TEACHER DIVERSITY

As you can see, the proportion of new hires who were Asian was consistently lower than the proportion of
Asians employed in the previous year, usually by 5-7 percentage points. By contrast, the proportion of Black new
hires was consistently similar to existing proportions. The pattern for Hispanic new hires was also relatively
stable, though there was a bit more fluctuation for this group. Only among White teachers were new hires consistently
overrepresented relative to previous years (by about 5 percentage points, on average).
5. ARE SECTOR LEAVING PATTERNS SERVING TO DIVERSIFY SAN FRANCISCO’S PUBLIC SCHOOL
TEACHERS?
In San Francisco, as shown in Figure SFO-7, teacher “leaver rates” (or, more accurately, “sector leaver rates”—
see “About the City Profiles”) fluctuated around 10-11 percent between 2003 and 2011. (Note that, in Figure
SFO-7, the rates in a given year express the proportion of that year’s Asian, Black, Hispanic and White teachers
who left after that year and did not return). Every year, schools must draw deeply into the pool of available candidates
to fill these vacancies, which, depending on the supply of qualified replacements, may hinder efforts to
improve teacher diversity. To the extent that teacher leaver rates are higher among underrepresented groups (in
this case, Asians, Blacks and Hispanics), the challenge is likely to be greater.
From 2003 to 2011, the leaver rates were generally highest among White and Black teachers, especially after
2005, and quite a bit lower among Hispanic and especially Asian teachers. In fact, the leaver rate among White
teachers was, on average, almost twice that of Asian teachers.
FIGURE SFO-7: SECTOR LEAVER RATES, BY RACE AND ETHNICITY, 2003–2011
25
District Schools
20
15
10
13.0
11.4
14.0
13.6
10.6 10.5
5
6.7 6.4
0
White Black Hispanic Asian
Figure notes: The year in this figure refers to the year before teachers left—e.g., the leaver rates for 2005 indicate teachers who were employed
in 2005–06 and left before 2006–07.
In Figure SFO-8, we present cumulative new-teacher sector leaver rates, by race and ethnicity. Note that, for
ease of presentation, these rates are not disaggregated by cohort, which means that the bottommost row of each
table includes cumulative outcomes for one new-teacher cohort (the earliest one we can identify in our dataset),
the second from the bottom includes the first two new-teacher cohorts, the third up includes the first three, and
so on.
ALBERT SHANKER INSTITUTE 89 THE STATE OF TEACHER DIVERSITY