Why we need a diverse teacher workforce

Abstract

Despite the consistent policy focus on diversifying the teacher workforce, this workforce still fails to reflect the diversity of the student body in U.S. public schools. Dan Goldhaber, Roddy Theobald, and Christopher Tien examine the theoretical arguments and empirical evidence supporting the importance of teacher workforce diversity. They conclude that there are good theoretical reasons to believe that students of color would benefit from a more diverse teaching workforce, and these theoretical arguments are largely backed by empirical evidence suggesting that there are small but meaningful “role model effects” when students of color are taught by teachers of the same race.