Professor Matthew Kraft has received an award from the William T. Grant Foundation for a project, titled, "Increasing Teacher Diversity, Supply, and Retention through Grow Your Own Programs." The project will be funded through the Foundation's Research Grants on Reducing Inequality program, which supports research studies that aim to build, test, or increase understanding of programs, policies, or practices to reduce inequality in the academic, social, behavioral, or economic outcomes of young people ages 5 to 25 in the United States, along dimensions of race, ethnicity, economic standing, language minority status, or immigrant origins.

As the project PI, Professor Kraft will lead the research team to oversee the research design, data collection, and analysis. He will also work with Danielle Edwards, Co-PI and a postdoctoral research associate at the Annenberg Institute at Brown University, to author a policy brief and an academic paper detailing the study results.

The project begins on September 1, 2023, and ends on August 31, 2026.

Project Description

We aim to examine the scope of “Grow Your Own” (GYO) programs and evaluate their potential to benefit students of color and low-income students. GYO programs develop students, paraprofessionals, and community members to become certified teachers in their districts. A growing body of research affirms that access to same-race/ethnicity teachers is a critical resource for supporting the academic success of Black, Hispanic, and other students of color. By encouraging individuals already living in the community to teach in local districts, GYO programs have the potential to recruit and retain a more diverse teacher workforce in schools serving students of color and low-income students. These initiatives hold considerable promise, but little evidence exists concerning the features and effectiveness of GYO programs.

We will first conduct a systematic landscape analysis of GYO programs nationally to identify common program characteristics. We will then evaluate the efficacy of GYO programs in Texas using a natural experiment created by a statewide GYO grant competition. By comparing districts that fell just below and above the grant funding cutoff, we will isolate the causal effect of the creation of GYO programs on teacher diversity, teacher retention, and student outcomes. Our GYO landscape analysis and original causal evidence can help identify features of effective GYO programs and help target future investments to improve their efficacy.