TEACHER DIVERSITY

Section VI:
Policy Recommendations
FEDERAL GOVERNMENT:
■ ■ As part of its Civil Rights Data Collection, the U.S. Education Department should collect and report
data on the race and ethnicity of the teaching force in all public schools, district and charter.
According to the U.S. Education Department, the purpose of its Civil Rights Data Collection (CRDC) program
is “to obtain data related to the nation’s public school districts and elementary and secondary schools’
obligation to provide equal educational opportunity. To fulfill this goal, the CRDC collects a variety of information,
including student enrollment and educational programs and services data that are disaggregated by
race/ethnicity, sex, limited English proficiency, and disability.”
On the principle that students of disadvantaged racial and ethnic groups must have equitable access to qualified
and experienced teachers, the CRDC collects teacher-level data on certification and licensure, years of
experience and current salary. It does not, however, collect any data on teacher diversity.
Research suggests that access to a diverse teaching force directly affects the quality of education that all students
receive, but especially students belonging to disadvantaged racial and ethnic groups. Thus, arguably,
data in regard to teachers’ race, ethnicity and gender, within and among schools, are as much a measure of
“teacher equity” as the measures that are currently being collected.
Given its historic commitment to securing students’ civil rights, and its unique authority to collect and report
civil rights-related data, the U.S. Education Department should begin collecting teacher diversity data
as quickly as possible. Further, these data should be transparent and easily accessible for public scrutiny and
review.
STATE GOVERNMENT:
■ ■ State educational agencies must ensure the accuracy and integrity of the data they collect from all
public schools, district and charter—including data on the race and ethnicity of teachers—and they
must fulfill their legal responsibilities to make that data available to the public.
The difficulties we faced in obtaining full and accurate public documents on teacher diversity from several
state education agencies are detailed in the Data Appendix of this report. Freedom of information laws in
different states were established precisely for the purpose of ensuring that the public has access to public
documents that government agencies might be reluctant to disclose. State educational agencies must fulfill
their obligations under these laws.
■ ■ Governors, state legislatures and state departments of education should review education-related
legislation and policy for their impact on teacher diversity, and amend or modify them to promote
diversification and avoid the unintended consequence of diminishing diversity.
New Orleans is one of the cities in this report that has experienced an immense decline in the share and
numbers of Black teachers in its public schools. State legislation and policy that dramatically transformed
the public schools of New Orleans in the wake of Hurricane Katrina—particularly the mass termination of
the entire pre-Katrina teaching force—clearly played a role in that decline. However, the impact of state
legislation and policy on teacher diversity is not usually so direct or self-evident. Further research should
be done to establish the diversity effects, positive and negative, of particular laws and policies. Governors,
state legislatures and state departments of education need to support that research and take its findings into
account in their decision making.
ALBERT SHANKER INSTITUTE 108 THE STATE OF TEACHER DIVERSITY