Efforts to recruit and retain diverse educators face increasing uncertainties.
In a new policy brief, “Protecting Pathways to the Profession: The Imperative of Maintaining & Strengthening Pipelines for Educators of Color,” researchers at the UCLA Center for the Transformation of Schools (CTS) contend the elimination by the Trump administration of key federal grants and funding will have lasting negative effects on students, schools, and school systems and that efforts to recruit and retain diverse educators face increasing uncertainties.
With California and other states already facing structural and financial challenges to teacher recruitment and retention and the need to boost educator diversity at a critical juncture, the recruitment and retention of teachers of color under the Trump administration is projected to be even more challenging. Anti-DEI executive orders, challenged as unconstitutional by a federal judge as of the publication of this brief, resulted in $600 million in cuts to various education-related programs that support institutions and teacher education programs using models that prioritize culturally relevant and sustaining systems and approaches, including $148 million withdrawn from California, according to the U.S. Department of Education. Among others, the consequences include the loss of a $7.5 million grant to California State University, Los Angeles being used to certify 276 teachers to serve in high-need or high poverty schools in the Los Angeles and Pasadena Unified School Districts and an $8.5 million grant to a Chico State University teacher residency program that prepares teachers to serve in high-poverty and hard-to-staff rural communities.
Additionally, two major grants supporting student teachers and current educators nationally have been terminated by executive orders by President Trump. The Teacher Quality Partnerships (TQP) program and the Supporting Effective Educator Development (SEED) grant under the Supporting Teacher Diversity, Quality, and Retention programs allocated $150 million to universities, educational organizations, and school districts. The Teacher Quality Partnership (TQP) grants focused on partnerships between K-12 institutions and universities to address teacher shortages. The SEED grant funded higher education institutions that focused on improving academic achievement, graduation rates, and rates of postsecondary enrollment. While the exact number of teachers benefiting from these programs is unknown, some programs, such as the SEED grant, directly served 1,500 teachers and impacted over 90,000 students over their three-year duration.
Rural schools, which already face some of the most severe teacher shortages, will be particularly affected by the cuts in funding. In California, previous UCLA CTS research shows that rural regions face pronounced teacher recruitment and retention challenges, largely due to high poverty rates and their geographic distance from teacher education programs . The development of professional development opportunities and strong pipelines between teacher education programs and rural school districts is crucial to addressing these shortages, a prospect made more difficult by recent funding cuts.
Preservice teachers from lower socioeconomic backgrounds will also face increased barriers to entering the profession. The loss of supports could deter individuals from underprivileged backgrounds from pursuing careers in education and teacher diversity will likely decline.
“The loss of federal funding will hinder efforts to address educational disparities and reduce the pipeline of teachers equipped to serve diverse student populations. This will disproportionately impact teachers of color, leading to the teacher population becoming less diverse, and school districts will face increased challenges in recruitment, retention, and innovative practices,” said Stanley L. Johnson Jr., senior project scientist at UCLA CTS and lead author of the research brief.
The funding cuts will also undermine alternative pathways to teacher certification, including community college program teacher preparation pipelines. For example, in 2023, UCLA’s Center X received a TQP grant to strengthen its teacher development pipeline by collaborating with Hispanic-serving community colleges. Without sustained funding, these efforts to diversify and expand teacher recruitment will be significantly undermined.
The challenges extend beyond educator diversity. The reduction or elimination of federal education funding may have far-reaching consequences, disproportionately affecting states with limited local revenue sources. In California, federal funds account for 13.3% of educational spending—roughly $8 billion in 2024–25. Cuts to this funding would disproportionately hit the most vulnerable students – those from low-income families and with special needs – the hardest.
“Together the structural and financial challenges pose a threat to recruitment of teachers of color in California, making it significantly more difficult for vulnerable students to have educators who reflect their ethnic and cultural backgrounds,” said Johnson.
The research brief’s authors offer a series of recommendations to foster and strengthen a diverse teaching workforce including policy changes at the federal and state levels, advocacy for alternative funding sources, and steps to strengthen state and local commitments to teacher diversity, among others.
The research brief “Protecting Pathways to the Profession: The Imperative of Maintaining & Strengthening Pipelines for Educators of Color,” is authored by Stanley L. Johnson, Jr., Erika Yagi, Grace Ha Eun Kim at the UCLA Center for the Transformation of Schools. The research is available online here.