A University of Maryland researcher’s work has helped to inform recent federal documents on diversifying the teacher workforce and recruiting, retaining and supporting teachers. In December 2024, the U.S. Department of Education (ED) released nonregulatory guidance entitled “Supporting a Diverse Educator Workforce to Strengthen Teaching and Learning,” which cited three publications by David Blazar, associate professor of education policy and economics and faculty director of the Maryland Equity Project at UMD. In addition, two of Blazar’s publications were cited in President Joe Biden’s January 2025 “Economic Report of the President,” in sections about policies to attract and retain qualified teachers and maximize their potential. The cited publications focus on the benefits of a diverse teacher workforce, teacher recruitment programs and teacher coaching.
“It’s always something we strive for as academics: to make sure that our work has impact,” said Blazar. “These are documents that are getting directly in the hands of policymakers [and] of people [involved in education] who might not read academic journals.”
Nonregulatory guidance from ED is nonbinding and does not set any new legal requirements but provides research-informed resources for educators, families and advocates. The annual “Economic Report of the President” provides an overview of the country’s economic progress.
The ED nonregulatory guidance cited Blazar’s research demonstrating that a diverse teacher workforce benefits all students, including a 2024 study in the journal Educational Researcher and a 2021 working paper published by the Annenberg Institute at Brown University. In his study of upper-elementary teachers and students in four U.S. school districts, Blazar found that Black students who had a Black teacher demonstrated higher self-efficacy and classroom engagement, likely driven by role modeling. Blazar also found that students of all races and ethnicities who had a Black teacher had higher test scores and fewer absences, potentially attributed to stronger instructional practices. The study documented that Black teachers, on average, had higher scores on several mindset and practice measures, including differentiated instruction, growth mindset beliefs, positive and well-organized classroom environments, and strong relationships with students. The beneficial effects for students persisted many years later.
“My research [demonstrates] the critical importance of Black teachers, not just to Black students, but to all students,” said Blazar. “If we’re thinking about strategies to improve academic performance, which is always of interest to policymakers and the public, [diversifying the teacher workforce] is, in my eyes, one of the key ways,” said Blazar. He added that it is also a “moral imperative” to ensure Black students have access to teachers who look like them and “to provide access to professional jobs for Black individuals who made up a very large share of the teacher workforce decades and decades ago, but were systematically ushered out of the profession” following Brown v. Board of Education in 1954. According to the National Center for Education Statistics, 80% of U.S. K-12 public school teachers identify as white, compared with 46% of U.S. K-12 public school students.
In addition, both the ED guidance and “The Economic Report of the President” cited a 2024 working paper published by the Annenberg Institute that examined the effectiveness of the state-sponsored Teacher Academy of Maryland (TAM)–an example of a Grow-Your-Own (GYO) program–in addressing teacher shortages and recruiting educators with strong connections to the communities they serve. GYO programs bolster the educator workforce by recruiting high school students, classroom aides and other members of local communities to become teachers in neighboring school districts. Blazar authored the study along with Wenjing Gao, a UMD doctoral student in education policy and leadership; Francisco Lagos Ph.D. ’22, formerly a UMD postdoctoral associate; Seth Gershenson of American University; and Ramon Goings of the University of Maryland, Baltimore County. The study–which followed Maryland students for 10 years, beginning in ninth grade–found that students exposed to TAM were 47% more likely to enter the teaching profession than other students. White girls were the most likely to become teachers after exposure to TAM, but the effect on Black girls was also significant, potentially helping to diversify the workforce.
GYO programs are now being implemented in all 50 states, but research on their effectiveness is only just beginning to emerge. “This is one of the first [studies] of its kind to provide rigorous evidence on strategies that states are engaging in now to try to build a robust and diverse teacher workforce,” said Blazar. “We now have some evidence that programs of that sort are a good investment.”
The economic report also cited a 2018 meta-analysis published in the Review of Educational Research, which Blazar co-authored along with Matthew A. Kraft and Dylan Hogan of Brown University. The meta-analysis of 60 studies showed that teacher coaching has a positive impact on teachers’ instructional practice and students’ academic achievement.
