Black teachers improve outcomes for all students, but the profession remains largely white |
Having Black teachers and other educators of color improves students’ classroom experiences, research shows. They often serve as role models, set high academic expectations and teach material that connects to students’ lives outside of schools.
This can lead to higher standardized test scores, better school attendance and more classroom engagement – particularly when it comes to students who share their teacher’s racial or ethnic background, but also for all students.
Yet over the past four decades, the teacher workforce has barely become more diverse, even as the student population has changed.
In the late 1980s, about 70% of public school students and over 85% of teachers were white. Today, the public teacher workforce is still around 80% white, compared with fewer than 50% of students.
I am a scholar of education policy who studies policies affecting Black and other teachers of color, including strategies for diversifying the teacher workforce.
My colleagues and I recently published two studies that help explain why the teacher diversity gap is so difficult to close, despite programs designed to do so.
Even with local district and state-funded teacher recruitment programs that aim to bring in more teachers of color, it is not easy to reverse a workforce gap that took decades to create. Black teachers were pushed out of classrooms during school desegregation in the 1950s through 1970s, resulting in long-lasting effects that shape how a classroom looks today.
This legacy is rarely discussed in teacher recruitment policies that state they support diversity goals. As a result, they often fail to confront or address the racial inequalities that created the gap in the first place.
A history that still shapes the workforce
In 1954, the Supreme Court’s Brown v. Board of Education ruling struck down state-sanctioned segregation in public schools. The landmark decision opened school doors for students of........