Education Minnesota schools struggle with widening racial gap between students and teachers Number of teachers of color is stuck at 5 percent as state’s diversity explodes. email Print more Share on: Share on LinkedIn Share on Pinterest Copy shortlink: Purchase: Order Reprint

Across Minnesota, as the student population becomes more racially diverse, the number of teachers of color is not keeping pace. Since the 2006-07 school year — when this year’s high school graduating class was in first grade — the number of K-12 students of color has exploded, while that of teachers of color has barely budged, a Star Tribune analysis of state education data reveals. The disparity is even more pronounced in some rural and suburban school districts. Education researchers predict Minnesota’s student-teacher racial mismatch likely won’t change for several decades — meaning today’s first-graders will face the same struggle for their entire school careers, too. Having more teachers of color in classrooms has a positive impact on student learning overall, mounting research shows. A diverse teaching corps can help eliminate racial disparities in school discipline, and over time, it may even help close the achievement gap between students of color and their white peers. Also, when students of color are matched with teachers who look like them, the students’ perceptions and attitudes about school improve, researchers say, and they are more likely to graduate from high school. “We can all think of mechanisms and theories for why it might matter, but people have actually tested a lot of these theories and data and have found quite strong evidence that students learn more when they are in classrooms with teachers of the same races,” said Aaron Sojourner, associate professor at the University of Minnesota’s Carlson School of Management, who has been studying school recruitment and retention of teachers of color. Efforts to address the shortage of teachers of color have had limited success. Student-Teacher racial mismatch in Minnesota The share of students of color in Minnesota’s public schools has been rapidly growing, while the share of teachers of color has remained stagnant. Percentage of teachers and students of color 34% Students of color 24% Teachers of color* 5.2% 5% 2017-’18 2007-’08 Student-Teacher racial mismatch in Minnesota The share of students of color in Minnesota’s public schools has been rapidly growing, while the share of teachers of color has remained stagnant. Percentage of teachers and students of color 34% Students of color 24% Teachers of color* 5.2% 5% 2017-’18 2007-’08 Jim Foster – Star Tribune *Combines part-time and full-time teachers Source: Minnesota Department of Education and the Minnesota Professional Educator Licensing and Standards Board

About 34 percent of K-12 students in the state are nonwhite, while teachers of color make up only 5 percent of part-time and full-time teachers, the Star Tribune analysis found. And of the Minnesota schools with at least five minority students, 41 percent did not have any teachers of color in the last school year, the analysis found. The difficulty in attracting and keeping teachers of color stems in part from too few minorities graduating with teaching degrees. Another problem, researchers report, is that teachers of color often have negative experiences with a school’s culture — causing them to leave. The situation could get worse as the state’s population of people of color is expected to grow at a much faster rate, projections from the state demographer’s office show. “We’re going to be in a crisis for many years to come,” said Paul Spies, professor of the School of Urban Education at Metropolitan State University. Spies is also co-founder of the Coalition to Increase Teachers of Color and American Indian Teachers in Minnesota. That has prompted new urgency to a long-stalled statewide push to boost the number of minority teachers to 8 percent and double the percentage of teacher candidates of color from 10 to 20 percent. In 2017, legislative fixes included expansions of “grow your own” statewide teacher preparation programs, a new tiered licensing system, and the passage of a controversial proposal repealing a skills exam for those who finish teacher preparation programs. They would still need to pass the Minnesota teaching licensure exams, which measure content mastery and teaching skills. The statewide teachers union and some teachers of color oppose parts of the new teaching licensure law. They argue the removal of certain training requirements for entry-level teaching licenses amounts to “lowering standards” for teachers and say the change could make teachers of color fear they will be viewed as less qualified than their white counterparts. Advocates say the skills test is culturally biased and blocks many teacher candidates of color from entering the profession. Parents are pushing for change, too.

How has your school fared? Type in your school below to see how the number of teachers of color have changed since 2006-07, and how it compares to the rest of the state. Students of Color in 2017-18: STUDENTS OF COLOR PER 1 TEACHER OF COLOR 2006-07 → 2017-18 Percentage of teachers who are non-white 2006-07 2017-18 Statewide 50% 18% 18% 18% *School had no teachers of color during that year Rahul Mukherjee – Star Tribune These ratios were calculated by dividing the number of students of color by the full-time equivalency number of teachers of color Source: Minnesota Department of Education and the Minnesota Professional Educator Licensing and Standards Board