Researchers find that a teacher workforce that reflects the diversity of the student population is going to require exceptionally ambitious efforts, taking far longer than previously acknowledged.
Racial parity is not possible by relying solely on school districts to recruit more minority teachers.
A study released last week by the Brookings Institution and the National Council on Teacher Quality shows that achieving genuine racial parity between public school teachers, whose minority representation constitutes 18 percent of the workforce, and public school students, whose minority representation has increased to 50 percent, will be incredibly difficult, requiring an additional 300,000 African American teachers and over 600,000 Latino/a teachers.
This study, High Hopes and Harsh Realities: The Real Challenges to Building a Diverse Workforce, focuses on the four main problems that contribute to the dearth of minority teachers: lower retention rates for minority teachers, lower hiring rates, fewer minorities interested in pursuing teaching, and lower college graduation rates. The co-authors of the report, researchers from the National Council on Teacher Quality and the Brookings Institution, use data from the U.S. Census Bureau, the National Center for Education Statistics, and other sources to build a unique teacher workforce model. This model answers the questions of how our teacher workforce would change if the nation increased the rates of minority adults who (1) completed college, (2) pursued education degrees and certification, (3) were hired into teaching positions, and (4) remained in teaching positions, so that the minority rates were equivalent to those of white adults.
The findings, asserts co-author Michael Hansen, Senior Fellow and Director of the Brown Center on Education Policy at the Brookings Institution, “should serve as a wakeup call to any group invested in this issue. Researchers, practitioners, and policy makers all agree that we could serve our nation’s students better with a more diverse workforce, but few acknowledge how big a problem this is or how long it might take to fix it.”
Key findings include:
- If schools started retaining the same proportion of African American and Latino/a teachers as white teachers, the report projects that by 2060, the nation would still only reduce the diversity gap by 2 percentage points for African American teachers and 0.6 points for Latino/a teachers.
- If districts successfully hired African American and Latino/a teachers at the same rate as they currently do white teachers, the report projects that by 2060, the nation will still only reduce the gap by less than 1 percentage point for each group.
- If more African American and Latino/a candidates were persuaded to enter teaching either through traditional or alternative certification routes at the same current rate as white candidates, the report projects by 2060, the gap would still only be reduced by 2 points for African American teachers but more significantly by 7 points for Latino/a teachers.
- If African American and Latino/a college students graduated at the same current rate as white college students, the report projects by 2060 that the gap would only narrow by 1 point for African American teachers and five points for Latino/a teachers.
For more commentary, see: https://www.brookings.edu/research/high-hopes-and-harsh-realities-the-real-challenges-to-building-a-diverse-teacher-workforce/
For the report, see:https://www.brookings.edu/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/browncenter_20160818_teacherdiversityreportpr_hansen.pdf
