In today’s education landscape, the teacher shortage isn’t just a temporary staffing challenge. It’s a long-term systems issue that calls for proactive, strategic talent management. According to the National Center for Education Statistics, 74% of public schools faced difficulty filling vacancies in the 2024-25 school year. For HR Directors and Educator Preparation Program (EPP) Coordinators, that means one thing: the time to start building your district’s future workforce is now.
An active talent pipeline—a continuous, collaborative system for identifying, preparing, and supporting future educators—can help schools mitigate turnover, strengthen mentorship, and improve teacher quality over time. Below, we’ll explore research-backed strategies you can use to develop that pipeline, plus practical steps you can take today to make meaningful progress.
Why Active Talent Pipelines Matter
Teacher preparation and retention are deeply connected. Studies show that when student teachers are placed with effective mentors and in schools that reflect their future teaching environments, they begin their careers with the equivalent skill level of a third-year teacher. That’s a major advantage for districts facing turnover or struggling to maintain instructional quality.
Yet right now, only 3% of classrooms host a student teacher in any given year, leaving on the table significant untapped potential to expand the pool of mentors and build relationships with aspiring educators early on. When EPPs and K-12 partners collaborate to make better, data-driven placements, they not only improve candidate outcomes but also cultivate a ready-made hiring pool of teachers who already know the district’s culture, students, and standards.
5 Tips for Building Your Talent Pipeline
1. Develop Strong Partnerships
The most successful pipelines are built on deep, functional partnerships between districts and educator prep programs. Instead of transactional placement arrangements, think of these as shared ecosystems where both sides exchange insight, data, and long-term goals.
Start by establishing a joint talent strategy that defines how you’ll collaborate around recruitment, placement, and professional growth. For example:
Share staffing projections so EPPs can align candidate placements with high-need subject areas or grade levels.
Regularly review data together, like mentor teacher performance or retention outcomes, to improve future matches.
Co-design professional development for mentors and new teachers that reinforces both the district’s instructional vision and the EPP’s preparation framework.
This level of coordination helps everyone make smarter, more intentional decisions that strengthen the educator pipeline from the start.
2. Recruit and Empower Effective Mentors
Research confirms that mentor quality is one of the most influential factors in a student teacher’s success and long-term retention. Yet mentor recruitment remains one of the biggest challenges for both EPPs and HR teams.
To improve mentor recruitment:
Collaborate with principals to identify strong classroom teachers who model effective instruction and positive leadership.
Survey potential mentors about their strengths, interests, and prior experience mentoring. This builds a more complete picture of who’s ready to support candidates.
Recognize and incentivize mentors. Whether through stipends, leadership credits, or public acknowledgment, mentors should feel valued for their contributions to the district’s talent pipeline.
This investment pays off. Districts that intentionally pair candidates with effective mentors often see improved instructional outcomes and higher teacher satisfaction across the board.
3. Align Placement Criteria with Future Hiring Needs
Too often, placement decisions are made based on convenience or tradition rather than strategic alignment. But small adjustments in placement criteria can yield big results.
For example, if your district anticipates vacancies in middle school math or schools with high multilingual learner populations, you can work with EPP partners to place teacher candidates in those settings. This gives candidates targeted experience while allowing you to “test drive” future hires in authentic, high-need environments.
Research suggests that when candidates’ student teaching placements mirror their eventual full-time positions, they are more likely to stay in the profession and perform at higher levels. Aligning placement data with your HR forecasting data helps ensure that every placement serves a strategic purpose, not just a logistical one.
4. Give Voice and Choice to Participants
Mentorship and placement processes can sometimes feel opaque or one-sided. But transparency builds trust and engagement, two essential ingredients in a sustainable pipeline.
According to a Torace survey, 95% of respondents agree that it’s important for the matching process to feel transparent. By giving mentors and mentees structured opportunities to share their preferences, goals, and teaching philosophies, you create matches that work better for everyone involved.
Some ways to bring voice and choice into your process:
Ask mentors to describe their classroom environments and mentoring style.
Invite student teachers to outline their career goals and learning preferences.
Involve principals in confirming readiness and fit for mentoring roles.
These simple steps don’t just make participants feel heard. They also generate valuable data that improves placement quality over time.
5. Leverage Technology to Streamline the Process
Even with the best intentions, many EPPs and HR teams rely on outdated spreadsheets, endless email threads, and manual data entry to coordinate placements. This limits visibility, slows down communication, and increases the risk of misalignment.
Modern matching platforms like Torace were designed to solve that problem. The Torace platform collects detailed data from mentors, candidates, and administrators, then uses AI-powered matching to pair participants efficiently based on alignment, readiness, and preference data.
The result: better matches, faster decisions, and more time for what matters most—building relationships that grow great teachers.
Torace: The Secret to Strong K-12 Talent Pipelines
Building an active talent pipeline doesn’t happen overnight. It requires intentional partnerships, data-driven placements, and a commitment to making the process transparent and equitable for everyone involved. But the payoff is worth it—higher retention, stronger teacher development, and a workforce that’s more engaged, more prepared, and more likely to stay.
Ready to modernize your program’s approach to mentorship and placements? Download our free eBook, Making the Best Matches, to explore research-backed strategies and real-world examples that can help you start building a sustainable talent pipeline today.
