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Teacher Diversity

Learn more about how California is leveraging teacher compensation policies to attract a qualified, effective, and diverse teacher workforce.
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California’s Performance

Ungraded
Explore the key policy levers below to learn more about how California is implementing policies to diversify its workforce. (NCTQ does not assign rankings to states for this policy area.)
See how California performs across policy levers to improve Teacher Diversity.
Teacher Pipeline Programs
Financial Incentives
Supports for Teachers of Color
Data Systems
Strong
Moderate
Weak
Unacceptable
Ungraded

Why focus on Teacher Diversity?

Teachers of color positively impact all students, especially those of color. For students of color, having a teacher of color can increase academic achievement, reduce discipline incidents, increase high school graduation and college attendance, as well as increase social-emotional outcomes like grit and sense of self-efficacy.1 Research also finds that teachers of color produce additional positive academic and behavioral outcomes for all students, regardless of race, compared to white teachers.2

Recommendations for California for Teacher Diversity

Data Systems

  • Publish explicit goals for increasing the racial/ethnic diversity of the teacher workforce

Financial Incentives

  • Include loan forgiveness in the state's strategy to increase the racial/ethnic diversity of the teacher workforce

Supports for Teachers of Color

  • Publish retention data disaggregated by race/ethnicity

Teacher Pipeline Programs

  • Fund teacher prep programs within minority-serving institutions
References
  1. Egalite, A., Kisida, B., & Winters, M. (2015). Representation in the classroom: The effect of own-race teachers on student achievement. Economics on Education Review, 45, 44-52; Goldhaber, D., & Hansen, M. (2010). Race, gender and teacher testing: How informative a tool is teacher licensure testing and how does it impact student achievement? American Educational Research Journal, 47(1), 218-51; and Dee, T.S. (2004). Teachers, race, and student achievement in a randomized experiment. The Review of Economics and Statistics, 86(1), 195-210. Lindsay, C., Monarrez, T., & Luetmer, G. (2021). The effects of teacher diversity on Hispanic student achievement in Texas. Policy brief. Texas Education Research Center. Gottfried, M., Kirksey, J. J., & Fletcher, T. L. (2022). Do high school students with a same-race teacher attend class more often? Educational Evaluation and Policy Analysis, 44(1), 149-169. Gershenson, S., Hart, C. M., Hyman, J., Lindsay, C., & Papageorge, N. W. (2018). The long-run impacts of same-race teachers (No. w25254). National Bureau of Economic Research. Grissom, J. A., Kabourek, S. E., & Kramer, J. W. (2020). Exposure to same-race or same-ethnicity teachers and advanced math course-taking in high school: Evidence from a diverse urban district. Teachers College Record, 122(7), 1-42.; Lindsay, C. A., & Cassandra M. D. Hart. (2018). Exposure to same-race teachers and student disciplinary outcomes for Black students in North Carolina. Educational Evaluation and Policy Analysis, 39(3), 485-510. Scherer, E., & Cleveland, C. (2022). The effects of teacher-student demographic matching on social-emotional learning. Annenberg Institute at Brown University.
  2. Blazar, D. (2021). Teachers of color, culturally responsive teaching, and student outcomes: Experimental evidence from the random assignment of teachers to classes. EdWorkingPaper No. 21-501. Annenberg Institute for School Reform at Brown University; Cherng, H. Y. S., & Halpin, P. F. (2016). The importance of minority teachers: Student perceptions of minority versus white teachers. Educational Researcher, 45(7), 407-420.