Teacher Diversity In America: Why Students Prefer Black & Latino Teachers Than Whites

Diverse schools shouldn't just contain students from all races. An inclusive classroom comprises a diverse teaching staff as well.

A new study, which is a part of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation's Measures of Effective Teaching project, measured how students perceive their teachers and it turns out that they prefer having black and Latino teachers than white teachers. The research gathered data from 1,680 teachers and around 50,000 students (grades six to nine) in 200 schools located in six big metropolitan areas across the United States, CNN reported.

The research was conducted by Hua-Yu Sebastian Cherng, who was a math teacher at a majority-black middle school in San Francisco, California, and Peter Halpin, an assistant professor of applied statistics at New York University. The study was published in the journal Educational Researcher last week.

The study didn't focus on Asian-American teachers or teachers of other races because there weren't enough of them to gather conclusions from, Cherng said. As for the reason behind students' preference, the pupils said that their black and Latino teachers were "clearer" or easier to understand during classroom lessons than their white teachers.

According to the students involved in the study, they feel more motivated and supported by their black and Latino teachers. It should be noted that the students' own race didn't affect their teacher preference. For instance, even white students prefer having Latino teachers and their relationship is at the same level as the relationship between Latino pupils and Latino teachers.

Asian-American students, on the other hand, had favorable views about their black teachers. Rich Milner, director of the Center for Urban Education at the University of Pittsburgh, said that the study's results aren't surprising because of the nature of teachers of color.

Milner said that "teachers of color tend to empathize with their students" and "relate to their inside and outside of school realities," CNN further reported. Teachers of color also cater to the different learning styles of students and they develop "instructional practices that are responsive to students and give students' multiple opportunities for success."

A 2004 analysis published by the National Education Association found that increasing the percentage of teacher diversity in classrooms narrows the achievement gap between students from different ethnic groups and economic backgrounds. Better teacher diversity is also connected to improved student performance.

Despite the positive effects of teacher diversity in classrooms, 83 percent of all elementary and secondary teachers in the U.S. are white, according to the Department of Education. The country's ethnic diversity of school-age children, on the other hand, is increasing.