Ten Universities to Tackle the Problem of K-12 Teacher Diversity

The American Association of Colleges for Teacher Education (AACTE) has selected 10 universities to participate in its Networked Improvement Community with the goal of increasing the number of Black and other minority men who teach in the nation’s public schools. According to AACTE data, 80 percent of all PK-12 teachers are White middle-class women and 40 percent of all public schools have no teachers of color whatsoever. The U.S. Department of Education reports that only 2 percent of all public school teachers are Black men. Members of the Networked Improvement Community have agreed to support research and test approaches aimed at increasing the recruitment of Black and other minority men to the teaching profession.

The universities selected to participate in the effort are Boston University, California State University-Fullerton, Florida Atlantic University, MidAmerica Nazarene University, Northeastern Illinois University, the University of Arkansas-Little Rock, the University of Connecticut, the University of Saint Thomas, Western Kentucky University, and William Paterson University.

Dorothea Anagnostopoulos, director of teacher education at the Neag School of Education at the University of Connecticut, stated, “This Networked Improvement Community that we’ll be part of will help us collect data on whether those initiatives are working, how they are working, and provide us with insights and feedback where they are working.”