slowly increasing, the report concludes that Colorado needs a sustained, statewide effort through dedicated funding, local strategies, and stronger connections with communities to build a more representative and supportive teacher pipeline.