Still wanted: More teachers of color in Minnesota

MINNEAPOLIS -- Minnesota is pushing to build a diverse teacher workforce to better match its student demographics, with the goal of increasing the number of teachers of color by 2% per year.

That pursuit now faces fresh challenges, with the Trump administration targeting diversity and equity initiatives, and the state being three years removed from the last major infusion of new teacher development funding.

To meet the state’s objective, 1,425 teachers of color would need to enter the sector each year. Last year, 456 people of color completed teacher preparation programs.

“Systemic change is starting to happen, but it’s more like a big ship that’s hard to turn and get up to a top speed — rather than a speedboat,” said Paul Spies of the Coalition to Increase Teachers of Color and American Indian Teachers in Minnesota.

Stakes are high in the push to build a more diverse teacher workforce in Minnesota. Ten years ago, 4% of the state’s teachers were people of color. Last year, the figure climbed to 7.4%, or 5,240 of the 71,214 teachers statewide — thanks in large part to advocacy from the teachers of color coalition.

But a 2% annual growth rate is “ambitious” and will require “significant changes in policies and practices to achieve,” according to a Minnesota Department of Education report issued in December.

The Minneapolis and St. Paul public schools are taking on the challenge.

St. Paul recently finished interviewing its 11th cohort of educators in a residency program that has produced more than 200 high-demand teachers — a year after the Trump administration tried unsuccessfully to pull federal funding from its university partner because it was deemed a diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) initiative.

A month ago, Minneapolis Public Schools filed for dismissal of a federal lawsuit alleging that contract provisions aimed at protecting minority teachers from “last in, first out” layoffs and reassignments discriminated against white educators.

At the Capitol, lawmakers have yet to take up the Department of Education’s report from December that gave recommendations, and the teachers of color coalition, knowing funding is tight, isn’t pushing matters. But the group did recognize past bipartisan victories at a 10-year celebration in March.

A decade ago, the state invested about $4 million per biennium on targeted teacher development, retention and related programming, Spies said. More state funding was allocated in a significant way in 2021 and 2023, bringing it up to $98 million per biennium, with more than half dedicated to “grow your own” programs putting paraprofessionals and others on track to become licensed teachers.

Spies said he is encouraged, too, that the number of people of color completing teacher preparation programs has risen from 244 in 2020-21 to 456 in 2023-24.

Leaning on each other

At Hazel Park Preparatory Academy in St. Paul, special education teacher Quantell Crawford, 28, has put his residency program lessons into practice, and in just two years assumed a leadership role among colleagues.

Crawford, who is Black and wears his hair in locs, feels a natural connection with students, including twins who he says are obsessed with their own locs: “They just love that they have the same hair as me,” he said. “And I’m not even their day-to-day teacher. They just come in and we hang out. We talk.”

He senses respect walking into a room.

“When I go to a class, and there’s a new student in there and they’re acting a fool, and I just want to talk to the teacher or something, they’re like, ‘Oh, Mr. Q’s in here, you don’t want to play when Mr. Q’s in here, like he’s cool,’” Crawford said.

He’s worried about students who left school during the recent federal immigration enforcement surge in Minnesota. He thought about carrying his own passport, too. Then, there were his colleagues — a group of four Filipino teachers working on visas — and wondering if they needed food, clothing or a ride somewhere.

“That’s literally half of our special education staff,” he said. “That was probably such a crazy experience for them to come, not only to the district, to the state, but to our school specifically.”

Creating a climate in which teachers support one another at the building level is a district pursuit. While 90% of graduates in the St. Paul Urban Teacher Residency program stuck with the district in the first year, just half of those in the first nine cohorts remain with St. Paul Public Schools.

“We’re trying to find resources to stop the leak,” said Lyle Dandridge, retention specialist for the state’s second-largest district.

Trump challenges local schools

The residency program is a partnership between the district and the University of St. Thomas, and over the course of two summers and a full school year, Crawford earned while he learned — all while on a path to obtaining a license as a special education academic behavior strategist.

Last year, the Trump administration cut two federal grants related to teacher preparation at St. Thomas as part of its opposition to supposed DEI initiatives. But the grants were reinstated by a U.S. District Court judge after groups to which the university belongs filed suit. (The program also draws white participants.)

In Minneapolis, the Trump administration sued the state’s third-largest district in December for providing what it described as discriminatory protections for teachers of color in layoff decisions, and for a separate agreement prioritizing the hiring of Black male educators at a north Minneapolis elementary school.

“Our public education system in Minnesota and across the country must be a bastion of merit and equal opportunity — not DEI,” U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi said in a statement then.

In February, Timothy Sullivan, an attorney representing the district, filed for dismissal of the lawsuit, arguing that the U.S. Attorney’s Office failed to show that any teacher or applicant had been discriminated against.

Seniority still ruled, he wrote, and the district and the teachers union simply created “narrow exceptions in limited circumstances” to remedy past discrimination that “disproportionately impacted the hiring of underrepresented teachers in the district.”

In addition, he wrote, the district’s agreement with the group Black Men Teach, involving the hiring of Black male educators at the north Minneapolis elementary school, expired months before the suit was filed.

St. Paul Public Schools is aware of the lawsuit, and exercising caution with its own contracts, Dandridge said. But its mission is unchanged.

“Eighty percent of our students are people of color, and our teaching force is not there,” he said, with 28% of all licensed educators, including teachers, in that category. “We just want our schools to look like our communities.”