Mississippi News is a non-profit organization. Most teacher education programs in Mississippi are predominantly white. A new study has found that many teachers don’t look like their students, which exacerbates the existing teacher diversity gap. TNTP, formerly The New Teacher Project published Tuesday’s “A Broken Pipeline Teacher Preparedness’s Diversity Problem.” The study used data from 2017-2018 by the U.S Department of Education to examine the racial disparity in teacher preparation programs. Mississippi is second in the diversity gap ranking, behind Washington, D.C. and 50 other states. According to the report, Mississippi is among three states, along with Washington, D.C. and Louisiana, that have a teacher preparation diversity gap of more than 30 percentage points. This is the difference in white students attending public schools compared to students enrolled in teacher preparation programs. 76% of the students enrolled in teacher education programs in Mississippi were white during 2017-28. Only 44% of public school students were white. The study revealed that the majority of the 400,000 potential teachers who enrolled in 25,000 teacher education programs across the country were white. If broken down by program type, alternative route programs (for candidates who are pursuing a teaching licence with a non-education degree) were 47% diverse than traditional programs which were 70% white. The report stated that “our national reckoning about racial inequity has sparked long-overdue discussions about how education and other systems historically failed people of colour, as well as urgent calls for improvement,”. “Closing our teacher diversity gap is one the most important steps that we could take in order to make public education more equal.” Recent research has shown the benefits of diversifying the teacher candidate pool for students of color. However, increasing teacher diversity can be a complex issue. Teachers of color, who are traditionally underserved and have had limited opportunities to take advanced courses in K-12 education, face the greatest challenges in becoming certified. The National Council on Teacher Quality’s 2019 report found that programs do not always prepare teachers to pass Praxis, four to five certification exams. They also don’t require them to take the required classes to be able to teach the content they need. READ MORE: Advocates call for an evaluation of prep programs to help Mississippi teachers pass certification exams. The TNTP report said that “it’s a complex issue with many causes, including certification rules that place emphasis on test scores over teaching ability, latent biases in hiring and district recruitment, and school cultures that often fail to help teachers who are of color to build long careers in education,” The majority of Mississippi’s public school teachers are white women. This is also due to the composition of students in pre-school programs. Even with an increase of $1,500 last year, Mississippi teachers are among the lowest-paid in America. According to the Mississippi Department of Education and the National Center for Education Statistics, the average salary for public school teachers in 2019 was $45,105. Mississippi’s average income is also the lowest in the country. READ MORE: Who is teaching Mississippi’s children? Deep dive into the race and gender of educators in each state. The authors of the TNTP report acknowledge that teacher preparation programs are not solely responsible for this problem, but they also create the teacher candidates pool. These programs must make diversity a priority, the report stated. The report said that “State governments and school districts as well as individual schools have important roles in bringing more teachers from color into the classrooms and keeping them there.” “But too often higher education leaders try to absolve themselves from responsibility for their programs’ lack of diversity rather than acknowledging their power over it,” the report stated. In a February 2019 press release, the Institutions of Higher Learning (IHL), outlined the steps taken by public universities in order to better prepare “the next generation of educators.”