TEACHER DIVERSITY

As you can see, differences in group sizes for the various racial and ethnic categories can mean that relatively
modest changes in one group’s proportional share can actually represent a fairly large shift within that category.
For example, while the proportion of White teachers in the district declined by only 5 percentage points, the
actual number of White teachers fell by nearly 22 percent. Similarly, while the Black share of the teacher force
fell by only about 2 points, the number of Black teachers actually declined by a hefty 32 percent. Meanwhile,
the share of Asian and Hispanic teachers, which grew at similar rates of 3-4 percent, represented a 12 percent
increase in the number of Asian teachers but an 8 percent increase in the number of Hispanic teachers.
Figure SFO-4 illustrates trends in “representation gaps” between students and teachers of the same racial or
ethnic category, in this case Black, Hispanic and Asian gaps (the proportion of students minus that of teachers,
in percentage points), between 2003 and 2012. As mentioned above, these gaps were considerably smaller
among Blacks and Hispanics compared with our other cities. The Black student-teacher gap fell slightly over
this time period, while the Hispanic gap increased slightly. In both cases, the shifts were attributable to concurrent
changes in both the teacher and student distributions. The student-teacher gap among Asians, in contrast,
decreased somewhat during this time. Part of this was due to an increase in the share of Asian teachers, accompanied
by a small decrease in Asian representation among students. Nonetheless, the gap remained at about 20
percentage points.
FIGURE SFO-4: STUDENT-TEACHER REPRESENTATION GAP, BY RACE AND ETHNICITY, 2003–2012
60
50
40
30
27.6
20
10
0
20.8
10.5 8.9
6.3 6.0
Black Hispanic Asian
The fact that teaching is a female-dominated occupation means that Asian, Black and Hispanic men constitute
only miniscule proportions of the total teacher workforce in San Francisco (Figure SFO-5). Thus, Asian, Black
and Hispanic boys are particularly affected by the disparities in characteristics between teachers and students.
ALBERT SHANKER INSTITUTE 87 THE STATE OF TEACHER DIVERSITY