Chalkbeat Chicago compiled demographic data on teachers across Illinois, where about half of all public school students is a person of color but four in five teachers is white.
Our searchable district-by-district database, which draws on numbers from the Illinois State Board of Education’s annual Illinois School Report Card, is below. You can use it to compare teacher diversity at Illinois school districts. The tool breaks down the percentage of teachers and students at a school district by race. It also includes a gender breakdown for teachers, who are overwhelmingly white and female in Illinois, like across the country.
This is the third in a series focused on teacher diversity, which research indicates can have a positive impact on students of all race but is especially impactful for students of color who have teachers from similar racial or ethnic backgrounds. As a state, Illinois hasn’t made much progress in recent years diversifying the ranks of teachers.
For a closer look at the teacher diversity problem in Chicago Public Schools, read our analysis of the stakes, challenges and opportunity. While Chicago’s teaching force is more diverse than most Illinois districts, it’s still disproportionately white. The ranks of black teachers is in decline, and gains among Latino teachers have been slow.
And for a view even closer to the ground, read this story about a majority Latino high school on the South Side. The principal there hopes to hire and build a pipeline of Latino bilingual teachers so that more of her students can learn from native Spanish speakers, but it hasn’t been easy.
