TEACHER DIVERSITY

About the City Profiles
In this section of the report, we examine the state of racial and ethnic diversity in the teaching forces of the public
schools systems (both district and charter) of nine American cities—Boston, Chicago, Cleveland, Los Angeles,
New Orleans, New York, Philadelphia, San Francisco, and Washington, DC.
This investigation was undertaken in response to anecdotal reports that the numbers of minority teachers were
in decline in urban districts across the country. To help determine the veracity of this impression, we endeavored
to choose cities for this report that included districts of a range of sizes located in a variety of geographic
regions. We then filed Freedom of Information Act requests for each city, asking for data from 2002 through
2012 for both district schools and charter schools. (See Data Appendix for more information on the data acquisition
process.)
Each city’s profile begins with a snapshot (Figure 1) of the current state of racial and ethnic diversity in its public
schools. Using the most-recent annual data in our study, this snapshot provides a picture of what an observer
would have found in the teaching force and student body of the city’s schools at one moment in time. But the
snapshot is only a starting point. A full understanding of what is happening with racial and ethnic diversity in
the city’s schools also requires an analysis of the racial and ethnic distributions among teachers and students
over time. The profile turns, therefore, to the investigation of longitudinal trends. 1
Although Figure 1 and the final data tables that follow each profile include all information on all Census-identified
racial and ethnic demographic groups, most longitudinal graphs only describe trends pertaining to demographic
groups that the Census identifies as comprising at least 10 percent of the general U.S. population:
White-non Hispanic (82 percent), Hispanic (17 percent), and Black (13 percent). Any groups that comprised
at least 10 percent of the population of students or teachers in any city were also included for that city, adding
trend lines on Asians to the Los Angeles, New York City, and San Francisco profiles. 2
Each profile provides two different lenses for viewing trends in teacher diversity. First, the shares of the teaching
force held by the major racial and ethnic groups were mapped for the years where there were data (Figure
2). Second, population changes in the numbers of teachers within each major racial and ethnic group were
presented (Figure 3). By examining these proportional and population changes over time, the reader can gauge
whether the district- and charter-school teaching forces in that city have been becoming more diverse, less
diverse, or have remained relatively unchanged.
In the next section, each profile looks at the relationship between the racial and ethnic distribution among
teachers and the racial and ethnic distribution among students, in both district schools and charter schools.
Here we focus on “representation gaps” for minority students (Figure 4). 3 The gender breakdown among minority
teachers is also presented (Figure 5), which is of particular concern, given arguments about the need for
role models for male minority students. 4
The profiles next move to indicators of the diversification effect of each city’s recruitment and retention policies;
they look at the demographics of those who were hired and those who left the teaching force in district and
charter schools during this time period. In general, a teaching force is shaped by a combination of “pull” and
“push” dynamics: on the pull side of the equation, new staff are added through recruitment and hiring; on the
push, the existing staff either stays or leaves through resignations, dismissals, and retirements. To measure the
effect of new-teacher hires on teacher diversity in a city’s district and charter schools, the profile compares the
proportions of different racial and ethnic groups in new hires to their proportions in the existing teaching staff
(Figure 6). To gauge the effects of rates of teacher “leavers” on teacher diversity, the profile employs two dif-
1 It should be noted that, despite the uniformity of our Freedom of Information Act requests, the years of data we were able to obtain varied
substantially from city to city.
2 Overview of Race and Hispanic Origin: 2010, US Census Bureau, http://www.census.gov/prod/cen2010/briefs/c2010br-02.pdf.
3 Data for all racial and ethnic groups of teachers and students are available in the master tables for each city profile.
4 For a discussion on this, see Section II, ‘The Evidence on Teacher Diversity,” in this report.
ALBERT SHANKER INSTITUTE 24 THE STATE OF TEACHER DIVERSITY