America’s student body gets more diverse by the day—more than half of public school students are children of color—yet the education workforce remains majority white. This reality is among the root causes of our nation’s sweeping opportunity gap for children of color, including African American students, for whom the benefits of having a Black teacher are proven. Our project will engage a range of partners to radically improve the public school learning experience of current Black male students to draw them to the teaching profession, while simultaneously addressing structural barriers to the field and resourcing, promoting, and retaining Black men currently in the education sector. By intervening with asset-based approaches from students’ earliest years of schooling, and strengthening our Black male teacher pipeline through mentorship, policy advocacy, and hiring reform, we will provide more students of color with a highly qualified teacher who looks like them and improves their learning.

CAAASA has a 25+ year track record of effective, large-scale collaborative impact for Black, Indigenous, and People of Color. Its Boys and Men of Color work dates back 7+ years and has followed the data to focus on building the Black male teacher pipeline as a tool for equity. Below we share the details of some of our past policy convenings and professional development trainings: