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This past year’s dual challenges of ongoing systemic racism and COVID-19 exposed the deep inequities that exist within our schools and communities, including disparities in access to high-quality teachers prepared to teach both virtually and in-person. High-quality teacher preparation can play a critical role in dismantling these and other inequities in education.

We—a group of leading Teacher Preparation Transformation Centers (Centers) supported by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and Education First—are working together to transform the way teachers are prepared. We ground our work in a shared vision for teacher preparation transformation: If teacher preparation programs implement sustainable, quality programming at scale that recruits and retains diverse, effective new candidates, then more teachers will be better prepared to positively impact outcomes for Black and Latino/a/x students and students experiencing poverty. We’ll have more teachers of color who better reflect the diversity of students in their classrooms and so positively impact student achievement. The Teacher Preparation Outcomes and Indicators (TPP O&Is) is a framework that supports this vision and describes the outcomes teacher preparation programs seek to achieve in service of this vision.

We recognize, however, that we cannot achieve this vision without an explicit focus on principles of diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) and/or antiracism. We developed this new guide—the DEI Companion Document to the Teacher Preparation Outcomes and Indicators—to ensure that every action our Centers and teacher preparation programs take in pursuit of this vision is grounded in these principles. 

This guide is organized by the four TPP O&Is Domains and their corresponding Objectives. For each Objective, this guide includes:

1. Example actions Centers or TPPs could take to further implement the Objective with a deeper focus on diversity, equity and inclusion and/or antiracism; 
2. Guiding questions that will aid Centers or TPPs in identifying whether and how they are implementing the Objective with an explicit focus on diversity, equity and inclusion and/or antiracism; and
3. Helpful resources that share promising practices and examples from the field that Centers or TPPs may utilize to assist them in their efforts to implement the TPP O&Is with an eye toward diversity, equity and inclusion and/or antiracism.

While every Center and teacher preparation program has its own unique approach to diversity, equity, inclusion and antiracism, we hope this guide can supplement these existing efforts and elevate the critical role that teacher preparation plays in dismantling our education systems’ racism and inequities.

Learn more about this guide here.