Researchers find that a teacher workforce that reflects the diversity of the student population is going to require exceptionally ambitious efforts, taking far longer than previously acknowledged. Racial parity is not possible by relying solely on school districts to recruit more minority teachers. A study released last week by the Read more
The percentage of students completing high school and enrolling in college has increased over time for all racial and ethnic groups, according to a newly released report. However, despite these gains, the rate of progress has varied among groups, and gaps persist on key indicators of educational performance. The National Read more
The Condition of Future Educators 2015 reveals that only 4% of the more than 1.9 million 2015 ACT-tested US high school graduates said they intended to pursue a career in education-as either a teacher, counselor, or administrator. This is down from 5% in 2014 and down from 7% in 2010. Read more
Brian Kisida and Anna Egalite, in Real Clear Education, write about the potential positive effects on increasing teacher diversity that they discovered through recent research. An excerpt from their post appears below: It’s long been touted that for students, having teachers that look like them leads to higher test scores. Read more
New research published by the Upjohn Institute finds that non-black teachers have significantly lower educational expectations for black students than black teachers do when evaluating the same students. This is concerning, as teachers’ expectations likely shape student outcomes and systematic biases in teachers’ expectations for student success might contribute to Read more
Recent studies show that the demographic characteristics of teachers can impact student achievement. These findings point to the need for more female teachers in science and mathematics, as well as more ethnic minority educators. More than three-quarters of U.S. public school teachers are female. So it’s a bit surprising to Read more
Andy Rotherham of Bellwether Education has a new article out in the US News & World Report that calls out a little-considered issue in education: the people who are making the decisions about education reform are by and large those people who did well in and enjoyed school. This means Read more
All students-regardless of race, color, national origin or zip code-deserve a high-quality education that includes resources such as academic and extracurricular programs, strong teaching, technology and instructional materials, and safe school facilities. U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan announced guidance, in the form of a Dear Colleague letter to states, Read more
On the Top Performers blog of Education Week, Marc Tucker has written a compelling post which challenges American complacency on the new “separate but equal.” Despite Brown v. Board of Education in 1954, various statistics show that American schools are as segregated as they ever were before that monumental court Read more
A new report from Catalyst Chicago focusing on teacher preparation in Illinois highlights the discrepancy between increasing numbers of minority students and stagnant numbers of minority teachers but cites limited success in enrolling more Latino teacher candidates. The Latino demographic, however is the only group that enrolled at increasing rates Read more
If you spend time in almost any major school district in America today, you will notice that the students often do not look much like the teachers. In fact, in some areas, the students don’t look anything like their teachers. There is a significant demographic gap in the largely white Read more
Just four years after passing a law mandating that prospective teachers must pass the Test of Academic Proficiency (TAP) within five attempts, Illinois state board of education officials have scrapped this law in hopes of “manipulating the pipeline” of new teachers. State officials, dismayed at the disproportionately low number of Read more
Last Wednesday, during his remarks at the National Urban League conference in New Orleans, President Obama announced he would sign an Executive Order to improve outcomes and advance educational opportunities for African Americans. The President has made providing a complete and competitive education for all Americans – from cradle to Read more
Rural administrators who want to better prepare and support a culturally diverse teaching force need to vary recruitment strategies, seek partnerships, and promote a culture of collaboration, according to a new study. Those are among a list of suggestions in “Teacher Identity in a Multicultural Rural School: Lessons Learned at Read more
The Center for American Progress released two reports last week focused on the lack of diversity in the American school system and what might be done about it. The first paper, Teacher Diversity Matters, by Ulrich Boser, reflects on the increasingly diverse public school population and the decreasingly diverse teacher Read more
Earlier this month, Richard M. Ingersoll and Henry May published a study through the Consortium for Policy Research in Education that addressed the long-held belief that the country is suffering from a lack of diversity in the teaching profession. They synthesized their findings in a recent article for Phi Delta Read more