New push for teacher diversity.

The National Collaborative on Diversity in the Teaching Force has released a report on diversity in America's teaching force that includes the results of the organization's examination of the relationship between educational achievement and teacher diversity. What the collaborative found was that increasing the percentage of teachers of color in classrooms is connected directly to closing the achievement gap of students.

The members of the National Collaborative on Diversity in the Teaching Force are the American Association of Colleges for Teacher Education, the American Council on Education, the Association of Teacher Educators, the Community Teachers Institute, Recruiting New Teachers and the National Education Association.

A news release from the National Education Association (NEA) says that the necessity for teacher diversity is often overlooked rather than accepted as central to school reform, and the logistics of the No Child Left Behind (NCLB) Act continue to create significant barriers to recruiting teachers of color.

NEA cites these as some of the key trends found in our nation's schools:

* About 17 percent of public school students but only about six percent of teachers are African American. About 17 percent of students and five percent of teachers are Hispanic.

* In about 38 percent of public schools, there is not a single teacher of color on staff.

* Students of color tend to perform better when taught by teachers from their own ethnic groups.

Among the solutions proposed by the Collaborative are revising NCLB measures to clearly spell out diversity as a critical element of a highly-qualified workforce, identifying and eliminating the obstacles faced by minority teachers in passing entry tests, and developing programs that support teachers of color.

The report, Assessment of Diversity in America's Teaching Force, is available as a PDF on the National Education Association Web site at www.nea.org.