Report: Wisconsin teachers still mostly white, and pipeline doesn’t offer diversity
Wisconsin public school students have become significantly more diverse in the last decade, while teachers have remained overwhelmingly white, a new study by the Wisconsin Policy Forum reveals.
The report describes a cycle in which: Students of color chronically achieve less than their white counterparts, and the gap might narrow with a more diverse teaching pool, but the supply of young teachers of color is dropping and those that do enter the field don’t stay long.
“A Teacher Who Looks Like Me: Examining racial diversity in Wisconsin’s teacher workforce and the student-toteacher pipeline,” released last week, is the first in a series that will examine the magnitude of the teacher-student race gap and the trends leading to it. Future installments will also look at potential solutions to the issue, said senior researcher Anne Chapman, author of the report.
Over the past decade, disparities have been wide between white students and several groups of students of color, with the gap between white and Black students among the widest in the country, the report said. “Wisconsin’s Black-white score gaps on both reading and math and in both fourth and eighth grade rank it highest of any state in the nation,” it said.
Research suggests that teacher diversity is important for all students, the report went on, but especially important in improving the achievement of students of color. Chapman said students of color can learn better from teachers of color.
However, while the percentage of teachers of color has increased slightly in the last decade, it hasn’t come close to matching the increase in students of color. In 2019, 31% of those enrolled in Wisconsin K-12 public schools were students of color, but less than 6% of teachers were people of color — and barely 2% were Black. The gap widened every year since 2009.
Further, the disparities in representation by race among students and teachers widened in all types of schools across the state — city, suburban, town and rural.
Fewer teachers in the pipeline
The gaps will almost certainly continue to increase — again, not just in cities but suburbs and more rural areas as well, Chapman said in an interview with the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel.
That’s because of a domino effect that is leading to fewer teachers of color in the classroom.
First, the number of high school graduates enrolling in college has been dropping for years. By 2018, 64% of white high school graduates enrolled in some form of post-secondary education; the percentages dropped to 44% for Hispanic or Latino graduates, and 40% for Black graduates.
Second, of those that do go on to college, there is a huge drop in enrollment in teacher programs by students of color. Just between 2012 and 2018, the number dropped by more than onethird.
Third, once students of color graduate and get into the field, data shows they have a high turnover rate. “Moreover, among the state’s relatively small share of teachers of color, previous research by the Forum and others has found higher turnover and attrition compared to white teachers, a pattern that also reflects national trends,” the report said.
In addition to not seeing themselves reflected in teachers, the turnover can affect students’ learning and stability in classrooms, Chapman said.
Chapman acknowledged in the report that it is coming at an unprecedented time, given the coronavirus pandemic and the social movement against systemic racism following the death of George Floyd in Minneapolis by a white police officer.
“In the wake of the pandemic, students of color have been particularly disconnected from the education system,” the report said.
“Research suggests that teachers of color appear to be well positioned to reach those students and push them to succeed.”
The Wisconsin Policy Forum was created in 2018 by the merger of the Milwaukee-based Public Policy Forum and the Madison-based Wisconsin Taxpayers Alliance.