SEAL Joins the 1 Million Teachers of Color Coalition

June 2022‍

The research is clear that all students benefit from working with teachers of color, especially students of color. For Black students, having just one Black teacher in elementary school can improve their lives far into adulthood.Yet  across the country, teachers don’t look like the students they serve. While 53 percent of students in the United States identify as people of color, 80 percent of teachers are white, as are 78 percent of principals.  And 40 percent of public schools don’t have a single teacher of color.

Every discussion about educator diversity must include bilingual teachers. We support the movement to ensure our nation’s educator workforce is more racially, ethnically, andlinguistically diverse just like our student population.That is why SEAL joined the One Million Teachers of Color Coalition, a national coalition committed to creating an educator workforce that more closely resembles the students it serves.

By improving how educators are recruited and retained, the coalition’s goal is to grow the number of teachers of color by one million and the number of leaders of color to 30,000 by 2030.We look forward to working with this coalition to build an excellent and diverse educator workforce that both reflects and supports all students. We co-authored this blog with our fellow coalition member, Latinos for Education, that will highlight the importance of including bilingual teachers in this conversation. Read our blog