A Study on the Level of Ethnic Representation of High School (9-12) Teachers to the Ethnic Representation of Students Enrolled in Each Comprehensive High School in the Commonwealth of Virginia

Abstract

The ethnic composition of the United States is diversifying (NCES, 2014), which is altering the types of ethnicities seen in America’s school system. Beginning in the late 1980s and continuing into the two decades following, educators of ethnic minorities (e.g., Black, Hispanic, Asian) began entering the field of education at a more rapid pace (Ingersoll & May, 2016). The number of educators considered ethnic minorities increased from 325,000 to 666,000 between 1987 and 2012 (Ingersoll & May, 2016); however, this number did not create a proportionality between the ethnicity of students and teachers. This has been linked to the achievement gap between ethnic minorities and Caucasian students in public high schools in America, according to researchers Gershenson, Holt, and Papageorge (2016). The hypothesis that a school division that employs a proportionate number of licensed ethnic minority teachers directly reflecting the population of ethnic minority students will aid in closing the achievement gap can only be considered by first determining whether differences exists between licensed ethnic minority teachers and ethnic minority students. This study investigated the ethnicities of teachers and those of students in high schools in each school division located in the Commonwealth of Virginia. The ethnicities of the teachers in each high school were collected by contacting the Human Resources department in each school division or by telephoning each high school. The ethnicity of students in Grades 9– 12 was collected using the Virginia Department of Education’s website. There were five key findings gleaned from this study. The first finding was that school divisions with the highest levels of representation between the ethnicities of students and teachers were either the largest of the reporting 24 school divisions, or in the smallest of the 24 reporting school divisions. The second finding shows that 45% or reporting school divisions had minority populations that were too small to report. Finding three shows the majority of high school students from participating school divisions identify as White, followed by Black and Hispanic. The fourth finding is that the majority of high school teachers from participating school division identify as White followed by Black. Finally finding five shows that teachers and students that identify as Native Hawaiian, American Indian, Asian, or as having two or more ethnicities were either underrepresented or not reported.