A report published in December by the Harvard Kennedy School shows that diversity among Massachusetts teachers is falling short.
The report came amid growing research that students benefit academically from having teachers that represent their own demographics.
According to the report, "Massachusetts’ situation is similar to the nation’s in that its current teaching workforce is nearly 90 percent White, while its K-12 student body is only 60 percent White."
Paul Reville, former secretary of education and a professor at Harvard University’s Graduate School of Education, told Boston Public Radio Thursday that there has been little effort to attract people to the teaching profession in general, let alone targeted efforts of inclusion.
"We haven't, in general, totally apart from this question of diversity, we haven't created a very attractive profession, for a whole host of reasons,," he said. "And as a result, people who have other [career] choices execute those choices.
"If we want to attract more candidates of color to the field, we're not only going to have to make exceptional efforts to reach out to them and develop pipelines, starting as early as high school, to interest people to the teaching profession, but in general we're going to have to make this a more attractive profession."
Reville also runs the Education Redesign Lab at Harvard. His latest book, co-authored with Elaine Weiss, is "Broader, Bolder, Better: How Schools and Communities Help Students Overcome the Disadvantages of Poverty."
