Importance of teacher diversity in closing the achievement gap?

Question

The Need for a Diverse Teaching Staff

"It is also important to expose children to a diverse teaching staff within each of our schools. Every child has a basic right to a great public school with a qualified and caring staff, including educators who look like them,

I am skeptical of this claim, and more generally, the idea that a diverse teaching staff is essential to close the achievement gap.

I'm planning to teach in economically-disadvantaged public schools, and considering joining the highly selective TNTP Teaching Fellows. They claim to hold the highest standards of any training program in America. The students they intend to help tend to be minorities. I see nothing on their site which suggests a commitment to teacher diversity.

How important is teacher diversity in closing the achievement gap?

Answer 1

A 2004 report linked on the NEA’s teacher diversity website lists the evidence that supports that teacher diversity does indeed impact on closing the achievement gap.

In particular, they highlight that

• Students of color tend to have higher academic, personal, and social performance when taught by teachers from their own ethnic groups, [and]
• Teachers from different ethnic groups have demonstrated that when students of color are taught with culturally responsive techniques and with contents-pecific approaches …, their academic performance improves significantly

And they say this about the data-gathering methodology:

Most of the data currently available on connections between teachers of color and student performance are generated from small-scale qualitative research involving single or multiple case studies. These data focus on a number of significant, though under-recognized, school achievement markers, including attendance records, disciplinary referrals, dropout rates, overall satisfaction with school, self-concepts, cultural competence, and students’ sense of the relevance of school.

While they themselves give the caveats “small-scale” and “qualitative” and don’t seem to consider other, more conventional markers such as grades and rates of conversion to higher education, this looks like it might be a valid conclusion.

However, the report doesn’t provide an itemisation of the cited studies (which, by the way, is inexcusable). A lot of the evidence seems to have been collected in a monograph [1]. Unfortunately I’m unable to check this out myself since I couldn’t obtain access to it online.

• [1] Gay & al., “The Presence and Performance of Teachers of Color in the Profession”, 2003.