TEACHER DIVERSITY

As in all of the cities we examined, White teachers are heavily overrepresented (more than 5 to 1) relative to
White students. As for the under-representation of teachers, the greatest student-teacher gaps were among
Asians (14 percentage points) and Hispanics (12 percentage points), with a modest gap among Blacks (about 4
percentage points).
3. TRENDS IN THE SAN FRANCISCO PUBLIC SCHOOL STUDENT BODY AND TEACHING FORCE
As Figure SFO-2 illustrates, from 2003 to 2012, the proportion of San Francisco’s teaching force that was White
decreased moderately (about 5 percentage points), while the share of Black teachers also decreased, but less so
(less than 2 percentage points). The proportion of Hispanic and Asian teachers, in contrast, increased by roughly
3-4 percentage points each. 3
FIGURE SFO-2: TEACHER RACE AND ETHNICITY DISTRIBUTION, 2003–2012
100
District Schools
90
80
70
60
50
57.2
52.1
40
30
20
10
0
27.0
23.4
14.2
11.3
7.6 6.0
White Black Hispanic Asian
Figure SFO-3, which includes teachers in both the charter and district sectors, presents another way to visualize
these data. Here, we see changes within each racial and ethnic category over time.
FIGURE SFO-3: TEACHER POPULATION CHANGES BY RACE AND ETHNICITY, 2003–2012
50
40
Decreasing Incereasing
30
20
10
0
-10
-20
-30
-14.4
-21.9
8.1
12.2
-32.4
-40
-50
Overall White Black Hispanic Asian
3 In our San Francisco data, in any given year, around 10-15 percent of observations have missing and/or non-valid values for the race and
ethnicity variable. This is an unusually high proportion, but we are unable to determine the degree to which this affects our results—see Table
SFO-B and the Data Appendix for more discussion.
ALBERT SHANKER INSTITUTE 86 THE STATE OF TEACHER DIVERSITY