While a majority of U.S. public school students are children of color, most teachers are white women, data show. Would new federal requirements for accountability and transparency about educator hiring practices help change that?
South Bend, Ind., Mayor Pete Buttigieg, who is seeking the Democratic presidential nomination, proposed adding new teacher diversity requirements to the Every Student Succeeds Act as part of a larger set of policies designed to advance racial equity. The plan, named for Frederick Douglass, includes proposals for a variety of government sectors that aim to dismantle 鈥渟tructures that inhibit prosperity and [build] new ones that will unlock the collective potential of Black America.鈥�
More than half of U.S. schools鈥� enrollment is students of color, but , a figure that has hardly changed in 15 years, according to a federal report cited in Buttigieg鈥檚 plan. His plan most directly centers on teacher diversity, but he鈥檚 not the only candidate to address it. Other contenders for the Democratic nomination have also proposed attracting more teachers, including teachers of color, to the field through pay increases, assisting with student debt, and working with minority-serving institutions, like historically black colleges and universities, to attract more black graduates to high-demand fields like education.
Research suggests that having a black teacher can be a gamechanger for black students. in kindergarten through 3rd grade are more likely to graduate from high school than their black peers who had teachers of a different race, according to a National Bureau of Economic Research working paper cited in the Buttigieg plan. Other research links having a black teacher to better for black students and a higher likelihood of being . And researchers have found that , which can become self-fulfilling prophecies when students internalize those perceptions.
鈥淭hat is why we will require new transparency around teacher hiring procedures: States will disaggregate their applicant and hiring by race and document teacher diversity initiatives as part of their Every Student Succeeds Act school improvement plans,鈥� Buttigieg鈥檚 plan says. 鈥淲e will also set new guidelines around the use of Title II funds to invest in recruiting, training, and supporting the next generation of school leaders of color.鈥�
Here鈥檚 What ESSA Already Says About Teachers
The Every Student Succeeds Act, the federal K-12 education law, loosened teacher quality requirements that were included in its predecessor, the No Child Left Behind Act, giving more power to the states in areas like teacher evaluations.
ESSA doesn鈥檛 have any explicit teacher diversity requirements, but it requires states鈥� plans to address 鈥渉ow the local educational agency will identify and address ... any disparities that result in low-income students and minority students being taught at higher rates than other students by ineffective, inexperienced, or out-of-field teachers.鈥� The law leaves it to states to define 鈥渋neffective, inexperienced, or out-of-field teachers.鈥�
How More Teacher Diversity Data Could Help
Requiring additional reporting on teacher diversity and hiring practices could help build public understanding of the issue and identify issues that need to be addressed, said Anne Hyslop assistant director of policy development and government relations at the Alliance for Excellent Education.
She pointed to the policy changes that have followed other increased federal data collection. When schools began reporting suspensions and expulsions of children as young as prekindergarten, for example, the statistics surprised many parents and policymakers, leading states and districts responded by changing their discipline policies.
Elizabeth Ross, the managing director of teacher policy at the National Council on Teacher Quality, said the federal government is 鈥渦niquely positioned鈥� to gather data at the scale that will help education leaders identify what policies aren鈥檛 working for retaining and hiring teachers.
鈥淭eacher diversity matters for all students, but particularly and especially for our most vulnerable students,鈥� she said. 鈥淲ithout access to good data, system-level leaders can鈥檛 uncover what problems exist, and they can鈥檛 make good decisions about interventions.鈥�
Brookings researchers, for example, have found that certain school and district financial incentives鈥攍ike relocation assistance, and student loan repayment鈥攁re more strongly associated .
How The Teacher Career Pipeline Affects Diversity
Some state district leaders who鈥檝e worked to hire a more diverse pool of teachers say the issue is complicated. Ten states are working with the Council of Chief State School Officers as part of its , which involves a range of innovations. And dozens of advocacy groups have pushed Congress
A mostly white workforce isn鈥檛 merely the result of poor hiring practices, they say. As Education Week鈥榮 Madeline Will wrote in May, historians trace a dearth of black teachers back to the 1954 U.S. Supreme Court decision Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka. As public schools around the country desegregated, many dismissed black teachers from formerly all-black schools and retained white teachers instead.
鈥淭he number of black teachers has increased by about 34 percent over the past three decades鈥攁 smaller increase than any other group of teachers, except for Native American teachers (whose numbers have decreased over this time),鈥� she wrote.
Researchers attribute that slow growth and a lack of black teachers in some schools to a range of factors, including the cost of retaking licensure tests, an uneven distribution of black teachers in urban schools, the extra labor black teachers have to do (many report being pigeonholed as disciplinarians), and poor retention of black teachers because of poor school climate or a lack of support from administrators.
The Center on Great Teachers and Leaders at the American Institutes for Research has identified a continuum of factors that contribute to low teacher diversity, including lower graduation rates for students in some racial groups, predominantly white enrollment in some teacher-preparation programs, problems with state licensure tests, and district- and school-level interviews. Addressing policies and practices at any of these steps could help, says the organization, which has to help leaders explore existing data.
Additional data could help states better hone in on solutions not directly related to hiring, said Ary Amerikaner, the vice president for P-12 policy, practice, and research at Ed Trust, an education civil rights advocacy group.
鈥淚f we want to improve teacher diversity, we have to tackle the gaps at each point in the teacher pipeline,鈥� she said.
For example, data about teacher demographics could be analyzed against school discipline rates or placement rates for students of color in advanced coursework as a barometer of equity. Or data could explore retention rates among black teachers who are led by black principals, she said.
Only six states mention teacher diversity in their ESSA plans: Connecticut, Mississippi, Nebraska, Oregon, Tennessee, and Pennsylvania, Amerikaner said.
Is Amending ESSA Realistic?
But any new requirements would require Congress to agree to amend ESSA. It would be an understatement to say that historically, federal lawmakers have dragged their feet at updating the federal education law (just do a little walk down memory lane about No Child Left Behind), and movers and shakers are largely focused on the Higher Education Act at the moment.
In addition, some district and state leaders have said they already feel burdened by the lack of data collection and reporting they are required to do.
Beyond an official act of Congress, a future president could promote educator diversity in other ways, Amerikaner said, for example by using the bully pulpit to explain the importance of the issue, issue guidance and technical assistance to promote state-level efforts, or further analyze existing federal-level data.
Buttigieg seems to hint at this type of action by proposing 鈥渘ew guidelines鈥� for the use of Title II, the chunk of federal teacher development funding that doesn鈥檛 have a lot of strings attached. Such funding could help with early career retention of new teachers, which can be a 鈥渓eak鈥� in the diversity pipeline, Amerikaner said, or it could be used to advance more people of color into principal roles, which can be influential in school staffing. (Under ESSA, states can already for principal training).
A Parallel in South Bend
The national discussion about hiring a more diverse pool of teachers has some parallels to efforts to hire more black police officers in South Bend, an issue that has made headlines in recent weeks after a white police officer shot and killed a black man in June while his body camera was shut off.
鈥淎ccording to data provided by the city, , representing 6 percent of the force,鈥� the South Bend Tribune reports. 鈥淚n 2012, Buttigieg鈥檚 first year in office, there were 29 black officers, about 11 percent of all sworn officers. According to the most recent census estimates, 26 percent of South Bend residents are African-American.鈥�
Buttigieg, who also faced criticism for previously firing the city鈥檚 black police chief, has pointed in interviews to an and the pipeline of steps between applying for a job with the force and suiting up as an officer. The city has also made adjustments, like changing the language used in hiring notices and working with high schools to build interest in policing.
When asked about boosting police diversity in a recent Democratic presidential debate, Buttigieg acknowledged that he 鈥渄idn鈥檛 get it done.鈥�
鈥淭his is an issue that is facing our community and so many communities around the county,鈥� he said. 鈥淎nd until we move policing out from the shadow of systemic racism, whatever this particular incident teaches us, we will be left with the bigger problem of the fact that there is a wall of mistrust put up one racist act at a time.鈥�
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