Report finds K-12 teacher diversity lagging as more minorities earn college degrees

A new report has found that the racial diversity of the K-12 teacher workforce is growing slower than that of college-educated adults, reversing a longstanding trend.

The National Council on Teacher Quality said Tuesday that while 35% of working-age adults identify as American Indian, Black, Hispanic, Pacific Islander or multiracial, only about 1 in 5 teachers comes from these historically disadvantaged groups.

The findings erase a long-term status quo of teaching attracting slightly “more Black and Brown adults” than the workforce at large and suggest the profession is getting Whiter, the council said in a summary of the findings.

The advocacy group called that a “troubling trend” based on research that found Black students who had at least one Black elementary teacher were nearly 40% less likely to drop out of high school than those who never had a Black teacher between the third and fifth grades.

“Teachers of color have a positive impact on all students — especially students of color — yet our teacher workforce continues to lack racial diversity,” said NCTQ President Heather Peske. “Addressing this issue begins with better data.”

The NCTQ partnered with the Center for Black Educator Development to analyze state and national data that researchers compiled in a new Teacher Diversity Dashboard.

It found that the number of educators from historically disadvantaged racial backgrounds increased from 18.3% of the state teacher workforce in 2014 to 21.1% in 2022. Over the same period, the share of working-age minorities with college degrees surged from 17.2% to 22.6%.

The share of minorities in the teaching profession outpaced the number with college degrees until 2020, when the database found 20.7% held degrees and 20.4% taught in K-12 schools.

“Attempting to address the diversity gap between students and teachers is not enough,” said Sharif El-Mekki, founder and CEO of the Center for Black Educator Development. “Advocates and policymakers must consider how teacher diversity compares to the broader workforce if they want to truly understand and address the startling gaps in representation.”

The report divided several racial justice, education and parental rights advocates interviewed by The Washington Times.

“If teachers of color are more likely to hold high expectations for students of color, why do most inner-city American public schools with 70% or more teachers of color have less than 15% student proficiency in reading or math? What truly matters is that qualified teachers know how to teach children to read, write, and do math regardless of their skin color,” said Sheri Few, president of the conservative U.S. Parents Involved in Education.

Omekongo Dibinga, a professor of intercultural communications affiliated with the Antiracist Research and Policy Center at American University, has worked in minority recruitment efforts at K-12 schools. He cited low teacher pay, the “miserable experiences” of non-White students with racist bullying, and conservative efforts to squash diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives as factors discouraging potential teachers.

”This anti-DEI fake activism is going to make these numbers decline even more for sure,” Mr. Dibinga said. “Why work in a place that is erasing your story that was barely taught in school in the first place?”

Others blamed the diversity gap on the share of minority students growing faster than the available cohort of diverse teachers in older generations.

“So even though teaching has become more diverse, representation gaps between students and teachers of color are getting worse,” said Jason Grissom, a Vanderbilt University professor of public policy and education who studies the issue in Tennessee.

He pointed to a 2021 Pew Research Center report that teachers of color grew from about 13% of the teacher workforce in 1987-88 to 20% in 2018-19, with Hispanic educators making the biggest gains.

But only 47% of students were White in 2018-19, compared with 78% of their teachers. Hispanics — a leading driver of immigration to the U.S. — surged from 11% to 27% of all students over that period while increasing from 3% to 9% of all teachers.

“One important issue is that White young adults are more likely to graduate from high school, attend college, and graduate from college than Black and Hispanic young adults,” Mr. Grissom added.

Another roadblock is that minority students who make it to college are less likely to major in foreign language education, added economist Gema Zamarro, a K-12 education market researcher at the University of Arkansas.

“That is an area of teacher shortage in many districts across the country and so the inability to attract and retain teachers in this area can pose a challenge as the number of multilingual learners in a district increases,” Ms. Zamarro said.

She also noted that average inflation-adjusted teacher salaries have stagnated for decades, leaving four-year education degree graduates few resources to pay back up to six figures of federal student loan debts.

The nation’s two largest teachers’ unions, the National Education Association and the American Federation of Teachers, did not respond to an email seeking comment on the teacher diversity report.

Michael J. Petrilli, president of the Thomas B. Fordham Institute, a right-leaning education think tank, said union-endorsed public education pay scales offer stingy salaries to teachers with less than a decade of experience while funneling “an inordinate amount of money” into pensions and healthcare benefits for retired educators.

“If we want to make teaching a more attractive career, including for people of color, we need to flip this model on its head, and drive much more money into teacher salaries in the early years of teachers’ careers,” Mr. Petrilli said. “And we should provide a sizable stipend for teachers willing to teach in high poverty schools, who are more likely to be Black and Hispanic.”