Educators for Excellence-New York Reacts to New York Teacher Workforce Diversity Report

November 5 (New York) — After months of meetings with legislators and other education officials across the state, Educators for Excellence-New York (E4E-New York), a teacher-led organization, reacts to the release of the New York State Education Department’s (NYSED) draft report on state-wide workforce diversity data. 

“This crucial information about teacher diversity is a wake-up siren for leaders in Albany and City Hall. Policy leaders must now seize the moment to invest in diversifying the teaching workforce,” said Paula White, Executive Director of E4E-New York. “Governor Cuomo and leaders in the legislature can prioritize investments in expanding and improving on existing programs that recruit, train and graduate excellent educators of color. Meanwhile, Mayor de Blasio and Chancellor Carranza have the opportunity to leverage the size of our city’s workforce to prioritize hiring and recruiting from universities and preparation programs with a known record of supporting future educators of color. Failure by this generation of elected leaders to prioritize this issue robs future generations of students of color of the benefits of having role models of color leading their classrooms.”

Last February, E4E-New York released a series of teacher-authored recommendations addressing the severe gap between student and teacher diversity. E4E-New York teachers specifically engaged leaders in the state legislature and Board of Regents to demand the release of this report. After several delays, NYSED released a report that confirmed what educators across New York already know:

While non-white enrollment in teacher preparation programs has increased by 14 percent since 2010-2011, the diversity of the educator workforce continues to be 80 percent white – unchanged since 2010-2011. 
New York has only added a total of 1,400 educators of color since 2011-12, but communities across the state saw a decrease in educators of color. Significantly, both New York County and Kings County saw a decline in educators of color. 
There are more than 200 districts across the state that currently employ zero educators of color.

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