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The Role of Minority Serving Institutions (MSIs) and Alternative Certification
Our pipeline figures use statistics on teachers of color who come from traditional teacher preparation programs, which includes a sizeable population from MSIs, such as Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs). A disproportionate number of Black and Hispanic teacher candidates are prepared via alternative certification–either based in Institutions of Higher Education or non-IHE based. Tracking these candidates is empirically challenging (see our brief and Phi Delta Kappan article for more discussion), and as such, we can not include individuals who pursue teacher preparation in these types of programs in our figures. Below, we provide our best guess at the distribution of Black and Hispanic teacher candidates by type of program.
Figure 1. Distribution of Teacher Candidates by Type of Program
These figures suggest that non-alternative certification make up the majority of completers for both Black and Hispanic teacher candidates and a relatively small share of candidates are completing programs at HBCUs. That said, about half of Black teacher candidates have alternative certification. Interestingly, the majority of Hispanic teacher candidates in traditional programs are at non-HBCU MSIs.