The Loss of Equity When Teacher and Student Ethnicity Fall Out of Whack

The following is Part 1 of a two part examination of equity in terms of teacher, site administration, and district administration staff in Sonoma County. The central question is: does the race and gender of school staff affect student learning outcomes? If so, are we doing enough in Sonoma County to ensure that school staff generally match the student population being served. The first part looks at certificated teaching staff while Part 2 (coming May 26th) looks at district leadership.

     Last summer, I published some research on behalf of Kaiser Permanente on health care and schools. Kaiser commissioned the work partly because they wanted to gather more data on how schools and health care intersect. The Covid pandemic has underlined some of the conclusions of the study, including (sadly) that schools and healthcare tend to be quite separate. 

     But that isn’t what this post is about. One of the data points I looked at in that Kaiser report was race amongst Sonoma County educators relative to the students we serve. Staff at Kaiser had wondered whether schools in certain demographics did any better at preventive care, vaccinations, and general student health. Were there any factors, like the ethnicity of school staff, that could be variables in student health? I told the folks commissioning the study that making correlations like that would be a tall order, but it did send me to the data to check exactly who was teaching and who was leading education in Sonoma County.

     The data was alarming, as I point out below, but also deeply concerning because there is no obvious quick fix. We’ll return to that question at the end. During the last 20 years, the LatinX student population has increased significantly, from 18.9% to 45.6% of students, now a plurality of Sonoma County students. Though the number of teachers identifying as LatinX has increased in that span, less than 9% are LatinX, as of June 2019. It should be of huge concern that the number of LatinX teachers is so disproportionate to the student population (8% teachers to 45.6% students; 308 teachers to 31,799 students), a ratio of 1:96. Proportionately, white students (29288) are taught by white teachers (3362) in a 1:10 ratio. The data regarding administrators is similar during this twenty year time span. The number of administrators in general has grown from 334 to 405; the percentage of LatinX administrators has increased from 4% to 11%, accounting for most of the 8% drop in White administrators during this span. However, like certificated staff, 8 in 10 administrators are white.

Within these two datasets is one additional subset to focus on. Across the state of California in 2018-19, there were 6295 LatinX administrators (or 22.8%). But in Sonoma County, only 46 of 405 administrators were LatinX (or 11.4%). Sonoma County clearly lags the state in terms of LatinX teachers and administrators. 

The good news is that we know that the system can change because with regard to gender, it has! Over the last 20 years, administrative positions in Sonoma County have shifted to a much higher percentage of female administrators, from less than half (47.6%) in 1997-98 to more than 70% in 2018-19. This is a more profound shift than in the state (54.3% to 64%). In some ways, this makes logical sense in that a school often draws from its teaching ranks for administrators; it is reasonable, therefore, to see a trend where female administrators in 2018-19 (70.8% ) are now in proportion to female teaching staff in Sonoma County (76%). 

The bad news on rectifying the Latin X data is that the teachers in Sonoma are still predominantly white. And there is no immediate solution coming out of schools of education. In fact, when the Covid pandemic first struck back in March of 2020, one of the first actions by California’s Governor Newsom was to pull back on any discretionary spending. The thinking was probably that the economy would almost certainly go in the toilet and the forthcoming budget deficit would be a Goliath. One of the first cuts was the Teacher Residency Grant program. In general terms, the program is designed to support the development of California teachers in areas of shortage, like Special Education, STEM fields and bilingual education. The program has an intent to recruit and support non-white teachers, some of whom may struggle in choosing education as a career path. Becoming a teacher has a high cost of entry relative to the salary payoff down the road. After the expense of a four year college degree, the prospective teacher must complete a fifth year teaching credential program, including a stint in a classroom with a master teacher, first to observe and then gradually to take the reins of the class. 

This fifth year is expensive to the student in time and money. There are no earnings. But if one gets a Teacher Residency Grant, then, depending on the LEA (Local Educational Agency), the student teacher may earn up to $20,000 during that fifth year, critical bridge dollars to get her or him to the teaching credential. 

Newsom’s 2021 budget proposal includes a return of the program’s funding at higher levels than before. Specifically, his proposal would add an additional $100 million to expand the state’s teacher residency program. This would “enabl(e) teachers in training to spend a year working with mentor teachers in the classroom, and $25 million to expand a program that enables districts’ classified workers to earn a teaching credential.” (emphasis added)

So there is some hope, particularly if some LatinX classified staff embrace the opportunity to become teachers (since a much higher proportion of classified staff are LatinX.) But those in school of education know that developing teachers takes quite a while. First, significant recruitment must take place, perhaps in counties outside of Sonoma. But even then, prospective teachers are looking at 5 years of college + credential before entering the profession. And if the goal is to eventually have more LatinX site and district leaders, we may be more than a decade or more away. A typical administrator spends at least a few years teaching before seeking an administrative credential. 

Sonoma County is going to have to wrestle with this problem and perhaps do something more than simply wait for time to pass by. 

In Part 2, I look more directly at district leadership, an even more alarming disparity (coming May 26th)