In 2024, a number of agencies and organizations have recognized the importance of igniting workforce development in America’s Latina/o/x/é communities and have committed themselves to increasing opportunities that lead to meaningful participation in the U.S. economy. UnidosUS, Hispanic Heratige Foundation, Hispanic Federation, Hispanic Alliance for Career Enhancement (HACE), Spanish American Committee, and Latino Academy of Workforce Development, to name a few, have each launched vibrant support initiatives to understand and serve Latina/o/x/écommunities across the U.S, thus ensuring a more productive economy, one that embraces the nations 63.7 million Latinos living and working in the U.S. This growth of support aligns with recent research that has focused on the role that higher education, and Hispanic Serving Institutions in particular, can play in building economic and workforce stability by understanding the needs, interests, skills and talents of Latinos in the United States.
The education sector has recognized the need for increased diversity, specifically the need to recruit and retain teachers of color into the teaching workforce in U.S. public schools. Recognizing a diversity gap and student outcomes gap based on demographics, agencies, including the U.S. Department of Education(USDOE), have undertaken the task of ushering in a new generation of future teachers in an effort to improve outcomes and conditions. In a policy briefing in 2023, USDOE introduced Raise the Bar: Lead the World, which seeks to partner with Educator Preparation Programs (EPPs), specifically Hispanic Serving and Minority Serving Institutions, to increase educator diversity and improve public education outcomes for all learners. Similarly, in recognizing the important roles that Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs), Tribal Colleges and Universities (TCUs), and Hispanic Serving Institutions (HSIs) play in developing America’s next generation of teachers, especially Black, Indigenous, and People of Color (BIPOC) teachers, the USDOE introduced the Augustus F. Hawkins Center for Excellence Program.
According to the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES), Latino teachers represent approximately 9 percent of the teacher workforce in public education across the U.S., while Latino students currently represent approximately 28 percent of the PreK-12 public school population. In some public school districts, the percentage of Hispanic students is higher than in others. For example, the New York City (NYC) public schools, the largest public school district in the nation, has just over 41 percent of its student population listed as being of Hispanic origin. In public school districts in northern New Jersey, like Bloomfield, Clifton, Passaic, Paterson, and Dover, the percentage of Hispanic students is even higher than in NYC. The percentages are as follows: Bloomfield (44.5%), Clifton (59.7%), Dover (89.5%), Passaic (93.35%), and Paterson (66.9%). Each of these school districts is a Hispanic Serving School District (HSSD),comprising more than 25 percent Latino students.
At William Paterson University, an HSI in the greater New York City region and inaugural recipient of the Augustus F. Hawkins USDOE Award, we partnered with the five HSSDs listed above in a concerted effort to diversify the teacher workforce. Our efforts to recruit future teachers led to the Aspiring Educators Program, an experiential learning and dual enrollment program aimed at building efficacy and cultivating interest in the teaching profession. In four years of partnership, we have experienced tremendous growth, beginning in 2021 with 12 BIPOC students and growing to 57 (96 percent BIPOC) in 2024, who successfully completed the pre-college program for future teachers. Pre-college programs have been recognized for their important potential to build and sustain equitable pipelines of Latino students into higher education as well as into the workforce, and this program represents one example that demonstrates the significant contributions that can be made when Minority Serving Institutions partner with minority serving school districts, in this case, between HSIs and HSSDs.
With support from USDOEs Augustus F. Hawkins Program, William Paterson (WP) has been able to assist participants who are invited to campus for the 6-week long program to earn 3 college credits while studying Foundations of Bilingual and Multicultural Education, a pre-requisite course for all education majors at WP. It has supported participants by providing a $2000 stipend as teaching assistants in a summer youth program that provides math and literacy enrichment to k-12 students from our partner districts and across our region. The program is free to aspiring educators who are often members of their school district teaching academy or have been nominated by a teacher as a future teacher. Since our partnership is centered in HSSDs, the result has been that 136 aspiring educators have completed the program in 4 years; approximately 102 of these have self-identified as Hispanic or Latino.
Once on campus, the Aspiring Educators Program offers participants a structure that is designed to cultivate interest and build efficacy for future teachers from HSSDs, thus providing a structure that meets the mission and vision of the program, the college of education, and the university, to increase opportunities and outcomes for underrepresented students, particularly, our BIPOC students who comprise over 60 percent of our campus community. By focusing on economic disparities, we have taken an approach that seeks to define the ways in which our students can use their education to further their economic pursuits and achieve social mobility. The Aspiring Educators program provides students with a scaffolded approach to building self-efficacy, undergirded by elements of multiculturalism that value the identities that students bring into the classroom while providing experiential learning opportunities that allow students to earn while they learn. At the culmination of the program, students are met with a WP promise that ushers them seamlessly into the university by providing additional financial support, small scholarships, waived application fees and other incentives designed to transition between HSSDs and our HSI. Importantly, having earned 3 credits, the first part of the cost of college is behind them and key relationships have been established that allow both institutions to further partner over the ensuing academic year, continuity scaffolding college and career.
The Aspiring Educators Program at WP is an example of the incredibly important roles that the nation’s MSIs have always played and can continue to play to produce the nation’s teacher workforce, particularly our cherished BIPOC teacher population. By intentionally partnering with minority serving school districts (as HSIs and HSSDs have done), and by supporting our MSIs with significant resource allocations, we are well poised to address educator diversity and close the demographic disparities that have too long defined US public education, thus bringing us closer to our aim of an equitable, pluralistic democracy.
About the authors
David A. Fuentes is associate dean and professor of teacher education in the College of Education at William Paterson University. He serves as Principal Investigator and Inaugural recipient of the United States Department of Education’s $1.6 million Augustus F. Hawkins Award. He also serves as Project Director for the New Jersey Department of Labor and Workforce Development $564,000 GAINS award supporting Apprentices enrolled in Teacher Registered Apprenticeship (T-RAP) at WP. He is a member of the Board of Directors at the American Association of Hispanics in Higher Education (AAHHE) and the 2024 AAHHE recipient of the Mildred Garcia Founders Award.
Amy Ginsberg joined William Paterson University of New Jersey as dean of the College of Education in 2018, after over twenty years at Long Island University in Brooklyn, New York, where she had served as Dean of the School of Education, associate dean, department chair, and tenured faculty member. A licensed psychologist, Dean Ginsberg has focused her clinical work on developmental issues of young adulthood, identity development throughout the lifespan, and adjustment to disability. Dean Ginsberg has been awarded numerous federal, state and foundation grants and awards.
