Glenda L. Partee: Should African Americans Care about the Racial Composition of the Teacher Workforce?: Our country faces a population shift that has major implications for the teacher workforce. The proportion of teachers of color is out of step with the increasing racial diversity of our public school students.
African Americans can accept this imbalance as the result of a post-racial society and do nothing. Or we can decide it's to the benefit of our children to have strong educators and role models that look like them. If so, we can work to address this imbalance.
Nationally, students of color make up 40 percent of the public school population, but teachers of color represent only about 17 percent of the workforce.
