Schools
Building Diverse Teaching Staff a Challenge for Local School Districts
How demographics for local district teachers compare with their student demographics.
How to attract a quality, diverse staff -- It's a challenge for all school districts, particularly those with more diverse student demographics.
Studies have shown that students of color learn better from teachers of color.
Diverse students tend to have higher academic, personal and social performance when taught by teachers from their own ethnic group, according to a study done by the National Collaborative on Diversity in America's Teaching Force.
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Attendance, disciplinary referrals, dropout rates, overall satisfaction with school, self-concept, cultural competence and the students' sense of the relevance of school are all positively affected.
However, the number of diverse teachers does not represent the number of diverse students, according to the National Center for Education Statistics.
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, and Valley View School District 365U all focus on certain tactics to reach out to qualified teachers of different nationalities. Read more about those tactics on the site tomorrow.
The quality of those teachers remains paramount.
"Quality is number one," said Woodridge District 68 School Board President Thomas Ruggio. "No matter what the gender or the ethnicity of a candidate, they have to be top quality."
District 68 included an objective under its five-year strategic personnel goal directed toward recruitment: "Annually, the personnel department will recruit high-quality minority, bilingual and male candidates."
Another objective was to conduct an audit of district staff to compare its teacher demographics to those of the national teaching pool.
Below are the student and teaching demographics for four local school districts, as well as state averages.
Woodridge School District 68
Students Teachers State White 45.50% 93.50% 82.40% Black 13.30% 4.30% 6.10% Hispanic 27.90% 2.20% 5% Asian 8% 0% 1.20% American Indian 0% 0% 0.10% Multiracial 5.20% n/a n/aCenter Cass School District 66
Valley View School District 365U
Students Teachers State White 29.30% 84.90% 82.40% Black 21.60% 4.50% 6.10% Hispanic 38.70% 9% 5% Asian 6.20% 0.60% 1.20% American Indian 0.30% 0.10% 0.10% Multiracial 3.60% n/a n/aCommunity High School District 99
Students Teachers State White 70.50% 97.40% 82.40% Black 9.40% 1.30% 6.10% Hispanic 9.60% 1% 5% Asian 6.90% 0.30% 1.20% American Indian 0.30% 0% 0.10% Multiracial 3.20% n/a n/aGet more local news delivered straight to your inbox. Sign up for free Patch newsletters and alerts.
