Why Teacher Diversity Matters. Changes to the racial and ethnic diversity of the student body have drastically outpaced diversity in the teacher workforce: students of color make up more than half of the public-school student population, but teachers of color make up only about 20 percent of the teacher workforce. And there are good reasons to be concerned about this “diversity gap” as evidence finds that teacher role models can impact student achievement; for more on this, click here.

The Teacher Pipeline Diversity Tool. We’ve developed this tool to help visualize some of the potential reasons for diversity gaps. The tool models the effects of changes in the distribution of race/ethnicity of potential teacher candidates as they progress (or do not) through different “nodes” in the teacher pipeline. Each node represents a different stage—such as enrollment in 12th grade of high school, attending college, attending a teacher preparation program, and entering the classroom. For more information about these nodes, click here. The numeric assumptions that undergird these nodes can be found here.

Apply Your Own Assumptions to the Tool

Simulations We Found Interesting