Nov. 10, 2004

Diverse Educators Critical to Quality Teaching

Reg Weaver
President, NEA

As school enrollments continue to rise and more teachers retire, school districts across the country are valiantly trying to hire and retain enough high-quality educators to meet their needs. In increasing demand are teachers with math, science and special education backgrounds. But not enough attention has been paid to the critical need to recruit teachers with racially and ethnically diverse backgrounds.

Nationally, about 17 percent of public school students are African American and 6 percent of teachers are African American. Likewise, about 16 percent of public school students are Hispanic and 5 percent of teachers are Hispanic. In more than one-third of America's public schools, there is not a single teacher of color.

Issues of diversity are especially relevant today. Recruiting and retaining more teachers of color can be crucial to closing achievement gaps and ensuring all teachers are highly qualified.

NEA has joined with other education organizations in a National Collaborative on Diversity in the Teaching Force. In its recent report, "Assessment of Diversity in America's Teaching Force," the Collaborative examined the relationships among educational opportunity, educational achievement, teacher diversity and teacher quality. The Collaborative found that a diverse teaching force can be a resource for students and other teachers to help understand students with different backgrounds. It also found that increasing the percentage of teachers of color is directly connected to closing achievement gaps.

NEA and its partners in the Collaborative call for a variety of solutions, including early outreach to middle and high school students to identify those with an interest in teaching, reaching out to students attending community colleges, and helping those interested in teaching gain the knowledge and skills to become licensed.

We can't do it alone. States and school districts need to support teachers of color both in the pipeline and in the classroom.

The sad reality is that a child could go through his entire education without ever having a teacher who looks like me. This is not a reflection of the world or our communities, and it's certainly not a reflection of how we want our children to see the world.