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Closing the Educator-to-Student Diversity Gap
How can we attract and retain more diverse educators in our schools? The answer lies in comprehensive policy and practice changes at every level.
To thrive in an increasingly diverse world and workforce, young people need to learn in multicultural environments led by effective and diverse educators.
Research shows that all students benefit academically, socially, and emotionally from having access to teachers of color. Use the dashboards below to understand the current racial demographics in your area and to inform your priorities and plans for broadening and strengthening our nation’s educator workforce.
Explore the racial demographic representation of students and teachers, comparing the percentage difference of individuals identifying as people of color.
55 %
of students nationwide identify as a person of color.*
22 %
of teachers nationwide identify as a person of color.*
Navigating the map: Select states or districts on the map for detail. Use navigation menu in the upper left of map to search and reset the map view. Zoom feature is available for district-level maps.
Suggested Citation: TNTP National K–12 Teacher and Student Demographic Dashboards. Retrieved from https://tntp.org/k-12-demo-data/. Please include link or hyperlink.
These dashboards define a person of color as someone who identifies as one of the following six race categories established by the National Center for Education Statistics: American Indian or Alaskan Native, Asian, Black or African American, Hispanic or Latinx, Native Hawaiian or Pacific Islander, or two or more races.
*See key takeaways for details.
“No Gap” indicates that the percentage of teachers of color is the same or higher than the percentage of students of color.
Idaho and Utah: Only state-level teacher counts are available.
Maine, New Hampshire, and Vermont: Teacher demographic counts are estimated based on survey data.
Charter school students and teachers are included in home-district counts based on a charter school’s address where data is available. See data documentation for details.
See data documentation for more information on assumptions, methodology, and data sources including the number of years of data available for each area.
Learn the specific racial demographics of students and teachers in your local district or state.
21 %
of school districts nationwide do not have a single teacher of color.*
14 %
of school districts have just one teacher of color.*
The student-teacher racial diversity gap is the percentage of students identifying as a person of color minus the percentage of teachers identifying as a person of color.
A negative gap means the percentage of teachers who identify as a person of color is higher than the percentage of students who identify as a person of color.
Charter school students and teachers are included in home-district counts based on a charter school’s address where data is available. See data documentation for details.
Maine, New Hampshire, and Vermont: Teacher demographic counts are estimated based on survey data.
Suggested Citation: TNTP National K–12 Teacher and Student Demographic Dashboards. Retrieved from https://tntp.org/k-12-demo-data/ Please include link or hyperlink.
See data documentation for more information on assumptions, methodology, and data sources including the number of years of data available for each area.
*See key takeaways for details.
Analyze how student and teacher racial demographics in your local district or state have shifted over the past several years.
30% +
the national gap that has persisted between students and teachers who identify as people of color over the past five years.*
Hover over or select lines for detail.
See data documentation for more information on assumptions, methodology, and data sources including the number of years of data available for each area.
Suggested Citation: TNTP National K–12 Teacher and Student Racial Demographic Dashboards. Retrieved from https://tntp.org/k-12-demo-data/. Please include link or hyperlink.
Maine, New Hampshire, and Vermont: These states are not shown above as actual teacher demographic data is not collected for all teachers in these states.
Charter school students and teachers are included in home-district counts based on a charter school’s address where data is available. See data documentation for details.
*See key takeaways for details.
These dashboards define a person of color as someone who identifies as one of the following six race categories established by the National Center for Education Statistics: American Indian or Alaskan Native, Asian, Black or African American, Hispanic or Latinx, Native Hawaiian or Pacific Islander, or two or more races.
For detailed information on key assumptions, methodology, and data sources, see our data documentation page.
TNTP gathered teacher and student racial demographic data for as many years as it is available. We have aggregated data in all 47 states (plus the District of Columbia) where teacher demographic data is collected.
Teacher data is sourced from state departments of education and other publicly available information.
Student data is sourced from the National Center for Education Statistics.
Data date ranges:
TNTP has not independently verified the accuracy of the data provided by these governmental agencies.
For detailed state-by-state information about data sources, key assumptions, and the number of years of data available by state, visit our data documentation page.
Our goal is to include demographic data on as many public school teachers and students as possible—traditional public schools, charter schools, and specialized schools. Charter school data is integrated into the analysis when available, specifically within the traditional school district in which the charter school is located.
Review our data sources for detailed information on whether charter schools are included based on state data availability.
Data for specialized schools such as adult education, pre-K, regional schools, prison-based schools, schools on military bases, schools serving deaf and blind students, and virtual schools, are rarely available but included if so.
TNTP plans to make periodic updates to the data that drives these dashboards as more current data becomes available. Check out the latest updates on our data documentation page.
If you notice data that you think may be inaccurate or incomplete, please contact [email protected]
In some states, school district boundaries overlap with others. School districts consisting exclusively of elementary schools often have boundaries that are encompassed by school districts that contain their zoned high school. In these cases, students and teachers from the elementary district are included in the student and teacher counts in the high school district that encompasses the elementary district boundary. This is common in Arizona, California, Illinois, Massachusetts, Montana, and New Jersey. Explore our data to look up districts that have only elementary schools.
Members at The Village Leaders 2023 Conference
At TNTP, we partner with communities to drive meaningful change in America’s public education system, ensuring it meets the expectations of tomorrow. We understand the vital importance of educator diversity in this mission. From programming like Black Educator Excellence Cohort and The Village, to leadership roles in system-change initiatives such as the One Million Teachers of Color (1MToC) campaign, we’re broadening and strengthening our educator workforce and driving deeper impact for students.
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