Shannon Gray is a teacher resident at the Memphis Teacher Residency. This photo was taken at Cornerstone Prep.

Equity Commitment

NCTR believes that teacher residencies are the best way to recruit, prepare, and retain diverse, culturally responsive teachers to teach students of color and students from low-income backgrounds. NCTR is deeply committed to not just preparing teacher residents to teach students of color, but preparing teacher residents of color to teach students of color. In fact, 69 percent of teacher residents in NCTR Network residencies identify as people of color, as reported in our 2023-2024 Annual Report.

NCTR acknowledges the role of America’s educational system in systemic oppression and takes collective responsibility to challenge and correct these systems and structures. At NCTR, we advocate for a just educational system and believe that being a diverse, equitable, and inclusive organization will better enable us to achieve our mission and improve outcomes for all the students, teachers, and programs we serve.

NCTR invites individuals from a diverse set of backgrounds, experiences, and perspectives to identify challenges and enact solutions to teacher preparation challenges. We honor and celebrate each individual’s strengths and aspire to model diversity, equity, and inclusion. We are committed to providing resources and modeling best practices for our partner organizations, who seek to improve teacher pipelines and ensure all students have access to quality teachers.

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NCTR Network members

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NCTR Network member programs

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Participating Residency Design Academy teams

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Teacher residency programs preparing to launch

Selecting, Recruiting, and Retaining Teachers of Color

Teacher residencies focus on schools serving our highest need and most diverse student bodies that historically have struggled to attract and retain well-prepared teachers of color to eliminate racial disparities in educational outcomes. Teacher residencies are designed to address racial disparities in educational outcomes through the preparation of effective, diverse teachers. They are designed to reduce the systemic barriers that discourage people of color from entering and remaining in teaching. 

• 67% of teacher residents in NCTR’s Network identify as a person of color (NCTR Annual Report, 2023-2024), whereas only 21% of all new teachers nationally are persons of color (NCES, 2023)
• 23% of all teacher residents identify as Hispanic or Latinx/e (NCTR Annual Report, 2023-2024) versus 9% of the entire teaching field and 39% of teacher residents are Black (NCTR Annual Report, 2023-2024) compared to only 6% nationally (NCES, 2023) 
• NCTR awarded over $3 million in grants to 29 teacher residency programs of the NCTR Network to recruit, prepare, and retain educators as part of NCTR’s Black Educators Initiative (BEI) (NCTR Annual Report, 2023–2024) 

Maya Alston is a teacher resident at the Memphis Teacher Residency. This photo was taken at Grizzlies Prep.