Is the diversity of New York’s students reflected in the teaching workforce?
Teacher diversity is critical to the success and well-being of New York students of all backgrounds. Teacher retention, and in particular retention of teachers of color, is an important lever in making sure our teaching workforce is representative of the students it serves. Here’s how school districts across the state are doing at representing the diversity of students and retaining teachers of different racial/ethnic groups.
Click here for our analysis on teacher retention.
Educator Diversity Tool Toplines (2025)
Shares of students and teachers by racial/ethnic groups are reported using data for the 2023-24 school year. 5-year retention rates for teachers cover school year 2019-20 to school year 2023-24. “Multiracial” is a racial/ethnic group for students but not teachers, while teachers could decline to share their race.
On Representation: The shares of teachers of color in New York State are much smaller than the shares of students of color, 20% compared to 60% statewide. EdTrust-New York standardized the shares of teachers and students of color within their own populations in order to compare them, so districts where the shares of teachers of color are comparable to the shares of students of color will show this indicator.
On Retention: The average 5-year retention rate for teachers of color across districts in New York State is 47%, so districts that have a retention rate above that threshold will show this indicator and report their specific retention rate.
View our data note for more information.
Educator Diversity Tool Toplines (2025)
New York’s teacher workforce continues to fall short of representing the racial and ethnic diversity of students in public schools.
In New York State, students of color make up 60% of students enrolled in K-12 schools, while 75% of the teachers working in those schools are White. While the share of White teachers has declined since the 2018-19 school year, from 79% of teachers to 75%, representation in the classroom and school building of teachers of color is still an issue as only 20% of teachers in the workforce in 2023-24 identified as teachers of color. Black and Asian students each have a 7%-point gap between the shares of students and the shares of same-race teachers. This gap is largest for Latinx students, who make up 30% of the students in the state, but only 7% of teachers are Latinx.
Disparities in teacher retention rates persist.
The 5-year retention rate for White teachers remains higher than the retention rates for their colleagues of other races/ethnicities, at 64%. Collectively across the state, teachers of color had a 50% retention rate, meaning that over the course of the 5 years from 2019-2020 to 2023-2024, only half of teachers of color were still teaching in the same district. It is important that schools and districts retain teachers, as more experience in the same community means teachers are better positioned to help students thrive.
Representation and retention continue to be a challenge in different kinds of school communities across the state.
When we look at the shares of students of color and teachers of color in the Big 4 Districts (Buffalo, Rochester, Syracuse and Yonkers) we can clearly see the challenge of representation: 85% of students enrolled in these districts identify as students of color, while only 22% of their teachers identify as teachers of color. This gap in representation isn’t much better in New York City, where 85% of students are students of color taught by only 38% of teachers who identify this way. Charter schools are the only group of schools where over half of teachers are teachers of color, at 55%. Low-needs, Average-needs and Rural districts have the lowest gaps in representation between the shares of students of color enrolled and the teachers of color in the workforce, 33%-points, 29%-points and 16%-points, respectively.